Rest among the wildflowers and be inspired in this exquisite one-bedroom Cotswold home
Barton Meadow Lodge is what we mean when we say an inspiring escape to the country.
It’s been some time since I have written about property for Country Life dot co dot uk. Life moves on, people change, you move up and down and sideways across the corporate ladder. But what has remained, what will always remain, is my enduring desire to go and live in a small house in the middle of nowhere in rural England, where I will write the Next Great American Novel. Of Dormice and Men. It’s a working title, but you get the idea.
In between the meetings and the calendar invites and the whirlpools of circling back, when the corporate machine allows, I still browse the websites of esteemed estate agents, looking for this small slice of rural England where I can grow old and go mad. I am not talking about some kind of traveller’s caravan and I am far too chic for ‘off-grid living’. I need the internet, running water, a heating system and electricity. Probably a driveway too, on the rare occasion I venture out. I need a nice view, and land to walk around in. I just need it to be compact, stylish, and uncomplicated. I need it to be Barton Meadow Lodge, basically.
Barton Meadow Lodge is a one bedroom, one bathroom, one sitting room, one kitchen home with big french windows and 4.9 acres of wildflower meadows and grounds in an unspoilt edge of the Cotswolds. It is for sale for £1 million with the Blue Book Agency.
The unspoilt edge of the Cotswolds is more accurately described as Guiting Power, equidistant between Cheltenham and Stow-on-the-Wold. A historic village, in a historic part of the country, it would be easy to assume that Barton Meadow Lodge has been here forever, but alas despite its rustic, lived-in feel, it is altogether more contemporary.
Not that you could tell of course, with a Plain English kitchen working in concert with intentionally stressed (but actually new) oak flooring. Christopher Howe, that famed London antiques dealer, has handled much of the interiors, giving the entire space a feeling of uncommon beauty and bohemian taste. In short, if you can’t get inspired here, then you will not be inspired anywhere.
Image credit: Howe London/Blue Book
Image credit: Howe London/Blue Book
Should the interiors not be enough, the gardens and grounds certainly complete the ideal. The gardens, which are principally wildflower meadow, run down to a babbling brook (where else would they lead), and there are plenty of places to sit, stand, lay down and enjoy the trees and grass swaying in the breeze. It is a garden for all seasons.
Barton Meadow feels like the kind of place where an email actually would find you well. Or perhaps a place where an email would never find you at all.
