What’s the vibe?
As I walk into the building, freighted with luggage and an incessantly whinging five-year-old, a cap’s visor obscuring my vision, I make the cardinal mistake of careening into a wonky doorframe at The Feathers in Woodstock, and nearly knock myself unconscious. This was entirely my fault and, sadly, not an isolated incident – it happens to me every so often in my adopted home, where buildings often predate my native country’s founding.
There is, it turns out, a certain historical aptness to arriving here in a state of mild concussion. The Feathers dates to the 17th century – its bones formed from a terrace of town houses whose various owners, over the following centuries, knocked through walls, added staircases and generally ignored any obligation to build in straight lines. In the 19th century, it served as a sanatorium, which perhaps explains why the corridors feel engineered to disorient. Today, the 23 rooms are individually designed, each shaped around the building’s structural quirks rather than in spite of them – sloping ceilings, deep window seats, the odd floor that runs slightly uphill. The effect is less boutique hotel, more ancestral home of a slightly eccentric family who happened to install very good beds.
Our room, a feature suite, turns out to be pleasingly odd – low beams, deep sash windows overlooking Market Street, and a bathroom finished in brass. Beds are excellent; the minibar is stocked with local produce, Urban Apothecary toiletries in the bathroom, and a welcoming couch in front of the flatscreen. The building’s structural eccentricities have been worked with rather than papered over, which gives each room a character you won’t find replicated down the corridor. All of which, when amalgamated, result in a Michelin Key hotel.
The Aviary
John Scott Blackwell
What to eat and drink?
The hotel runs two dining options. The Nest is the more formal – seasonal Cotswolds produce, elevated British cooking, the kind of menu that changes often enough to reward repeat visits – though the aforementioned five-year-old dictated otherwise. However, we did get to pop in for breakfast and were pleased with perfectly poached eggs benedict and impeccably sourced coffee.
We ate instead at The Aviary, which has a courtyard that earns its keep on warmer evenings and a fireplace that does the same on cooler ones. Isle of Wight tomatoes with mozzarella and basil, and roasted beetroot with feta, walnut and treacle, were both exactly what you want after a day out; a morel and old winchester linguine as sumptuous as it was locally inspired.
There’s a small but well-stocked bar nearby – though if you have a soft spot for pubs, Woodstock has roughly as many as it has citizens, and you can crawl sufficiently to ruin the following morning without leaving the block.
Afternoon tea at The Feathers
Georgia Harris
What to do?
One could argue that Woodstock exists largely in Blenheim Palace’s considerable shadow – the birthplace of Churchill, a Unesco World Heritage Site, and roughly as subtle as its most famous son – it could very well be the closest analogue to Versailles in Old Blighty. At 2,000 acres, it comfortably absorbs a full day, from the formal gardens and the great lake to the palace rooms themselves, where the scale of 18th-century ambition tends to recalibrate your sense of proportion.
The five-year-old, for the record, was more interested in the adventure playground, the miniature train, and a swarm of bees that we found migrating to a new hive. Woodstock itself – antique shops, independent cafes, the Oxfordshire Museum – is easily covered on foot in an afternoon, with Oxford a 20-minute drive should you need to scratch an urban itch. Come back in the evening, mind the doorframe, and sleep well. The Feathers is a knockout – in more ways than one.
Starting from £250; feathers.co.uk
