Great Tew is barely five minutes from our front door, and the estate that surrounds it is one of the loveliest stretches of private countryside in Oxfordshire. Three and a half thousand acres of ironstone valleys, ancient woodland and rolling farmland, all anchored by a village that looks as though it hasn't changed in two hundred years.
The estate has been shaped by centuries of careful stewardship, and you feel it the moment you walk through. The village itself is a cluster of thatched ironstone cottages lining a single lane, with the church of St Michael and All Angels set on the hill above. There's no gift shop, no visitor centre, no heritage signage. It's simply a working estate that happens to be extraordinarily beautiful. The parkland was landscaped by John Claudius Loudon in the early nineteenth century, and his mature trees still frame long views across the valley toward the Bartons and beyond.
For guests at Well Cottage, it's the kind of place you'll stumble on during an evening walk and wonder why you've never heard of it. The Falkland Arms, the estate's sixteenth-century pub, serves proper ales and has an inglenook fireplace you won't want to leave in winter. Soho Farmhouse sits within the estate's boundaries too, so if you're splitting time between our cottage and the club, you're already in the right parish. It's the sort of landscape that rewards slow exploration: a footpath through the deer park, a drink on the pub bench, a long look at the light changing over the fields.
“Great Tew is the village I take people to when they ask what the Cotswolds really looks like. No crowds, no coaches. Just golden stone and old trees and a very good pint at the Falkland Arms.”
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.