General Discussion

It already has private clubs and A-list spas. But just when you thought north Oxfordshire couldn’t get any more luxe, along comes a super-rich American with big plans

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/cotswolds-luxury-homes-members-clubs-rh-nbdljjrhj

https://archive.ph/mklh3

Wednesday June 14 2023


From left: Actor Regé-Jean Page, left, with the CEO of US interiors giant RH, Gary Friedman, at the brand’s UK launch at Aynho Park earlier this month; the exterior at Aynho GETTY IMAGES

A lavish, bucolic bacchanal straight out of Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby movie, the party is firing now. It’s early June, DJ Idris Elba is on the decks with Pete Tong, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi joining him in the booth, and the sound system is pumping out Kylie’s Padam Padam summer 2023 anthem. There’s a huge raised dancefloor with a negroni bar on one side and martini mixology team on the other. Canapés are flowing from a kitchen teeming with chefs.

This isn’t a party in Los Angeles or Miami. We are instead looking over Capability Brown-landscaped gardens and closely mown ha-has as herds of deer graze in the green and pleasant distance. Architect John Pawson and former Tory party co-chairman Ben Elliot are admiring Sir John Soane’s mastery of symmetry, scale and light as Regé-Jean Page from Bridgerton, Sydney Sweeney from The Handmaid’s Tale and Avatar superstar Zoe Saldaña step from fleets of black limos onthe gravel apron outside, into the 17th-century house’s grand entrance.

Welcome to Aynho Park, north Oxfordshire, a handy nine miles from Soho Farmhouse and 20 miles from the Daylesford Organic farm shop, meeting place for anyone enjoying the Cotswolds One Percenter Parcs experience. The estate, which under its previous owners played host toJade Jagger’s wedding in 2012 and Noel Gallagher’s 50th birthday in 2017, has been revamped and jet-setted by new California-based billionaire owners.

The house, once Aynhoe Park, is now called the Gallery at Aynho Park, taking the name of the quiet village next door. At a cost that may be more than £50 million, the house has been transformed into an immaculately rendered temple to aspirant taupe and white, its high and airy halls and drawing rooms home to precisely curated exhibitions of cabinets in engineered teak and forged bronze, kayak-sized day beds, smoothly finished tall boys, marble-topped drawers and console tables and section sofas of rich, clean-lined, low-profile modernism. Instead of bright colours, there are 50 shades of grey and even more variations on white.

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The grade II listed members’ club and hotel, Estelle Manor


Friedman with his wife, Bella Hunter, and Idris Elba, who deejayed at the RH launch


The Orangery restaurant at Aynho


The living room at the Estelle Manor private members’ club


Friedman in Aynho’s architecture and design library


Daylesford Organic’s farm shop


A lakeside villa at John Hitchcox’s upscale development, the Lakes by Yoo


The bar and dining area at Soho Farmhouse