Owners George and Polly Phillips spent two years transforming this old farmyard – it took a couple of drawn-out appeals to planning, a few panicked conversations with the bank, countless interiors proposals and a seriously good deal from Cotswolds designer Pippa Paton to turn the family land into a perfectly of-the-moment business.
Across the five barns, now reimagined as sleek, crisp hangouts, Paton’s look is tougher than the area’s ubiquitous Daylesford narrative, with agricultural artefacts including stone troughs and pitchforks as art. They work just as well for hunkering down – log burners, deep sofas – as they do for gatherings, with cedar hot tubs, huge dining tables and doors that open out onto the courtyard and great field of a garden.
In Grain Store, the largest space with five bedrooms, the ground floor could hold 50 friends without blinking. A sense of solidity is prevalent: wide floorboards, big beds, lengthy kitchen islands, copper bathtubs, oversized showers and double-height ceilings, beamed with ancient oak and lit with industrial steel pendants or an antler chandelier. Sunshine floods in through walls of glass, casting shadows through the fiddle-leaf figs.
Bedrooms have a moody kind of light play: greys on grey, a tonal Kelly Hoppen taupe-ness with linen throws and leather piped cushions. Bathrooms are dark, warm, stashed with botanical 100 Acres products. Framed black-and-white photographs of the recent mud-splattered floors and aluminium roofs are an arty reminder of the place’s agricultural roots. Not that the cows next door will let anyone forget. One of the UK’s prettiest villages Bibury is right on the doorstep – walk down after breakfast to explore before the crowds spill in. And the rest of the Cotswolds – with its pretty pubs such as Northleach’s Wheatsheaf Inn, antique shops, arboretum walks and charming towns – is there for the taking. Country smarts with heft. By Issy von Simson
Address: Bibury Farm Barns, Bibury, Gloucestershire GL7 5PB
Telephone: +44 1285 706188
Price: From £3,150 for a three-night long weekend in the Grain Store (sleeps 10)
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