Cotswold classics

Hidden in the rolling hills of this AONB are some of the finest country houses around

- Penny Churchill

THE timeless south Warwickshire village of Little Wolford lies to the north of the A44, three miles from Shipston-on-Stour and eight miles from Chipping Norton, at the junction of four counties Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire—on the northern fringe of the Cotswolds AONB.

‘Viewed from a height the rolling Cotswold uplands are like sea waves and appear to be bare of habitation; but between the folds of the rounded hills, invariably convex in shape, are secret valleys where the stone villages hide modestly away… not that Little Wolford is a typically secluded Cotswold village, for apart from the Manor House, it is a small group of scattered farmhouses and cottages set high, 700ft above sea-level, rather than in a deep cleft in the hills.’ This was the introduction to an article from April 1957 in the now-defunct The Antique Collector that tells the story of ‘this manor of truest Cotswold type… a small gem of Cotswold rural craftsmanship with many well-preserved features in wood as well as in stone’.

1957 was also the year that Guy and Diana Ward, the parents of the current owners, bought the exquisite, Grade II*-listed manor house with its gate lodge and cottage set in some 34 acres of gardens and pasture, which is now on the market with Jackson-Stops in Chipping Campden (01386 840224), at a guide price of £5 million.