I’m sitting in The Legbar cafe, part of the now sprawling Daylesford Farm Shop complex, drinking a nut smoothie and taking in the chit-chat around me.
To my left, there’s a chap shouting into his phone about how to get his containers out of China and, to my right, a woman is describing her latest £335 Bella Freud 1970 cashmere jumper.
I’m surrounded by the Kensington set who arrived en masse to the Cotswolds during the pandemic. As I continue to observe this influx of moneyed Londoners, I’m disturbed by the roar of a McLaren 720S super-car. It dawns on me: I live in London’s cringiest postcode — OX7, the Cotswolds.
I moved to the Cotswolds from London 10 years ago, just after my 40th birthday. Kate Moss had moved to the area two years earlier, as had Blur’s Alex James and pretty much the whole of the Groucho Club’s members’ list. It was around the same time as the infamous hacking scandal broke and I’d regularly overhear the victims of it mulling over the details in The Kingham Plough pub in Chipping Norton. The Cotswolds was full of London’s coolest creatives. It was a scene. It couldn’t have been further from cringey.
Fast forward to 2022 and my beloved Cotswolds is a vastly different place. The pandemic caused another rush to OX7. Now, I wonder, is there anyone left in Kensington and Chelsea? For the latest upsurge seems to have migrated from the west of the capital. These Sloane Rangers arrive in their 4x4s and helicopters — the skies are now filled with the buzz of engines when the new set needs to nip back to the city.
It’s not helped by Soho Farmhouse — surely the most unrelaxing place to go on holiday — with celebrities flying in for the weekend. Chrissy Teigen and John Legend stayed recently and made sure every moment was captured for their fans. Tom Cruise flies in from wherever he is filming. David and Victoria Beckham often pop over from their nearby country pile and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex had her hen do there. Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid enjoyed a stay last summer and Margot Robbie, Liv Tyler and Michael McIntyre have also been spotted.
And don’t get me started on Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat farm — the subject of an Amazon Prime show and the cause of much fury amongst locals who are sick of the snaking queues of fans every weekend.
Worse still is the influencer invasion. At lunch with a friend, I watch slack-jawed as a couple with a huge lens and fluffy microphone do pieces-to-camera. They make me dizzy with their back-and-forth as they weave between tables. Finally they order and proceed to photograph every single plate — without ever taking a bite. Everywhere in the Cotswolds has become ‘Instagram-worthy’. Last weekend, as I went to pick up my milk from the local farm, I had to wait outside for someone who was taking selfies with the milk filling machine.
Bibury, a pretty Cotswold village where years ago residents campaigned for one local to remove his yellow car from in front of his picture postcard cottage, is now inundated with gimble-wielding couples taking one for the ‘gram’ and obliterating any quaintness.
In the village shop, I regularly overhear requests for gardeners and private chefs. They also need small rental cottages in which to house these entourages — taking over even more of the property market. What was once sleepy village life suddenly feels like the King’s Road. In fact, the villages feel more like mini towns now. New places serving gourmet fried chicken, artisan fish & chips and organic kimchee pop up every week. There are taxis now too for this poshest of postcodes. Life feels decidedly urbane.
Nowadays, I choose to stay away from villages at the weekend to avoid the white jean-wearing brigade and the sheer mass of cars parked on the verges of country lanes. “Oh, just park it anywhere, they don’t have proper roads here,” I overheard the 4WD Lamborghini driver shout to his friend.
Moving to the Cotswolds is not new. William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement descended in droves to Kelmscott and Chipping Campden at the turn of the 20th century. Then again after WW2 with more artists relocating to south Cotswolds, the late Nineties (my lot) and now the Covid cohort.
A great game I play with a friend is, did they sell up or is this their second home? We first note from whence they came — usually Primrose Hill, Chelsea, Ledbury Road — then decide if they kept their £3 million pound bolt hole in London or if they upped sticks and dived fully into OX7 life.
I always wonder if they appreciate the six bedrooms of detached honeycomb listed stone, surrounded by pretty villages and endless fields or if they long for the smoke of the city and its 24-hour amenities. Is the idyll of country life all that they thought it would be?
Perhaps not. Families are starting to move back to London. These are the sensible ones who kept their city houses. According to Rightmove, sold prices in the Cotswolds were up seven per cent last year and just one per cent in London, making a move back to the city a loss financially.
When I relocated, it was for my mind more than anything and I the pandemic has recreated a desire to escape city life for one of calm and tranquillity. That’s all been lost though, and the local cafes and pubs are filled with noise.
Despite all that, I know I can retreat to my farm with its glorious Belted Galloway cows and beautiful view. That’s the Cotswolds, the way it should be.
