LORDING IT OVER
To feel royal, Americans just need the buck$
DEEP-pocketed Americans are swarming the bucolic Cotswolds outside London to live like lords, renting estates for pheasant-shooting weekends for an eye-popping $250,000.
“Americans will pay up to $250,000 for a shooting weekend. A lot of these places do it. You arrive at tea time on Friday and leave after lunch on Sunday, with shooting all day Saturday,” says bestselling author Plum Sykes, whose new book “Wives Like Us” chronicles the overthe-top lifestyle of Americans and Brits through the eyes of a butler named Ian.
Sykes, a Vogue contributor, is no stranger to the worlds that she satirizes with love and glee. She made her name as an “it girl” in New York with her twin sister, Lucy, capturing a certain class of women in her 2004 bestseller, “Bergdorf Blondes.”
Now, it’s as if Sykes’ “Bergdorf Blondes” grew up, got married and moved to the British countryside.
Just about 90 miles northwest of London — about the same distance that Southampton is from Manhattan — the Cotswolds was once known for its sleepy-chic ways. Amanda Brooks, the former fashion director at Barneys, set a new tone when she launched Cutter Brooks — a clothing and antiques shop — in the market town Stow-on-theWold in 2018. The spot was soon serving as a gathering place for Americans and Brits in the region, Sykes said.
Then came the pandemic, and rich Londoners flocked to the Cotswolds’ rolling hills and quintessential English villages dotted with stone cottages. “It’s like what happened to the Hamptons,” Sykes said.
Celebrity sightings
Among the celebs who might be spotted in towns like Tetbury — just a five-minute drive from King Charles’ beloved Highgrove House estate — is soccer legend David Beckham, who has a Cotswolds estate with his former Spice Girl wife, Victoria.
“The joke is he wants a knighthood,” Sykes said.
Also for rent nearby is the 600acre Churchill Manor in Oxfordshire, owned by Annabel Brooks, Amanda’s sister-in-law and a former LA-based actress married to Oscar-nominated British film director and “Fatal Attraction” screenwriter James Dearden. Annabel Brooks also owns Avenue Properties, which lists a curated collection of some of the world’s most exclusive rental homes worldwide and rents to many American celebs and Hollywood stars, although it does not offer shooting.
Among the boldfaced names who have rented the 19th-century Georgian home — which features nine bedrooms, seven baths, a pool, tennis court and two coach houses starting at about $38,000 a week — was Rebecca Hessel Cohen, the owner of cult-fave LoveShackFancy, who produced a photo shoot on the grounds.
Vogue model Adwoa Aboah recently hosted her 30th birthday party at the Coombe End Estate in Gloucestershire, a historic manor house set in 2,500 private acres. Booking the 12bedroom, 11-bath manor house, which includes a spa area with a massage room, sauna, plunge pool and hot tub, asks around $38,000 a week to start.
Add in a shooting party at a manor like this, and the tab can skyrocket to $250,000.
Other famous homes in the Cotswolds rent not only to wellheeled partiers, but also to film and movie productions. Badminton in Gloucestershire, home to the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, is where streaming series like Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen” and the BBC’s “The Pursuit of Love” were shot, not to mention serving as the interior of the Duke of Hastings’ estate for many steamy scenes in the first season of “Bridgerton.”
Badminton’s website says it is available for rent for “weddings, corporate activities and filming.” There’s also The Badminton Shoot, which, as described on the site, is available starting with partridge season in October and “focused on delivering high quality shooting and hospitality in a stunning landscape in the South of the Cotswolds.”
Sykes’ home was built from the ground up, on a remote sheep farm in the Cotswolds Hills on the edge of a valley. The fact that it is modern is also part of its charm — a charm that attracts more than just fat-cat Americans and celebs living large.
In demand
Lord Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a Russian oligarch and KGB operative who helped put Vladimir Putin in power, is also a press baron in Britain known for hosting controversial parties in Perugia, Italy, where then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson once arrived following a NATO meeting.
Evgeny once asked to rent Sykes’ home for two weeks. She declined, as it was during a time when she was in the house with her kids. However, while on holiday, Sykes did rent her home to a “lovely” Chicago family.
“They were inspired to come here after watching “The Holiday,” and they said they felt like they were in the movie the whole time,” she said.
Finally, there’s Belvoir — pronounced “Beaver”— Castle, the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, David and Emma Manners.
Films like “The Da Vinci Code” and streaming series like “The Crown” were shot there.
When Americans rent there, the duke and duchess may attend the shooting weekends, or at least pop in to say hello.
“It’s one of the things the Brits are selling,” Sykes said. “It’s like an export — the English countryside.”