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Telegraph
a day ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
‘Sorry about JD Vance circus', manor house owner tells villagers
The owner of the manor house accommodating JD Vance in Oxfordshire has apologised to neighbours for bringing a 'circus' to their hamlet. The US vice-president is to stay in the 18th-century, Grade-II listed house after visiting David Lammy at Chevening, the Foreign Secretary's official country residence in Kent. Secret Service agents have been preparing the area around Charlbury, a village with 3,000 residents, for Mr Vance's arrival, putting in place checkpoints, installing new technology and cutting a makeshift helipad into a field. And the owner of the home where the vice-president is staying apologised to her community about the preparations and heightened public attention. In a message seen by The Telegraph, Pippa Hornby, who bought the house with her husband Johnny in 2017, told neighbours she was 'so sorry for the circus that is there for the next few days', adding that she hoped it would not be 'too disruptive'. It came as Mr Vance interrupted his holiday with a high-stakes meeting to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine. The vice-president and the Foreign Secretary held security talks on Saturday about a controversial Russian proposal under which Ukraine would permanently cede territory currently under occupation. The White House is pushing for Europe to accept a deal. Security preparations On Saturday in the Cotswolds, a number of people could be seen roaming the manor house's six-acre grounds, while a man in a black suit and tie with an earphone and a US/UK flag lapel badge stood at the entrance. Black trucks unloaded heavy duty boxes and marquees had been erected across the road at two locations, each housing a generator and chairs. A large antennae was erected behind the house, which locals mused could be a signal jammer, anti-drone system or a telecoms tower to beat the haphazard phone reception. One resident said: 'It's humming constantly, I thought if I go near it might improve my signal but no luck.' Other antennae appeared on the manor house's roof. Vehicles marked with the branding of an event production company and blacked out vans transporting people drove to and from the manor throughout the day. Workers could be seen arranging cushions on the furniture outside. A resident said the usual household staff had been relieved of their duties for the week.
The Independent
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
13 hard truths about the Cotswolds that JD Vance should know
Growing up in the Cotswolds in the 1980s, my childhood was all village hall discos, feral kittens in farmyards, and one bus a week to the local market. Now it's a world of deVOL kitchens, security gates, and an epidemic of A-listers cosplaying Cotswolds life (I see you, David Beckham). Oh, and this week – much to everyone's dismay – JD Vance and his entourage arriving, complete with road blocks and an apology from his host, Pippa Hornby, who bought her 18th-century Cotswolds home in the hamlet of Dean with her husband Johnny in 2017, and told villagers that she was 'so sorry for the circus'. But really, the whole region should come with a warning: just as the Greek islands have morphed into a Mamma Mia theme park, the Cotswolds risk becoming a caricature of America's idea of it: Downton Abbey meets the Hamptons. But here's what the influencers won't tell you… 1. Be prepared for Zimmer Frames Yup, for every midriff flaunting twentysomething doing peace-fingers by the pool at Soho Farmhouse (for somewhere that bans photography, Instagram is somehow awash with striped towels and picante-boomerangs), you'll find an army of octogenarians playing bridge inside the multi-million-pound homes they bought for £25k in the 70s. Those high-end apartments next to the market square you fancy the look of? It's a retirement community. 2. It might be the bleakest place on Earth in winter Night falls AT 3PM and the only thing to do is pull those thick curtains to block out the sideways drizzle. If you can survive the strip-lighting at Tesco in Stow-on-the-Wold on a Tuesday afternoon in February (because everything else shuts just after lunch), then go ahead and press purchase on that stoneclad farmhouse, but don't blame me when no one can hear your screams through those sixteenth-century walls. 3. You will have to book a taxi days in advance And it will cost you £50 to get anywhere. 4. They CAN see you coming As soon as tradespeople see a GL or OX in your postcode, they get very giddy with their decimal points. And to be fair, if you can afford a bespoke wine cellar, a temperature-controlled barn for your art collection or an underground garage for your fleet of luxury cars, then some might say you deserve to be taken for a ride. 5. Every village has a celebrity –but there is only one that matters to locals Kate Moss basically christened the Cotswolds when she bought a cottage in 2003. Since then, the Beckhams have converted a barn next to Soho Farmhouse, Ellen is Goldilocks-ing her away around the villages, Simon Cowell converted four separate homes in to one £8m mega-mansion (of course he did), Jamie Dornan is setting hearts a-flutter in his local co-op, Calvin Harris's new build project is keeping the local economy afloat, Hugh Grant, Amanda Holden, Kate Winslet… you get the picture. The funny thing is that the aforementioned pensioners have NO idea who any of them are. Apart from Jeremy Clarkson. 6. There is a love-hate thing going on with Carole Bamford Aka the queenmaker of villages, not content with turning the sleepy hamlet of Daylesford into Disneyland for people who like scented candles and over-priced cabbages, Carol-with-an-e Bamford has now waved her magic wand over the village pubs in nearby Kingham, Oddington and Asthall, steroid-injecting neighbouring house prices and local business opportunities. Less fun for anyone who doesn't want to wait six weeks for lunch on a Wednesday, but still, villagers around the Cotswolds can be heard begging 'pick me!', 'pick me!' whenever Carole drives through. 7. It voted Remain, but you'd better get along with Tories Boris and Carrie held their wedding party at the Daylesford Estate (see above). Chipping Norton, the unofficial capital of the Cotswolds, is David Cameron's home turf. And now the rightest of right-wingers, JD Vance, is holidaying in the tiny village of Dean. The Cotswolds has long been a safe haven for the yellow-corduroy brigade, but Vance's impolite and aggressive chat about his brand of American politics will get short shrift at the local bowls club. Oh, and he might want to know that when it comes to childless cat ladies, there are quite a few in these parts too... 8. There are two driving speeds Country lanes in the Cotswolds are not for the fainthearted. It's either tourists gripping the steering wheel at 15mph or locals taking corners at 85mph. You can always tell someone who has just moved from London, as there's a pristine Range Rover parked on the drive. Real Cotswoldians drive second-hand Volvos. 9. There are two tiers of tourists too And they are literally EVERYWHERE. One cohort on buses heading to Bourton-on-the-Water for a cream tea (sometimes up to 90 coach trips a day), the other thinking they're in an exclusive Tom Ford fragrance ad in dad's Porsche, en route to Estelle Manor. 10. Beware the village boardroom Let's face it, you've got to be rich to move to the Cotswolds (house values have increased by approximately 22.8 per cent over the past five years) and most people with the kind of money to buy the best properties tend to have sold a soul at some point. Now imagine what happens when you throw that kind of CEO energy into a tiny village with not a lot going on. Yup, the local horticulture show suddenly becomes more like the Chelsea Flower Show and the backstabbing dramas are like something out of Succession. 11. There's more to the Cotswolds than meets the eye Every postcard-perfect cottage and charming village pub has a flip side: the locals peddling very fast indeed behind the curtain to keep the whole fairytale from collapsing. A Coventry University project, Hidden Hardship, found that many residents in the North Cotswolds quietly endure low-paid seasonal work, rare affordable housing, poor transport, and challenges accessing health care and services. Meanwhile, they're surrounded by weekend warriors blowing absurd money on hearts made out of twigs to hang on their front door. There's a reason the Lidl car park is rammed and why Daisy May Cooper's mockumentary This Country was so popular. 12. It IS as ridiculously beautiful as it looks It might be easier to get a reiki massage than a pint of milk, but on a summer afternoon, there is nowhere on earth better than the Cotswolds. 13. But it's still closer to Birmingham than it is to London…
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
'Sorry for the circus!' Owner of the manor house in the 'Hamptons of the UK' apologises to neighbours over JD Vance's stay
The owner of the manor house set in the 'Hamptons of the UK' has apologised to her neighbours ahead of JD Vance 's stay. As part of his 'MAGA summer' holiday, the US vice-president is set to make a visit to the Grade II-listed Oxfordshire property, accompanied by his wife Usha and children Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel. It comes after a brief trip on Friday to Chevening House, the official residence of British foreign secretar y David Lammy, set within 3,000 acres of North Downs countryside. Mr Lammy, 53, and Mr Vance, 41, are understood to have forged an unlikely friendship and spent time with each other's families, alongside engaging in a short, bilateral meeting. Now, Pippa Hornby, who bought the 18th-century Cotswolds home with her husband Johnny in 2017, has told villagers that she was 'so sorry for the circus' set to take place across the coming days, the Telegraph has reported. The luxury manor house believed to be hosting Mr Vance was built in 1702 for Thomas Rowney, an Oxford MP and is set neary to Diddly Squat farm, owned by Jeremy Clarkson, who has previously voiced his dislike for Mr Vance. Set across six acres of land, the sprawling property is home to two cellars, a tennis court, rose garden, basement gym and Georgian orangery. Dubbed the 'Hamptons of the UK' due to its idyllic scenery and upmarket properties, the quaint Oxforshire village of Charlbury, which houses up to 3,000 residents, has been preparing for Mr Vance's anticipated arrival. With the US politician expected to make a one-night visit, checkpoints are said to have been installed by secret service agents, alongside a makeshift helipad in a remote field. One local previously told the Daily Mail: 'There has been a lot of activity at the manor this last few days. It is hard to miss. Security absolutely everywhere. 'Men dressed identically surrounding the property with ear pieces and dark glasses. 'Blacked out Mercedes vans shuttling people around every few minutes. We have never seen anything like it. It's like something out of a film. 'The word is that it is indeed for JD Vance. So we shall see.' In the grounds, American secret service personnel in dark glasses, talking into ear-pieces, were dotted around its four corners keeping watch. On the main gateway of the property, leading to a sweeping 'in and out' driveway, two suited security guards were checking the security clearance of those coming and going in a stream of blacked out cars and Mercedes limousine vans. One local villager told the Telegraph that a large antennae placed behind the house, perhaps a telecoms tower, is 'humming constantly' and had failed to improve their poor phone signal. Meanwhile, another slightly less amused local seemed almost entirely uanware of the upcoming visit at all. When asked about Mr Vance, he remarked: 'Who? I'm unsure who that is'. Large trucks and marquees have also reportedly been placed along the small, picturesque roads at two locations. Within the grounds, teams of gardeners had been drafted in to make the lawns and pretty herbaceous borders look immaculate. As the Daily Mail reported last month, the tiny village of Charlbury is home to the UK's best pub, The Bull. Earlier this year, Charlbury was named as one of the best places to live in Oxfordshire, alongside the towns of Henley and Burford. It comes as the Cotswolds have become the latest hot ticket with Americans seeking what they see as a traditional cosy English escape. Ellen DeGeneres, the US talk show host, is reportedly deliberately fleeing her home in the area ahead of Vance's arrival after leaving the US following Trump's election. Fashion journalist Plum Sykes told BBC Radio 4 last month of the cosy English haven: 'It's just so hot and so trendy and so fashionable... it's an incredibly beautiful area because it's being protected, almost like a national park that you can live in. 'Americans cannot get over the charm but since Covid it's been refashioned with all the pleasures of London, Paris and New York. It's only an hour away from London by direct train - making it an ideal place to live for the well-to-do commuter - and has a population of just over 3,500, per the most recent census. Despite their differences in political opinions, Mr Lammy previously declared that he considers Mr Vance to be a 'friend' and someone who 'completely relates' to him. The pair are said to have bonded over their common backgrounds - both being raised without their fathers - and their religion: Mr Lammy is an Anglican; Mr Vance a baptised Catholic since 2019. Ahead of Mr Vance's visit, which a source claimed would include a 'short bilateral meeting', the Foreign Office said ministerial engagements would be announced in 'the usual way'. Chevening, a 400-year-old Grade I listed mansion, has been the de-facto summer residence of the Foreign Secretary for decades, after being gifted to the UK in 1959 via the Chevening Estate Act after being bequeathed by the last Earl Stanhope, James Richard Stanhope. The unlikely friendship of a Labour Foreign Secretary and a Republican Vice-President comes a year after the current Government came to power - when Mr Lammy casually swept aside concerns that diplomacy would be hard to achieve. Mr Lammy insisted he could find ways to relate with the then-favourite VP nominee, despite once calling Mr Trump a 'woman-hating neo-Nazi sociopath' and a 'tyrant in a toupee'. He has since called those comments 'old news' - and the pair have bonded over their similar upbringings and their strong views on family. Mr Lammy told the BBC last July their 'similar backgrounds' had led to common ground. 'Let me just say on JD Vance that I've met him now on several occasions, we share a similar working-class backgrounds with addiction issues in our family,' he told the Breakfast programme. 'We've written books on that, we've talked about that, and we're both Christians. So I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.' The pair have indeed bonded in an unlikely Labour-MAGA bromance, with Mr Lammy and Mr Vance pictured in warm, cordial exchanges each time they have met in a formal capacity. In March, the Foreign Secretary and his wife Nicola Green visited the vice-president's official residence, the Naval Observatory, for a private meeting without officials. And the Foreign Secretary told the Guardian earlier this month he and Mr Vance spent a 'wonderful hour and a half' together over drinks at the US Embassy in Italy during the inauguration of the new Pope, Leo XIV. 'I remember being at the inauguration of the new pope in Rome with Angela Rayner and JD Vance,' he said. 'I don't think JD and Angela will mind me saying that they were having a couple of drinks … I really wanted a glass (of rosé) but instead I had a Diet Coke.' It comes shortly after President Trump visited Scotland, spending time teeing off at his Turnberry golf course in Ayrshire in between holding diplomatic talks with the Prime Minister. Announcing plans for a protest during Trump's proposed state visit to the UK in September, the Stop Trump Coalition alliance said: 'We are meeting Trump with protests in Aberdeen and Edinburgh this month, and then in London and Windsor in September. 'JD Vance is every bit as unwelcome in the UK as Donald Trump. We remember how Vance cut short his ski trip in Vermont because he was so enraged by the sight of a few protesters. 'We are sure that, even in the Cotswolds, he will find the resistance waiting.'
