Say “the Cotswolds” to any seasoned traveler, and a vision of classic British countryside living quickly springs to mind. Cobbled streets lined with rambling chocolate box cottages, with limestone facades covered in vines and spring blossoms? Check. Sweeping meadows dotted with cows and trimmed with wildflowers, soundtracked by a chorus of morning sparrows? Check. Stately homes and gardens to wander through on a lazy afternoon, followed by a visit to a cozy pub to enjoy a pint by the fire? Check.
Yet what lends the Cotswolds its unique magic isn’t just its beauty, but the heart and soul—and community—that keeps this beauty alive. (These villages may look like picture-postcard idylls, but it takes a lot of upkeep to ensure they stay that way, and to avoid them becoming a kind of Jane Austen Disneyland.) It’s a fact that Caryn Hibbert, the founder of Thyme—a sprawling estate within the village of Southrop that is nominally a hotel, but feels more like its own, self-contained hamlet—knows all too well. Having first moved to the area from London in 2002 with the intention of opening a cookery school, Hibbert has slowly—and, yes, organically—evolved Thyme into a 150-acre paradise that now encompasses a farm, restaurant, pub, spa, and 31 rooms spread across the various barns, manor houses, and outbuildings that make up the estate.