Meghan and Harry, the Duchess and Duke of Sussex, have relocated to the UK as non-working royals and most interestingly, it’s believed that they are basing themselves in the Cotswolds, where they lived as newlyweds between 2018 and 2019. Parents at an unnamed private school in the area were contacted about new rules appearing to reference the Sussexes’ children. And then, last week came reports that Meghan had been spotted at Soho Farmhouse, an outpost of the exclusive private members’ club Soho House which functions as a luxury Cotswolds retreat.
But Meghan is only the latest American to set up life in the Cotswolds. Talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres moved there in 2024 with her wife, actress Portia Rossi, for a “simpler way of life”. She left her 43-acre estate after reportedly living in it for just a month, because it wasn’t big enough for Rossi’s horses. Taylor Swift supposedly rented a £3.3m property near Great Tew during her Eras tour in 2024, while Beyoncé and Jay Z have been spotted staying on a private estate in the area. Even A-listers who visit briefly, like Tom Cruise, frequent Soho Farmhouse. The English countryside has become a playground for rich Americans.
This exodus of wealthy Americans since Donald Trump’s re-election and a weakening of the pound has shaken up the local property market. Last year, Savills said the proportion of North Americans buying Cotswold properties above £1.5m quadrupled from its long-term average of 3.5 per cent to 13 per cent. In March, the Cotswolds office of The Buying Solution, an agency which specialises in properties over £2m, said they had already recorded a 50 per cent year-on-year increase in American clients since the start of this year.Sure, the Cotswolds has, to a degree, always been the playground of the rich and famous. In 2012 a network of high-profile individuals including the likes of David Cameron and broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson were crowned the “Chipping Norton set” because they had homes near the eponymous market town. But what is different now is the speed and scale of the influx of money into the area. In the past, the phenomenon of wealthy Londoners buying homes in the Cotswolds was not accompanied by so many news reports of it unsettling local people and dynamics.
In contrast, often the arrival of Americans is, perhaps characteristically, hard to miss. When JD Vance visited the Cotswolds a year ago, there was uproar after roads and footpaths were closed, residents had their vans searched by sniffer dogs, and a helipad was cut into a field. When Eve Jobs, daughter of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, got married in the area last year, residents complained the countryside had been taken over by Secret Service agents due to the attendance of former US vice-president Kamala Harris.
The village of Bibury in Gloucester has imposed restrictions on coaches over the last year, after facing up to 20,000 visitors on busy weekends (it has a population of 600). When I visited the picturesque village of Castle Combe recently, I could barely see it through the crowds of visitors who, judging by their accents, were mostly American. Reporting from Business Insider found that at The Bull in Burford, a hotel and collection of restaurants, half the clientele are Americans, and they have imported a culture of tipping. Stores in the Cotswolds now stock American staples too – from Hershey’s chocolate to American pancake mix.
When I visited the picturesque village of Castle Combe recently, I could barely see it through the crowds of visitors (Photo:: Andrea Pucci)And sometimes the effects of outsiders taking over the Cotswolds unfold in ways that are not immediately obvious. A report prepared for Cotswold District Council in June lays bare fears that wealthier outsiders “out-compete local households” via second homes and holiday lets, thus restricting the supply of lower-cost properties. Fewer residents using local shops and services affects the “vitality and viability of local communities and service provision within them”. A friend whose family used to live in the South Cotswolds said their former family home was flipped by wealthy outsiders who then sold it at a price unaffordable for locals. They failed to get involved in the local community – which he says is “what life in a Cotswold village is all about”.
We talk plenty about Britain’s housing crisis, but much of the conversation in the media is confined to cities like London. What about the homelessness emergency that is playing out in rural communities? The number of county and rural households in temporary accommodation has increased by nearly 80 per cent over six years (much greater than the increase nationally and in London). The Cotswold District Council website explicitly lists in its priorities that “local people struggle to find and afford suitable accommodation, and many of the district’s younger generation are forced to leave the area because they can’t afford to live here”.
This looks especially perverse given an increase in second homes in the Cotswolds means around one in 10 properties are often vacant, according to the Office of National Statistics. Up to one in five homes in the parish of Swells, near Stow-on-the-Wold, are estimated to be holiday lets. Indeed, Meghan and Harry are reportedly keeping their home in Montecito, and also own a holiday property in Portugal. Will their Cotswold home be empty while they are at their other properties?
The Cotswolds aren’t the only bit of British countryside becoming overriden with the rich and famous, either. Burnham Market, a traditional Georgian village in Norfolk has been nicknamed “Chelsea-on-Sea” due to the influx of second homeowners from elsewhere. Villagers have complained that local essentials like the pharmacy and baker’s have been replaced by “posh gift shops”, and last year voted to ban existing homes from being turned into holiday retreats. Mawgan Porth, a rural settlement in Cornwall, has been nicknamed Hollywood-on-Sea after celebrities like Stanley Tucci, Cate Blanchett and Jason Momoa bought homes in the area. Local residents accused Blanchett in 2023 of a “land grab” and creating “constant misery” with her building work (Blanchett’s architects dismissed the idea the noise came from their clients’ property).
Perhaps you can’t blame Americans for choosing to come here. For them the Cotswolds are “quaint”, or to borrow Kourtney Kardashian’s understated description of the area last year – a “dreamy storybook fairy tale”. The best bits of rural life are carefully packaged together: honey-coloured stone buildings, log fires, organic shops.
But it makes you wonder: who is the English countryside really for these days? We used to think of the countryside as being a nationwide inheritance; the National Trust’s mission is to “protect nature, beauty and history – for everyone”. But wealthy Americans are reimagining it as something to be experienced through gated estates and private clubs. Rural England is still being carefully preserved – but this time by people who can afford to keep others out. The Cotswolds is open to everyone, provided you can afford the membership fee.
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