How I Found the House
Cotswold Diary, Note 9

“What are you looking for?” an English friend familiar with the territory asked.

“A modest Georgian house with a garden. An old rectory maybe?”
“That’s what everyone wants,” he said.
“Oh.” I muttered, deflated.
Why on earth one thinks one is original escapes one. Or is it simply the resistance on principle to wanting “what everyone wants,” which is supremely unoriginal. But that’s what I wanted.

In any case this brief exchange did discourage me. This house “that everyone wants” would be elusive and beyond reach. So I resigned myself to a more cottage-y dwelling along the lines of my old Bee Cottage in East Hampton, or the fictional Rosehill Cottage in The Holiday. One could do worse.

And yet something in me longed for the more formal architecture of the elegant Georgians, with high ceilings and other comely architectural attributes.

Aside from that, my criteria were to be in a walkable town with a little shop, a good pub, and a nice hotel for future overflow guests. I also wanted people around, neighbors, signs of life. I live alone and that suffices for privacy, thank you. No need to go all Henry David Thoreau here. Oh, and would be nice to have close by decent shopping and a thriving arts scene, and not too far from London, please.

I did mention last post that I had Blenheim Palace tastes and Little-House-on-Prairie funds? So a little-ish something in a village would do, and I’d know it when I saw it. Or so I thought.

If you are going to have a disastrous start, it may as well be in a pretty setting. This one was out of a fairy tale, albeit a cautionary one.

But first, meet my friend Jonathan, because he is part of the story. A friend since we met in London in the ‘90s, he lives today guess where.  J is a doll, hilarious, and the best company ever. He knows great people, and his friendship and friends have been a huge help to me.

About a year and a half ago, J happened by a listing for an old mill house in the window of an estate agency, as they are called there. He emailed it to me and I was smitten. Surrounded by water and willow trees, visited by the occasional swan, it was a Cotswold fantasy, and in my price range. I went, I saw, I offered. Complications ensued. When a property is on and off the market for several years, as I had discovered was the case, something is usually up. Or at best  sideways. Nevertheless, I persisted for months, many calls and emails, and some $15,000 to lawyers and others. Then I let it go. Sooooo sad.

But here’s the thing. The whole time I had a pit in my stomach, like I’d swallowed a cannonball. If I learned anything in two years’ training with life coach Martha Beck, it is that the body does not lie. It feels what it feels and knows what it knows. The trouble is the brain and how it chatters at you you from here to next Tuesday, like, “WTF are you doing buying a house in a foreign country?… Hey, YOLO! Why Wait?… Wait! You just got divorced. Do NOTHING…What’s wrong with renting?… What’s wrong with Connecticut?…… Oh LEAP and the net will appear!… What? Are you nuts? …”   You may relate?

Here’s the other thing. Problematic as it was, the whole process did put me the wiser. The cannonball became a beebee. I still wanted a house.

Shortly before the rabbit hole of House Number Wrong, J had also referred me to “house hunter,” aka buying agent, Katy Campbell. The property biz is different in England, and house hunters are a thing in desirable areas like the Cotswolds, where it pays to be tuned in and connected. Katy and I had spoken, but she had not been involved in the mill house. We re-connected by email and then in person that summer while I was renting in Gloucestershire. (See? I did rent…) Katy was also adorable, great company, and inspiring. I love that she has found a way to make a living at what she loves AND has written two books about English country houses.

House hunting was soooo fun, I didn’t want it to end.

Until it did. The last house we saw was a fluke. It hadn’t been part of that day’s plan, and Katy had told me nothing about it. Also it was slightly beyond the popular perimeter of the “3-Bs” towns of Burford, Bibury, and Bourton-on-the-Water. Mind you I had only a vague sense then (and now, to be honest) of where was considered fashionable. Location mattered, but so did my budget and boxes to tick.

Did I mention I loved topiary? Like weirdly, really like it?

Anyway so we are driving west into the hillier part of Gloucestershire, so pretty there, up, down, and around. That is what a “wold” is—a landscape of gentle, open rolling hills. And a “cot” refers to a shelter or enclosure for sheep. Cots+wold = now you know.

We arrive in Painswick, whose town square comprises the beautiful St. Mary’s church and churchyard, and, as Sir Walter Raleigh is my witness, a veritable forest of topiary.

We walk along a path through the carefully clipped, Dr Seuss-y yews which part to reveal a picture-book row of houses along a lane by the church yard, crowned by a handsome if small Georgian house. Inwardly I sighed. If only. As in, if only it were available…

Except that it was available. This was the house we were there to see. I had a cow.  Georgian, yay! Garden, yay! In a walkable town with a bodega. A great local pub. A lovely hotel for guests and a(nother) pub with less expensive rooms. Biggish towns nearby with restaurants and shopping. It was even, for a stint, the church rectory.

A few compromises, yes: 2.5 baths for 4 bedrooms, of which 2 are attic rooms, and the kitchen removed from the living spaces. No off-street parking place (kind of a huge pain). And there was the tiny matter of location. At Painswick’s 100 miles from London compared to the expat-popular Burford’s 78 miles, it wasn’t that far… right? Nothing’s perfect. I could see how I would live in it and could imagine myself there.

Greg McKeown, in his brilliant book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, wrote “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.” The owners, an artist and his creative wife, accepted my offer right away. When the universe gives you a clear yes, She makes it easy. Which is not to say She doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Weeks later at a fashionable hostess’ dinner party in a definitely fashionable area, someone inquired where my newly purchased house was.
“Painswick,” I chirped brightly.
Replied she instantly, “Oh that’s much too far.”

 

 

EARLIER:

Lordy Mercy I’ve Done It Now

Why I Bought a House in the Cotswolds

NEXT:

Hire a Designer or go It Alone?

Decorating Notes: No Such Thing as a House That Needs No Work

Nothing Like Reinventing Yourself in Your 60s

Decorating Notes: Choices and Changes

How You Live in Your House Is How You Live in Your Life