Thyme, Cotswolds - hotel review

This grown-up, elegant hotel is all about English Country life, says Cathy Hawker
Rural retreat: Thyme hotel
Cathy Hawker18 January 2016

The Cotswolds is nirvana for celebrity-watchers. First there was the whole David Cameron-Rebekah Brooks-Jeremy Clarkson social set saga where life in Chipping Norton seemed one never-ending drinks party for the in-crowd.

Then Liz Hurley bought a house and some Hunter wellies and reinvented herself as a farmer, Blur bassist Alex James got stuck into cheese-making and singer-songwriter Lily Allen splashed herself and her Cotswolds house — pale stone outside, riotous colour inside — across the pages of Vogue.

Carole Bamford, the wife of a billionaire industrialist, helpfully set up a shop to cater for this crowd. Daylesford, her organic café and deli, sells a carefully curated country lifestyle to Londoners craving a rural idyll minus the mud. Then this year Soho House, the ultimate urbanite members’ club, chose the village of Great Tew to open its latest outpost.

So when I turn up at Thyme, a new place to stay in Southrop, my celebrity radar is on red alert. After all, in 2011 this was the sleepy village (population 245) where supermodel and Cotswolds resident Kate Moss tied the knot with The Kills’ singer Jamie Hince in a pastoral blur of antique lace and white posies.

Reader, in a two-day stay I did not spot one celebrity, a most disappointing statistic. I did, however, sleep for nine hours one night, learn to cook a piquant Vietnamese soup in the purpose-built cookery school and spend several hours walking in the extensive gardens among rare-breed sheep and super-friendly duroc pietrain pigs.

There are many explanations for the Cotswolds’ popularity. It is perfectly pretty, it is civilised (this isn’t the land that time forgot: you can get five-star food, a well-made flat white, heck even a local craft beer) and it’s an easy two hours from west London on a good run.

Alfresco dining at the Thyme hotel

Thyme ticks all of those boxes. It is a low-level stone estate arranged around a large courtyard that is part boutique hotel, part country house with a cookery school, organic gardens and a 150-acre farm thrown in. Thyme is the brainchild of Caryn Hibbert who, with her film director husband Jerry, bought Southrop’s Manor House in 2002. When the neighbouring farmhouse and medieval barns came up for sale in 2009 the couple took a deep breath and bought them too.

Caryn is deliciously outspoken and energetic, a former medic at Queen Charlotte’s and the Royal Free hospitals. She never planned on becoming a hotelier but, having bought the beautiful old buildings, she had to make them pay and so Thyme was born. With her “dream team” of interior designer Roger Hall and gardener Bunny Guinness she created a total of 15 rooms including two- and four-bedroom cottages and eight double bedrooms in Thyme House, the original farmhouse. Initially guests had to book out the entire estate but since last autumn couples or small groups are welcome on a B&B basis.

Guest enjoying a cookery class

Thyme has grown organically, and the hardest task is pulling the disparate elements together but Caryn and her young team are trying hard. As soon as you step into the courtyard and hear the reassuringly expensive crunch of the gravel underfoot, you sense Thyme is a classy place to stay: a calming vision of pale-blue and sage-green highlights against mellow Cotswold stone.

Every bedroom is different. Mine in the eaves had the de rigueur bath beside the bed while some of the high- ceilinged rooms on the floor below are more traditional, complete with French antiques and separate bathrooms. Thyme is a grown-up, elegant country hotel (children under 12 are not allowed — you should probably take them to Soho Farmhouse), a heart-warming mixture of traditional and contemporary where it is easy to sink into the grey felt sofas in the comfy bar (The Baa) and pass several hours surveying the list of botanical cocktails.

Breakfast is served in the Tithe Barn at the Chef’s Table with oversized bowls of yogurt and granola as a preamble to imaginative hot dishes. My kale fritters with chilli jam and poached eggs were perfect.

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Afterwards, “culinary director” Daryll Taylor collected me for a cookery lesson in Thyme’s purpose-built school. My lesson covered Vietnamese street food but other sessions include game, French bistro and baking, with Daryll’s patience and humour making him more Jamie Oliver than Gordon Ramsay as a teacher.

Thyme is about English country life, sustainable farming and self-sufficiency, says Caryn, who gets real pleasure from seeing once derelict barns regenerated into beautiful, well-used buildings. The Hibberts have a bolthole in Chelsea but Southrop Manor remains their much-loved family home and Caryn is hands-on in every aspect of the estate. Future plans include converting the stables and another barn into a spa and restaurant.

Until then, evening meals can be taken across the road in The Swan, a much-loved Cotswolds institution also owned by the Hibberts. On my visit the menu included pumpkin ravioli, game and Agen prune terrine and roast partridge, with mains averaging £18. Even on a busy Friday evening I didn’t spot any celebrities in there, but I am sure you wouldn’t have to wait too long by the open fire before a supermodel, politician or media mogul strolled through the door.

Thyme, Southrop Manor Estate, Lechlade, Gloucestershire (01367 850174; thyme.co.uk). Double rooms start at £260 including breakfast.

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