Station Mill Antiques & Interiors
Two floors of an old Chipping Norton mill, around eighty independent dealers, and no telling what you will come home with.
Two floors of an old Chipping Norton mill, around eighty independent dealers, and no telling what you will come home with.
Station Mill sits on the edge of Chipping Norton, about fifteen minutes from the cottage, in a big old mill building near the top of Station Road. Inside, around eighty independent dealers each take their own patch and dress it however they like, so the place is really eighty small shops folded into one. It is one of the largest antiques and interiors centres in the Cotswolds, laid out over two floors, and the stock turns over constantly, which is the whole appeal: you never quite know what will be there, and you rarely walk out with the thing you thought you came for.
The range runs from proper antique furniture down to kitchenalia, glass and china, with mid-century pieces, prints and paintings, textiles, jewellery and all manner of decorative odds and ends in between. It suits a slow browse rather than a quick errand, and it is the sort of outing that keeps a mixed group happy: someone hunting a particular chair, someone after a birthday present, and someone quite content just to drift about and browse. We tend to fold it into a wider morning in Chippy, since the town itself is worth a wander once you are done.
A quick sense of what to expect:
Station Mill is an easy run from Well Cottage, roughly fifteen minutes by car towards Chipping Norton and then round to the north side of the town on Station Road. It keeps generous hours and opens every day, though they vary a little between weekdays and weekends, so it is worth a quick look at the current times on their own site before you set off. We would not rush it, since half the pleasure is the slow wander and the stop for coffee, but as a relaxed morning or afternoon out of the rain it is hard to beat.
“We go in for one thing and come out with three others we never knew we needed. It is the best kind of browse: no plan, a good coffee, and eighty dealers to lose an hour among.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.