As a Cotswolds resident for the last 15 years it didn’t surprise me at all to see Ellen DeGeneres’s Cotswolds mansion still on the market months after it was listed.
Along with her wife, Portia de Rossi, she fled the States last November after Trump’s election win and bought £15 million Kitesbridge Farm near Burford, in the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’. Less than a year later, after a ‘50 Shades of Beige’ revamp, the 43-acre farm is back on the market for a whopping £22.5 million.
As someone who was born and raised in and around the Cotswolds, I know Ellen got it wrong, badly wrong. Her high-end home makeover is simply not what any self-respecting affluent local aspires to. Why, you may ask?
Well for starters it’s not colourful or cluttered. The house is perfectly nice but too safe and predictable. The bland dining room with its matching bird pictures, neutral furniture and antique mirror looks straight out of a Dwell catalogue from the early noughties.
Real Cotswold VIPs and royals live in charmingly messy and eclectic homes. In 2021, Princess Anne famously shared on Twitter a snap of her and husband, Tim, sitting on a shabby orange floral sofa in their cosy living room at Gatcombe Park. From ornaments to figurines, photos and, of course, a dog bed, the royal couple were surrounded by an array of personal clutter and furniture. Perfect.
Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi, fled the US last November after Trump’s election win and bought £15million Kitesbridge Farm near Burford, in the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’
Inside a £2.8million home in Stow-on-the-Wold in the Cotswolds
Another local, grande dame Jilly Cooper, is the owner of a vibrant book and dog-filled home in bucolic Bisley, where she has lived for more than 40 years. The author once admitted: ‘The house is a cleaner’s nightmare, because every surface is covered in possessions. It’s embarrassing as there are great cracks in the paint, and in the downstairs loo there’s hardly any paint on the wall at all.’
Growing up as a devoted (but slightly impoverished) member of the local Pony Club, I went inside countless family homes just like Anne’s and Jilly’s. From the tatty armchairs to cluttered kitchen dressers, most of it had been passed down the generations. Living rooms were full of mismatched cushions, smelly dog blankets and scratched Chippendale.
There was no such thing as barn conversions (‘why live in a barn when you can live in a house?’ as one friend’s mum once said) and any outbuildings were used to store hay bales or drunken teenagers for sleepovers.
Interior trends come and go, but in this part of the world stylish houses are always more shabby than chic. On a recent visit to a local writer I was impressed by the kitchen table with more tea stains and mug rings on than Saturn.
As for kitchen islands, forget it. A neighbour ripped out the massive one installed by the previous neighbour to make space for an old red Aga she’d found online.
I love how many homeowners round here never realised when wallpaper went out of favour or Laura Ashley had closed down.
I very much doubt any Cotswold-based A-lister worth their salt, including Blur bassist Alex James, who lives near Kingham, or Cirencester-based Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, would dream of living in a home as bland as Ellen’s. I put this to a local interior designer.
Helen Keable, founder of Birdie & Co, a Cotswolds design consultancy, says: ‘Many clients want a property with character and a more playful, eclectic aesthetic. Ellen’s very neutral aesthetic may jar with cosy, real-life living in a rural environment – wellies, dogs, coffee mugs and so on. There’s a trend towards displaying clutter (albeit artfully curated).’
I expect DeGeneres, who has bought at least 34 properties and then sold them for a much higher price, knows what she’s doing. But give me a scruffy sofa, faded wallpaper and a overcrowded bookshelf over Ellen’s bland makeover any day.
