When the frost settles over the honey-stone lanes, Well Cottage is at its best: two inglenook log fires, a warming Aga, and thick old walls between you and the cold — a thatched cottage made for a winter escape near Soho Farmhouse.
Some cottages are made for summer. Well Cottage is made for winter — thick ironstone walls and a deep, freshly laid thatch holding the warmth in, two inglenook fires to gather round, and every room lit low and lamp-warm when the frost is down. It sleeps seven across four bedrooms, so it takes a whole family or a gathering of friends.
The two inglenook fireplaces are the heart of the house: deep, worn stone hearths built for wood-smoke evenings with a drink and a good book. Baskets of split logs stand ready either side — all winter really asks of you is to keep one lit.
Through a stone archway, the farmhouse kitchen is built around a cream Aga that keeps the whole room warm from breakfast to last thing at night — and turns a winter roast or a slow Sunday stew into the easiest thing in the world.
A snug all of its own — and, better still, its own second inglenook fireplace. It is the room for a film under a blanket, a game of cards, or somewhere for the grown-ups to slip away to once the children have taken over the living room.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, and a desk set into the window — a quiet corner to disappear into on a dark afternoon, or to work from for a few days over full-fibre Wi-Fi, with a view of the frost instead of the office.
Up beneath the old oak beams, the super-king room is all warm lamplight and sloping ceilings — the kind of room a cold morning makes very hard to leave. It is one of four bedrooms; you can see them all on the cottage page.
Footpaths lead straight from the door into the north-Oxfordshire Cotswolds, and there is nothing quite like a cold, bright winter walk through frost-stiff fields with the promise of a fire waiting. The Falkland Arms at Great Tew, five minutes away, has one of the best of them, along with proper winter lunches. Daylesford is a short drive for its farm-shop larder and festive produce, Blenheim Palace is quiet and beautiful under a low winter sun, and Soho Farmhouse is barely a mile down the lane.
It makes an easy New Year's Eve in the Cotswolds — see the year in by an open fire rather than in a crowd — a restorative winter break for two, or a February half-term with the whole family and space for everyone. Winter here is not the off-season to be endured; it is arguably the best time to have the cottage, when the fires are lit and the lanes are quiet.
The best winter dates — New Year, half-term, the run of weekends before Christmas — are the first to go, so it is worth booking ahead. Availability is kept up to date on Airbnb.
A thatched Grade II cottage with two log fires and a warming Aga, sleeping seven, in a quiet Cotswold hamlet a mile from Soho Farmhouse.