A holiday cottage near Blenheim Palace
Well Cottage is a thatched, self-catering cottage in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds — about twenty minutes from the gates of Blenheim, and an easy base for a day at the palace.
Well Cottage is a thatched, self-catering cottage in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds — about twenty minutes from the gates of Blenheim, and an easy base for a day at the palace.
Blenheim Palace is one of the great days out of any Cotswold trip, but you don't want to be staying on a main road to reach it. Well Cottage sits in Ledwell, a tiny hamlet near Great Tew where the lane narrows to a single track — and yet the palace at Woodstock is only about twelve miles away, roughly twenty minutes by car. It is a Grade II-listed thatched cottage that sleeps seven across four bedrooms, with two inglenook fireplaces, a walled garden and an Aga kitchen: the sort of place you are glad to come back to after a big day in a very grand house. And it is less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse, if that is on your list too.
Because the cottage is self-catering and takes the whole family, it suits a Blenheim trip well — multi-generational groups, a couple of families sharing, or grandparents bringing the grandchildren for the adventure playground and the miniature railway. You can be at the palace when it opens, back for lunch in the garden, and out again to a village pub in the evening.
Blenheim is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, and the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. It sits in more than two thousand acres of Capability Brown parkland — lake, cascade, great oaks and the long approach that makes you gasp a little the first time you see the house across the water. Inside there are the State Rooms and the Churchill exhibition; outside, the formal water terraces, the walled Secret Garden, the pleasure gardens with their maze and butterfly house, and enough parkland to walk off any lunch.
It is worth knowing that a standard day ticket can usually be converted into an annual pass at no extra cost, so if you are staying for a few days you can wander back as often as you like — a quiet early-morning lap of the lake is one of the nicest things to do from the cottage. There is a full read-up on our Blenheim Palace guide, with what to see and when to go.
The palace sits right beside Woodstock, a handsome old market town of honey-stone houses, good pubs and the Oxfordshire Museum, so a Blenheim day and a Woodstock potter go together naturally. From the cottage you are also well placed for the rest of the county: Great Tew and the Falkland Arms are five minutes away, Oxford is around twenty minutes, and Bicester Village and the Cotswold villages are all within an easy drive. Our full things to do guide has the rest.
In short: Blenheim is the headline, but Well Cottage puts a whole unhurried corner of the Cotswolds on your doorstep — with somewhere thatched and quiet to come home to.
Twenty minutes from Blenheim, a mile from Soho Farmhouse, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, self-catering, in the quiet hamlet of Ledwell.