The Super King Room
The principal bedroom, tucked up under the eaves where the old beams meet the thatch.
The principal bedroom, tucked up under the eaves where the old beams meet the thatch.
Climb the last of the stairs and the roof opens out above you: sloping oak beams, dark with age, fanning down from the ridge to walls of soft white lime plaster. A row of framed prints is set along the ledge behind the headboard, and the room feels like the calm heart of the old cottage.
A generous super king bed sits at the centre, made up with proper linen and layered for cool Cotswold nights, the bedside lamps throwing a warm light up into the rafters.
Crisp white pillows banked against the dark headboard, with a soft oatmeal cushion and a rust linen one set in front and the orange waffle blanket turned down ready.
Up close, the bedding is all texture: a burnt-orange waffle weave laid over a cream one, the kind of layers you pull up on a cool Cotswold night.
A line of linen cushions in oatmeal and warm tan, soft against the pale daylight coming through from the window behind.
By day the room is a different thing entirely: bright and airy, the lime-plaster walls catching the light and the beams reading warm rather than dark.
Fold back the pine shutter from the deep casement and the garden comes in with the morning: green leaves, birdsong, and the low Cotswold light that this corner of the house was built to catch.
Square on from the foot of the bed: the twin lamps lit beneath the row of prints, fresh white towels rolled and waiting on the turned-down blankets.
Close to, the bedstead shows its carving: a deep linenfold panel worked into the dark old wood, rising straight out of the crisp white sheets.
It is a proper room to settle into, not just to sleep in. A pine dresser with its original turned knobs stands against one wall, deep enough to unpack a week into.
A rocking chair waits in one corner and a small writing table sits beneath the eaves, somewhere to take a cup of tea, a book, or the morning while the rest of the house is still asleep.
The wooden rocking chair sits in the near corner, with the whole fan of beams sweeping over the bed and dresser beyond.
From the far corner you see how it all sits together by lamplight: chair, dresser and writing table gathered around the bed under the long, low eaves.
The carved panelled footboard stands square in the daylight, the pine dresser to one side and the shuttered window bright in the corner beyond.
Behind the headboard, a narrow plaster ledge carries a line of framed prints: wood engravings and old expedition photographs, lit softly from the lamps below.
They are the kind of pictures you find yourself looking at again each morning, half the reason this is the calm heart of the cottage.
A black-framed wood engraving of trees arching over a country lane, propped on the plaster and catching the morning.
Closer still, you can read its title in pencil — 'How still it is' — numbered and signed S. Cave, 2011 along the bottom edge.
Higher up the slope, an old ice-axe hangs beside framed expedition photographs, the dark beams running down to meet the plaster.
At night it is properly quiet. The kind of dark and still you only find this deep in the countryside, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse yet a world away from it.
The bedside lamps come on low, their soft filament bulbs throwing a warm light up the beams, and the village outside falls to nothing more than an owl or the wind in the eaves.
From above, the bedside lamp is all the light you need: an amber spiral filament glowing inside a pale linen shade.
Last along the ledge, a vintage photograph of a snow-covered ship's deck, the sledge dogs ranged along the rail in the ice.
The principal bedroom is one of four at Well Cottage, sleeping seven in all, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse. Check dates and book on Airbnb.