Hotel Hit Squad: 'The Wild Rabbit may have tamed the country pub, but it is ticking every box for the Cotswold clientele'
Should my children ever ask me what “misnomer” means, I will now have the perfect answer: “The Wild Rabbit, Kingham.”
Reader, there is nothing wild about this most urbane country pub, owned by Lady Carole Bamford, who also possesses (in no particular order) a billionaire husband, the Daylesford organic empire and a propensity to dress everything in immaculate, expensive shades of white.
Including the rooms at the Wild Rabbit. Around the corner from the Daylesford estate, the pub and 12 bedrooms were purchased and reopened in 2013, having been Bamford-ised with a lot of exposed stone, nude wood and neutral linen.
It has just opened three new, dinky cottages within the village, each with two en suite bedrooms, a kitchen, a sitting room and a garden. Ideal, then, for families who want to warm milk at mad hours or put the kids to bed without whispering in the pitch-black.
We are among the first to stay at the Bunny, so the bijou, bright-red Aga in its kitchen is, of course, blindingly shiny. However, the abundance of cream, driftwood and cow hide inside this honey-coloured cottage, directly opposite the pub, hint that the target market may be a family markedly less mucky than ours. You know the kind: they all have Hunter wellies, they’re all sparkling clean.
Back over the road, the pub confirms this. Despite a fluffle of rabbits etched and stuffed on stone walls, carved and perched on French dressers and even, in the front garden, topiaried, this place is neither wild, nor a conventional country pub. This is a rabbit that’s been groomed, brushed and perfumed into something you could carry down Marylebone High Street in a Hermes handbag.
Which is absolutely fine. There’s nothing magical about myxomatosis. And this is the Cotwolds after all, the area that polished shepherd’s huts into places for former PMs to chillax and broke the dictionary definition of “farmhouse” by adding the prefix “Soho”. The Wild Rabbit may have tamed the country pub, but it is ticking every box for the Cotswold clientele.
Especially since one thing here is absolutely the real deal. The food. After drinks beside a roaring fire and two roaring Sloanes, we are led into the dining room, where the pub really comes to life and is elevated high above the swanky sterility of Daylesford’s London outlets.
Michelin-starred chef Alyn Williams joined the Wild Rabbit as chef patron this year and worked with head chef Nathan Eades to create seasonal menus, using organic and locally sourced ingredients from Daylesford’s own market garden. I pick slow-poached pullet egg with bacon jam, pumpkin veloute and wild marjoram (£13), then Wootton estate venison with red wine salsify, chicory, chestnuts and pomegranate (£30).
I have spent decades sneering at those who use the cliché “melt in your mouth” to describe anything other than vodka jellies, but this venison… I feel drunk with sheer delight.
Plus, while supremely serious about food, the restaurant somehow swerves snootiness. This is largely due to the strikingly brilliant staff, seemingly as plentiful as the guests and clairvoyant too. At the precise moment you wet your lips, there they are, at your elbow with a bottle and a relaxed smile. They ace the most daunting of dining-room tests: children at 8pm on a Friday. Ours are welcomed with genuine warmth and handed colouring, cushions and organic elevations of staples such as sausage and mash and tomato pasta. This tightrope walk between formality and friendliness means all generations will feel at ease here. Perhaps that’s the Wild Rabbit’s special skill, because the same goes for the cottages.
The interlinking door between Bunny and Little Owl cottages, their shared garden and sumptuous but simple decor, all make them ideal for a multigenerational family gathering. If, of course, you’ve got the cash.
Bunny costs from £400 and Little Owl £350 a night. To some, in the era of Airbnb, this will seem steep for a small self-catering cottage. But you do not get the reassurance of the Bamford stamp of quality through Airbnb.
You are unlikely, too, to find organic milk in eco-pouches in the fridge, Nespresso pods and Jeeves & Jericho teas in the kitchen, Bamford lotions in the bathroom and Eleanor Pritchard wool blankets and cushions on the beds. Or get a world-class breakfast directly across the road.
A five-minute drive away, the Daylesford estate is one of the most sustainable organic farms in the UK. But come to the farm shop and you are more likely to see cashmere cardies being herded towards tills than cows towards troughs. The Cotswolds is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
A night at Bunny cottage costs £400 a night for a family of four, B&B. Minimum stay two nights.
Read the full review: The Wild Rabbit
