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For years now, reams of extremely rich and very famous people have hot-footed it to The Cotswolds – or, as some locals call it, the Costsloads.
Not just for a quick shop at Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Organic, or to lounge by the pool with Amanda Holden in her teeny bikini at Soho Farmhouse, or embrace the calming warmth of the tepidarium at Estelle Manor Hotel and members club.
No, they’ve come – usually by shiny black Land Rover Discovery, or Porsche SUV - to snag their very own welly-hold in this idyllic swathe of winding lanes, ancient pubs and honey-stone villages just 90 miles from London.
To snap up a sprawling old pile and, of course, join all their other fellow celebrities, who call this stretch of pretty rolling hills and perfect pubs ‘home’. Or, more usually, their second, or third home.
Everyone from the Beckhams to Simon Cowell, Stella McCartney, Elizabeth Hurley, Kates Moss and Winslet, Simon and Yasmin Le Bon. Blur bassist turned cheese maker Alex James. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond. The list goes on and on and on. Even Taylor Swift rented a pad as a Hunter welly base here during her recent tour.
For decades, they’ve been buying coffees in Chipping Norton or drinking pints in Great Tew. So ten a penny that the locals have long stopped gawping.
‘They’re nothing special, they drink coffee like the rest of us, though they seem to prefer all those daft non-milks,’ says Dave who is nursing an Americano in Chipping Norton’s Café Nero.
‘I used to see David Cameron. And that little bloke off Top Gear. But we just don’t notice them anymore,’ says James, 48, a mechanic who stops to chat in the rain. ‘They’re just part of life here.’
Recently though, there’s been a new influx.
This time, the super rich – real billionaires. A more international set, from all over – but particularly America, Australia and the Middle East, keen to add 500-year-old manor houses to property portfolios that already includes the US, the UAE, ‘warm Europe’ and London.
They are here because ‘Brand Cotswolds’ is bang on trend and already sloshing in money, luxury clubs and, well, because all their friends are buying here too. And they are ruffling quite a few feathers.
Particularly amongst the resident millionaires, who don’t like their style.
The way they build high walls and gates bristling with security cameras and shut out the community.
‘They buy up estates and then seal themselves off from the world. It’s not how we live here,’ says one long-term resident. ‘The people who do well here put on their wellies and get out in the community.’
And, however sprawling their set up, they only jet in for Christmas or a few days in the summer sandwiched between a week at Claridges and a fortnight in Ibiza.
Also, because while everyone here is feeling the pinch – yes, even the millionaires are drinking more prosecco than vintage champagne in the Cotswolds these days and bitterly regretting paying 20 per cent over market price for their properties during lockdown madness – the billionaires seem to be immune to economic factors.
Just last week, it was revealed that an Australian entrepreneur called Blair Raymond James who made his fortune in fake tan and hair renewal serum, and his glamorous wife Melanie Adams, had snapped up the plot next to the Beckhams for £16.5million.
And on a rainy Wednesday, it’s hard to see why.
A small, deserted house, a huge tumble-down walled garden, a lot of bracken and a clear view of £12million Chateau Beckham across a field. You can almost see David in his smart Holland Cooper country tweeds chatting to his chickens behind his white picket fencing.
But it is in OX7, one of the most desirable post codes here – or what locals call ‘celebrity Cotswolds’ – so it will fit perfectly in their property portfolio. And, most importantly, barely a mile down the lane to £2,500-a-year Soho Farmhouse, the hugely popular private members’ club which, even on a wet Wednesday, attracts so many black Porsche SUVs, Land Rovers, Aston Martins and Mercedes past the Beckhams’ front gate that they’ve applied for permission to build a new private access road across the fields.
According to Katy Campbell, a property finder for the one per cent, who regularly sources properties costing up to £30million for her clients, the super rich love the Cotswolds because their network is already here.
‘It’s their level,’ she says. ‘These people are used to a particular standard of living and now this is available to them here in the country, so they don’t feel like they’ve gone back in time.’
Which, of course, for many of us is the charm of the country.
But billionaires are different.
So they want to know that, should they fancy, they can take ice baths and play padel at Carole Bamford’s The Club where robot lawnmowers swirl around a huge topiary elephant on the lawn and the reception area reeks of cash, or they can embrace the opulence of Estelle Manor. And they love to tell their friends they’ve got a picture-perfect pub down the road.
But mostly, they want to stay behind their bristling security gates.
As a result, an entire industry has sprung up to cater for their every fad and fancy.
From top-end sushi biked to their door at midnight, to beauty providers who’ll rush over to administer vitamin drips and injectables in their bedroom. To party planners who specialise in astonishing tablescapes.
Local car companies will not only maintain and store their super cars, but also polish them and pop them on their driveway half an hour before they chopper in – after warming the seats, just in case they want to go for a spin.
Ang Jones runs a concierge company called Harrad & Bloom, where there is only ever one answer – ‘Yes!’
So if a client wants their multi-million-pound mansion transformed into a complete winter wonderland straight from Hollywood movie The Holiday just before they jet in for Christmas? Consider it done.
Or maybe they fancy a couple of pygmy goats and a live reindeer experience for their kids? No problem!
Or perhaps a Caribbean circus party, complete with tiki bar, steel band, big top tent, knife throwers and fire breather?
All in a day’s work, thanks to the network of caterers, chefs, chauffeurs and house dressers in the area who can throw their hand to anything behind those big stone gates.
Lucy Rigg launched her wellness, aesthetics and beauty service Lucieapp.co.uk here four years ago, delivering top-end specialists to very rich consumers in their mansions.
‘We’ve had a massive rise in clients from the Middle East and Americans, who call it the “new Hamptons”,’ she tells me. ‘And it really does feel like the Hamptons. A proper destination.’
They all have Lucy on speed dial for those all-important vitamin drips – crucial for jet lags and hangovers – lymphatic drainage massage, endless blow dries or to have top aesthetics doctors delivered to them from London for body sculpting treatments at home.
‘This is the only place in the UK with all the facilities of London,’ she says. ‘Not even Hampshire can compete – yes it has lot of money, but not the members’ clubs, and certainly not the London vibe, which is what they want here. Along with the same levels of service.’
Which for most includes four £80 blow dries a week, minimum, and no normal office hours.
‘They might want their hair cut at 10pm at night. Or a massage at 6am – and it’s always possible,’ she says. ‘Never ever “No”.’
It really is a different world and impossible to square with normal day to day life here, which consists of customers at Cost Cutters snapping up flavoured vapes and energy drinks, and tired mums in elasticated trousers with screaming babies in Café Nero in Chipping Norton.
Jenny, 62, is walking her border terrier in Aynhoe and is sick of the sound of helicopters swirling overhead.
So is anyone, really, who doesn’t have cash coming out of their ears.
Of course, the Cotswolds hasn’t been a cheap place to live for a long time now – the average house price here was £548,000 last year, compared to £291,000 nationally – and local employment has been dwindling with the decline of farming.
‘No one can afford to farm here any more other than Jeremy Clarkson,’ says Ed, 48. ‘And even he’s got Amazon paying for it all.’
Not that anyone here has a bad word to say about Jeremy. They love him and adore chatting to him in WHSmith in Chipping Norton.
‘He’ll talk to anyone and has no airs and graces,’ says one local. ‘He’s become a Cotswold person.’
But cost isn’t really an issue for billionaires when buying their massive piles.
They have a different set of criteria for their property finders like Katy, who generally charge an annual retainer and a percentage of the total purchase price and mostly deal in off market properties unavailable to the rest of us.
So, for starters, they want a breathtakingly pretty property, ideally Grade II-listed and already renovated – with a lawn big enough to land a chopper without annoying the neighbours.
It will boast one or, ideally two, very high-spec guest houses on the grounds.
‘Because however big, they don’t like having guests staying in the main house, even their own family,’ says Katy.
Also on the shopping list will be a party barn, large heated outdoor kitchen, natural swimming pool, and boot room (which includes at least one dedicated dog sink with shower).
And, of course, privacy.
Ironically, the locals shopping at the market in Chipping Campden market don’t seem to mind their home being turned into Britain’s Beverly Hills as much as the millionaires.
Colin, a retired teacher and musician, tells me he’s totally fine with the billionaires, though he’s sick of all the ‘rock hard’ artisan bread everywhere – ‘give me Mothers Pride any day’ – and the endless wicker baskets that nobody needs. ‘But that’s the normal rich; billionaires don’t eat bread,’ he says.
In fact, pretty much everyone I talk to on the street seems pretty happy with the jobs, the investment, the tired old pubs being pimped and preened.’
They point out no one here would ever be able to afford to buy the sort of houses this lot want anyway.
‘Even if we could buy them, we’d never be able to maintain or heat them!’ says Edward Grierson, who was born and bred near Cirencester and runs a second home company called Cotswold Tiger.
‘It doesn’t bother me if they want to spend money like idiots,’ says Ted, 38, who runs his own contracting business. ‘We’re happy to help them do it.’
Not that they need much help, splurging on everything from private jet hire at the incredibly busy Cotswold Airport at Kemble, run by former model Suzannah Harvey, to a bespoke laundry service also run by Grierson, which has taken off like a rocket. Because billionaires are so particular about their bed linen they’re happy to pay £50 to have a duvet cover, two pillow cases and a sheet laundered, spritzed with lavender, wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a stylish jute bag.
Which is all brilliant for now. But some worry that, like every fad and fashion, it will all suddenly stop.
As one long-term local puts it: ‘These are not Cotswolds people. They will never be. They’re just following the rest of their very rich crowd. And very soon they’ll all bugger off in their private jets to the next trendy place.’
But finally, what of the old guard here – the horsey and doggy aristocrats who have formed the society backbone here for centuries?
Lady (Sara) Bathurst, chatelaine of 3,000-acre, Grade I-listed Cirencester Park and former High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, insists she’s thrilled to share the ‘calm peace and tranquillity’ of her beloved Cotswolds with the newcomers.
‘I love Americans and I’ve never met anyone who moved here who I wished would go away again,’ she says firmly. ‘I am thrilled they are here and if anyone wants a tour, they should feel free to call me!’
Meanwhile she has a few tips.
‘They should try to venture outside their gates. Go to the local butcher. Get involved in the community and keep their heating turned down a bit to help global warming,’ she says.
‘And most of all, I hope they just soak up the atmosphere and mould themselves to the Cotswolds, rather than expecting the Cotswolds to mould to them.’
Which is a lovely thought, Lady B, but sadly it feels that that ship has well and truly sailed.