N° 04
The village
Gloucestershire
You can walk to dinner.
In the Cotswolds that is the rare part. Most houses of this kind sit down a lane with nothing in walking distance, so every evening becomes a question of who is driving and who is not drinking.
Tetbury
A wool town that kept its money and spent it on buildings.
Tetbury grew rich on Cotswold wool in the seventeenth century and then, usefully for us, stopped growing. What is left is a market town of honey-coloured stone lived in continuously for four hundred years rather than restored into a museum of itself — and, thanks largely to Lorfords, one of the most serious antiques destinations in Europe.
It is five minutes on foot from the door, across the fields rather than along a road — the sort of walk you do before dinner rather than the sort you plan. Guests mention it more often than they mention the pool.
- Tetbury on foot
- Five minutes
- Antiques
- Lorfords, on foot
- Market days
- Wed & Sat
- Market house
- Built 1655
What is there
An afternoon disappears into it very easily.
- Lorfords Antiques
- On Long Street, in the middle of townThe reason Tetbury is an antiques destination rather than a town with antique shops. Lorfords has been on Long Street since 2005 and calls itself the largest collection of decorative antiques in the UK and Europe. Interior designers fly in for it; you can walk to it before lunch.
- The Hangars
- Sixty dealers, sixty thousand square feetLorfords' two converted wartime aircraft hangars at Babdown, a few minutes out of town. Genuinely unlike anything else in the country, and worth half a day even if you buy nothing.
- And the rest
- Around twenty-five more dealersMost of them along Long Street too, with a long reputation for furniture. Serious dealers rather than gift shops.
- Eating, on foot
- Lola & Co, and a town full of pubsFor a town this size Tetbury is remarkably well fed — something like a dozen places to eat and drink, all of them within the five-minute walk. Lola & Co is the one to book: family-run Spanish, a deli next door, and consistently the best-reviewed table in town. Beyond it there are pubs with fires, a coffee house, a deli, and enough choice that a week of dinners need not repeat once — and nobody has to nominate a driver.
- The Market House
- Built 1655, still in useGrade I listed and one of the best surviving pillared market houses in England, raised on three rows of stone pillars in the middle of the street. Markets are still held under it on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
- The Chipping Steps
- The prettiest corner of the townA cobbled lane of seventeenth-century weavers' cottages dropping away from the old marketplace. Two minutes from the Market House and worth the detour.
- St Mary the Virgin
- One of the tallest spires in EnglandGeorgian gothic, and visible from the fields you walk in across. It is the tower on the horizon from the pool.
- Highgrove
- The shop is in the townThe King's private residence sits two miles outside Tetbury and its shop is in the middle of the town. The gardens open to the public between April and October; tours are ticketed separately and book many months ahead, so arrange them before you travel rather than after you arrive.
- The Woolsack Races
- Late May bank holidayCompetitors carry woolsacks up Gumstool Hill, which is as steep as it sounds and has been happening since the seventeenth century. A good weekend to be here, and one that books early.
Further out
And when you do want the car.
Everything below is close enough to be a morning or an afternoon rather than an expedition.
- Gardens and grounds
- Westonbirt Arboretum, HighgroveWestonbirt is spectacular in October and quiet in February. Both are five minutes by car.
- Sport
- Badminton, Beaufort Polo ClubThe Beaufort is five minutes away and plays through the summer. Badminton Horse Trials in May turns a normal week into a premium one and should be booked a long way ahead.
- Towns
- Cirencester, Nailsworth, MalmesburyCirencester for the Roman museum and the shops, Nailsworth for eating, Malmesbury for the abbey. All well inside half an hour.
- Cities
- Bath, Bristol, OxfordBath is the obvious day out and the least far. Oxford is a longer run but doable.
- Worth the drive
- Juliet, The Potting Shed, The Wild DuckJuliet at Stroud is the one critics travel for — a French-Italian bistro from the family behind the Woolpack at Slad, and about the hardest table in Gloucestershire to get. The Potting Shed at Crudwell is a Top 50 gastropub with its own kitchen garden. The Wild Duck at Ewen is the Pearmans’ Cotswold inn.
- Breakfast, or the way home
- Jolly NiceA farm shop, cafe and drive-through built out of an old filling station on the A419. Rare-breed burgers, a fire pit, and the obvious stop coming back from Kemble.
- Padel
- Within walking distanceThe one racquet sport not on site, and still no car required.
Distances
How long everything actually takes.
Times are from the door, by car unless stated.
- Tetbury
- Five minutes on footAcross the fields, not along a road. The reason nobody has to drive to dinner.
- Lorfords, Long Street
- Five minutes on foot
- Lorfords Hangars, Babdown
- A few minutes by car
- Highgrove
- Five minutes by car
- Beaufort Polo Club
- Five minutes by car
- Westonbirt Arboretum
- Five minutes by car
- Kemble station
- Ten minutes by carDirect to London Paddington in a little over an hour, roughly hourly.
- Cotswold Airport, Kemble
- Ten minutes by carA private airfield. Private aviation only, no scheduled flights, no terminal.
- Cirencester
- Ten minutes by car
- Malmesbury
- Ten minutes by carAbbey, market, and the Dyson campus.
- Supermarkets
- Minutes awayA full shop is a short drive; we will pre-stock the kitchen if you send a list before you arrive.
The manager will arrange it
Tables at Juliet — which is worth asking for early, because they go — or at Lola & Co and the Potting Shed. Tickets, tours, cars both ways. Tell us what you would like to do when you book and it will be organised before you arrive, which is the difference between a holiday and a week of admin.