Why Burford should be your next Cotswolds weekend away
If there was a Venn diagram displaying the trifecta of people who live in Hackney, have fussy little dogs and are partial to pet nat, The Bull in Charlbury would be in the middle. It is more contemporary than the more traditional Cotwolds boltholes, with provocative artwork and unusual furniture taking a stance against convention.
Still, we’re in the Cotswolds, and whichever ‘set’ you belong to, the idyllic countryside will forever attract the London crowd. Its honey-hued, chocolate box villages boast excellent hotels, pubs and restaurants just an hour away from the capital.
The Bull Burford
The Bull in Burford, an elegant coaching inn dating back to 1536 (the year Anne Boleyn was beheaded), wears its Cotswoldsness on its sleeve. Reopened as a hotel by PR titan and spin connoisseur Matthew Freud in 2023, The Bull is a stylish bolthole in an incredibly beautiful village. Heavy wooden panelling and deep stone fireplaces sit totally congruously next to the frenetic, jagged angles of a Basquiat painting.
The jumble of eras extends into the 18 rooms, which are tasteful and artsy. From my first floor bedroom window I can see Burford’s higgledy-piggledy stone houses. The room is spacious, even with historic low ceilings. Slate grey walls have a velvety, wind-brushed texture and the room centres around a huge bed draped in folds of linen. Everything smells of linden and cedarwood. A reading chair is the perfect place to sip on their signature white negroni and let London slip away.
Read more: Inside the ‘Venice of the Cotswolds’, a short distance from London
Food and drink
Outside of the room the focal area is Vincent’s bar, which occupies a dimly lit room towards the back of the building. Adjacent restaurant Horn is one of four places to eat. It’s a gastropub serving decent takes on the usual fare: steak and chips, custard and crumble. Wild offers an 11-course tasting menu with dishes largely cooked over live fire; Sl’ice serves pizza but is only open in the summer; and Hiro is for private dining omakase. Four restaurants in a hotel with 18 rooms feels excessive, and you wonder if it would be better to focus on doing one restaurant really well. But perhaps it’s necessary in order to strike the balance between appealing to Burfordians and sequestering A-list celebrities. The staff are young and lack formal training but are very friendly.
What to do
Come here with the intention of doing very little. Burford is a quintessential Cotswolds town with almost as many pubs as inhabitants. The vibe is long walks followed by pints. There are also lots of cutesy shops, delis and cafes along the high street, including The Oxford Brush Company, which sells what feels like every type of brush imaginable.
It’s also worth visiting the local church, St John the Baptist, and its canopied tomb of Sir Lawrence and Lady Tanfield. The ‘Wicked Tanfields of Burford’ were aristocratic landowners in the 17th century who were despised by locals for their cruelty to tenants. An effigy of the couple was burnt every year for 200 years to celebrate their deaths, and Burford myth has it that if the water level in the River Windrush (which runs through the town) drops too low, the Tanfields will be released from their watery grave to haunt Burford once again.
Weekending Londoners can’t be any worse than that, can they?
Visit The Cotswolds yourself
Rooms at The Bull at Burford start from around £270; go to bullburford.com/rooms-and-suites
Read more: Why the Cotswolds is perfect for an October holiday