The Bull, Charlbury
A handsome old village inn on Sheep Street, restored and reopened as a contemporary pub with rooms, its kitchen leaning hard into seasonal British cooking.
A handsome old village inn on Sheep Street, restored and reopened as a contemporary pub with rooms, its kitchen leaning hard into seasonal British cooking.
The Bull sits on Sheep Street in the centre of Charlbury, a lovely small Cotswold town in the Evenlode valley on the western edge of Oxfordshire. There has been an inn on this corner since the fifteenth century, and the present building wears its age well, with flagged floors, timbered ceilings, thick golden stone and a pair of open fires. It was carefully restored and reopened in 2023 by James Gummer and Phil Winser, the pair behind The Pelican in Notting Hill, who both grew up near here, and it manages the trick of feeling both properly a pub and quietly considered. In 2025 it was crowned National Pub of the Year at the National Pub and Bar Awards, beating hundreds of pubs across the country, and it sits in the Michelin Guide too, though the room stays refreshingly unshowy about it. We think of it as one of our nearest good village inns: close enough for a spur-of-the-moment lunch, but polished enough to build a whole evening around, and it shares the town with The Bell, which we send guests to as well.
The kitchen does contemporary, seasonal British cooking, and it is an all-day place, so you can drop in for breakfast, linger over lunch or make a night of dinner. There are oysters to start, seasonal fish coming and going with the catch (plaice, pollock, mackerel), and meat dishes built around the signature Bull Pie, rump steak and short rib, with vegetable-forward starters carrying the lighter end of the menu. The drinks list is thought through too: a carefully chosen wine list ranging across Europe and beyond, cocktails, craft beer and a proper spread of no and low options for anyone driving back to the cottage. It reads as pub cooking done seriously rather than anything fussy.
The Bull is a pub with rooms rather than just a restaurant, with bedrooms above and around the old inn. We rarely need them with the cottage a short drive away, but they are a useful pressure valve when Well Cottage is full and a couple of extra guests want their own bed, or when a long dinner makes the drive home feel like one too many. The pub also does private and group dining, which is worth knowing if you are travelling as a bigger party and want a table of your own. Being able to walk upstairs rather than call a taxi is a quiet luxury on the sort of slow, all-day visit the place seems built for.
It is about nine miles and a twenty-minute drive from the cottage, mostly along quiet lanes, and Charlbury itself is worth arriving early for. It is one of the loveliest of the smaller Cotswold towns, an easy grid of honey-stone streets set above the Evenlode, and it has its own railway station on the Cotswold Line, so anyone who fancies a drink and would rather not drive can leave the car behind and take the train in. It is a good town to build a slow morning around before lunch: a wander, a coffee, a look at the shops, then a table at the Bull. If the Bull is booked out, The Wild Rabbit over at Kingham is a similar hop from the door, and a wander round Chipping Norton pairs well with lunch here. Our full guide to eating and drinking in the area runs from village pubs to farm shops and everything between.
“An all-day pub you can slip into for breakfast or settle into for dinner. Order the Bull Pie, and if The Bushcamp is open, that is where I would sit.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.