Why wealthy Europeans are flocking to the Cotswolds

In Cowley Manor’s elegant, wood-panelled restaurant, waitress Maria Radu runs me through French diners’ culinary whims. “They love local produce such as grass-fed beef – that’s why we have a côte de boeuf and burgers on the menu,” she says. “And they’re just over the moon to be given a crudité of seasonal root vegetables because the quality of Cotswolds produce is the big thing for the French. That, and the fact that they know our brand.”

Cowley Manor’s new owner is Experimental, a trendy French hospitality group that began life as a modest cocktail bar on Paris’ Rue Saint-Sauveur. Still headquartered in Paris, the group now encompasses nine cocktail bars, a glitzy Swiss nightclub and luxury hotels in outposts beloved by the European glitterati: Venice, Ibiza, Verbier, New York, London and Biarritz.

Cowley Manor, a 19th-century manor house a few miles from Cheltenham, is its latest acquisition and a sign of the overseas market’s faith in a region once best known for its wax jackets and Land Rovers.

Following a £7 million, six-month makeover, Cowley Manor Experimental is an English country house-meets-the-continent admixture of Italian and French designer furniture, big-city cocktail bar and arts-and-crafts-style wallpaper and carpets with playing card motifs, nods to Alice in Wonderland which was inspired by the manor’s woodland folly.

Lacock village and Lacock Abbey, which stood in for the exterior of the titular character’s childhood home at Godric’s Hollow and Hogwarts school respectively in the Harry Potter films, have pulled in southern Europeans for a decade, says Chris Jackson of Cotswold Tourism.

The new crop are less the Potter crowd, more well-heeled travellers drawn to the Cotswolds for a taste of quintessential Britishness and to escape southern Europe’s summer heatwaves, he explains. “It’s the built environment that charms them: the old buildings with cosy little rooms, pubs and experiences [such as afternoon tea]. Though they are often caught out by how early we eat: most restaurants in Spain would still be preparing to open by the time English ones have finished taking orders!”

“Cotswolds estate agents are seeing a rise of enquiries from southern European second home buyers”, says Gemma Maclaran, Cotswolds expert at Middleton Advisors. “[Southern European buyers] are usually looking for the very traditional pretty Cotswolds houses,” she says. “French buyers in particular go for Georgian properties. The tall ceilings and well-proportioned rooms are quite Parisian, I suppose.”

At the Cotswold Cheese Company’s outpost in Moreton-in-Marsh, tourists are sheltering from the rain as a dog sniffs disconsolately from his banishment at the door. At the counter, staff Martha and Halias are doing a brisk trade in Comte, Brie de Meaux and Spanish olives.

The shop has witnessed a higher number of French, Spanish and Italian tourists in the past two years, Martha says, though they prefer local delights such as Ashcome and Rollright cheeses, the latter a washed rind made in Chedworth and inspired by the French Vacherin Mont d’Or. “When in Rome, I guess,” Martha quips, though she adds: “tourists who are in Airbnbs might pick up some pecorino for their pasta”.

Marie Faure-Ambroise, 44, is a Parisian socialite and digital marketer and runs the blog My Travel Dreams. A regular visitor to the Cotswolds, Faure-Ambroise enjoys “the oversized potatoes gratinated with cheddar and the local sausages” served in foodie boozers such as the the Bell at Sapperton and the Kings Head Inn in Bledington, as well as “buying woollen sweaters” in the rural region. She says that her fellow French nationals were historically aware of the images of honeystone Cotswolds cottages but not the Cotswolds’ name, although this is changing.

“It is becoming a destination even for those driving all the way from Paris,” she continues. “French people love the spirit and the carte postale looks of this paradise far away from [busy cities] and noise.” Faure-Ambroise tells people that the Cotswolds is “like living [out an] English film cliché: putting your Barbour and Hunter wellies on to walk in a rainy village”.

Novelist Cristina Marconi was the UK correspondent for Italian newspaper Il Messaggero from 2007 to 2020. Now based in Milan, Marconi says that well-to-do Italians can’t get enough of the Cotswolds. “There is a long tradition of Anglomania among the upper classes here,” she explains. For Marconi, period dramas such as Downton Abbey have given Italians the impression that the English countryside is soundtracked by the sound of ripping bodices. “The English countryside seems exciting compared to rural Italy and not just the theatre of some sleepy provincial life.”

Meanwhile Laia Díaz, 36, a journalist from Tarragona, tells me: “I think many Spanish people visit the Cotswolds these days because the images of very charming towns have gone viral on social media, although it is a very expensive place to visit for Spanish people. I love Castle Combe and Lower Slaughter, which feel like submerging myself in a Jane Austen novel. In Catalonia there are some very charming towns, but we don’t have one pretty town next to another like in the Cotswolds.”

Itineraries offered by southern European tour companies for 2024 include Spanish market leader Catai’s five-day Complete London tour, which takes in the attractions of the capital alongside Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and “la Venecia de los Cotswolds”, Bourton-on-the-Water. Italian package provider Viaggi Avventure Nel Mondo’s Celtic Family Short meanwhile loops from London to Cornwall, Wales and back to the capital via the Cotswolds.

At Hotel du Vin in Cheltenham, one of the market town chain’s early properties and set in a three-storey Georgian townhouse, a 50-something French couple puzzle over a menu that offers afternoon tea with finger sandwiches alongside French bistro classics such as chicken liver parfait and beef provençale. Yves and Aurelie are disappointed, they admit, to find no local plonk on the hotel’s extensive wine list.

“We had some sparkling English wine from [Cotswolds vineyard] Woodchester Valley yesterday,” Yves tells me. “Your wine used to be a joke, if you will forgive me for saying that, but it was really quite good.” “Though not champagne, just yet,” Aurelie adds.

Cowley Manor Experimental ( 01242 870900) offers doubles from £265 B&B. Hotel du Vin Cheltenham (01242 370584) offers doubles from £126 B&B.