Article in Country Living Magazine August 2005

WELL FARM

There’s only one bedroom for guests at this stone-built farm set high on the Cotswolds between Stroud and Cirencester, but it is surely the best room in the house.

A former hayloft with views in three directions, the spacious room and bathroom are in pink toile and stripes with carefully chosen botanical prints on the wall.  Embroidered linens illustrate the care and attention lavished on a good B&B – another plus is the something-for-everyone book collection for guests to dip into.

Kate Gordon Lennox and her husband Edward arrived at Well Farm to find a renovation project that had run out of steam.  They got to work and now the old Cotswold barn and outbuildings are linked by a new build, forming a south-facing courtyard shielded from the winds in this exposed spot.

As we had tea at Kate’s farmhouse kitchen table she told us about the garden she began creating five years ago and already flourishing with a native hedge, orchard and collection of roses.  Below my hayloft window was a hawthorn tree, beyond that the vegetable plot and chicken-run with Welsummers, Light Sussex and Pekins.

Kate serves their eggs for breakfast and, for dinner, she suggested the White Horse pub.  It was quite a find, having won Les Routiers’ UK Dining Pub of the Year 2004.  Fine dining on the doorstep made Well Farm not just a lovely B&B but an essential Cotswold stopover.   

LISA SYKES