The Killingworth Castle
Genuinely excellent cooking at Wootton: the Cotswolds at its most relaxed and generous, and the one place to eat if you only eat out once.
Genuinely excellent cooking at Wootton: the Cotswolds at its most relaxed and generous, and the one place to eat if you only eat out once.
If you only eat out once during your stay, we'd point you here. The Killingworth Castle is a seventeenth-century coaching inn in the village of Wootton, just north of Woodstock, and it is about fifteen minutes from Well Cottage along the lanes. From the road it looks like any handsome Cotswold pub, the colour of shortbread. Step inside and you find something more considered: exposed stone, wooden floors, roaring fires in winter, and a warren of small rooms filled with mismatched tables and eclectic art. It is a proper pub that happens to cook seriously well.
That standard is not an accident. Jim and Claire Alexander took the place on in 2012, when it had fallen derelict under long brewery ownership, and rebuilt it into one of the best dining pubs in the county. The kitchen has held three AA Rosettes for several years running, sits in the national Top 50 Gastropubs list and was named among the very best pubs in the country by the Good Food Guide. None of that comes with the stiffness you might expect. You can arrive in muddy boots, bring the dog and order a burger, or settle in for the tasting menu. Both are treated with the same care.
The cooking is seasonal British, built on organic and Cotswold ingredients wherever possible, and it changes often enough that we won't promise you a specific dish. What we can say is that it is generous with flavour and light on fuss. Ingredients are the star, whether that is fish brought up from Cornwall or something grown a few fields away, and the plates arrive elegant without ever tipping into fussy. Expect the kind of menu that reads simply and eats beautifully, and leave room for pudding, as the desserts here have a following of their own. Here is roughly how a visit tends to shape up for us.
This is a small, popular pub, so book ahead, especially for weekend dinners and Sunday lunch. At the time of writing the kitchen serves Wednesday through Sunday, with breakfast, lunch and dinner sittings, but days and times do shift with the seasons, so check the current hours on the pub's own site before you set off. If you have people staying who can't make the drive back, there are eight en-suite rooms in the converted stable block, though with Well Cottage a short hop away you can simply enjoy dinner and roll home along quiet lanes.
One nice touch of history: the pub sits close to Blenheim Palace, and Winston Churchill is said to have been a visitor in his time at the estate. Woodstock itself is a couple of minutes further on, so it is easy to fold a meal here into a day out. See our wider eating and drinking guide for more of the pubs and places we send guests to.
“We've had some of our best local meals here. Book for a Friday evening, take your time, and don't skip the pudding.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.