The Times - UK (2022-06-13)

the times | Monday June 13 2022 5

times2

The Cotswolds have gone the

same way as the Hamptons

And that’s not good, says Helen Kirwan-Taylor

“compound” — a Hamptons word

meaning multiple buildings on a plot.

The Hamptons were once potato

farms; now the closest thing you can

get to a potato are the bijou farm

shops that sell lobster

salad for $50. Wealth

follows infrastructure

and vice versa. “I’ve

called the Cotswolds

the Hamptons since

2000,” says Jonathan

Bramwell, head of the

property search

company Buying

Solution. “As soon as

Daylesford [Farm]

opened, I knew what

was coming.”

The typical

arriviste to the “hot

zone” (Stow-on-the-

Wold, Chipping

Norton, Woodstock,

Burford, Banbury

and some), he says,

is “used to spending

over £2,000 per

square foot in

prime central

London, so £1,000

per square here

seems cheap”. The

main requirement

when buying “is to

be able to walk to

a farm shop —

meaning Daylesford

— and entertain their

friends at a local

gastro pub or Soho Farmhouse”.

Those complaining about the crowds

and construction need to brace

themselves. Carole Bamford is

expanding her Daylesford wellness

centre to include a private members’

club and gym, while RH (formerly

known as Restoration Hardware), the

high-end American home emporium,

is turning Aynhoe Park, a grade I listed

17th-century estate near Banbury, into

a destination shopping experience.

Meanwhile, the Lakes by Yoo, the

groovy lakeside estate created by the

celebrity developer John Hitchcox, is

now expanding a few miles down the

road with another 140 properties.

The reason that every Cotswolds

resident with so much as an outhouse

is building a McHouse in its place is

that, like the Hamptons, Cotswolds

property is “a must-have in your

international property portfolio”,

Bramwell says. (Confession: we too

built a small house in our garden —

for our ride-on lawnmower.)

The hot zone and/or “golden

triangle” is rapidly expanding to my

area, the Coln Valley (now called

“Appleby” on account of our new

Silicon Valley residents). The arrival

of Crossrail promises quick access to

the City, meaning more Londoners

will arrive. I used to pass tractors on

my dog walks: now it’s all contract

gardeners and pool maintenance vans,

just like the Hamptons.

Despite all that, no one’s rushing to

move to Scotland. It is the people and

the “infrastructure” that drew us (and

sadly everyone else) to the Cotswolds.

I

miss country life. I’m in the

Cotswolds, where birdsong has now

been replaced with an orchestra of

saws, cement mixers, generators

and beep-beeping lorries.

Occasionally we

get a break, then a

helicopter flies

overhead. Just when

I think I can finally

relax, the sound of

drunken revelry

streams in (anyone

who owns as much

as a shed now lets it

every weekend).

Even renters

complain of the

noise. A local friend

had to refund several

bookings because

the last thing

Airbnbers expect to

wake up to here is

the chainsaws.

It’s all so familiar.

I grew up going to

the Hamptons for

the summer and

now the Hamptons

has come here.

What both places

have is great beauty

coupled with

disproportionate

wealth and an

obsession with

construction. We

all sneered when

the first McMansions went up in

East Hampton, taking up so much

space that one could shake hands with

the neighbour.

Cotswolds villagers once rubbed

along, but since the pandemic brought

a stampede of Londoners it has

become more fraught. Everyone is

either renovating or building from

scratch (new-builds are all the rage),

with so few builders on hand that

poaching is common practice. Two of

my friends are in litigation with their

builders because they sub-contracted

the job to someone else.

They were lucky to find one at all.

“My builders said they’re basically

busy for the rest of their life,” says

Gillian Quek, co-founder of

caboodle.dog, a gourmet dog food

business run out of an industrial unit

opposite her house. Quek is a typical

Cotswolds transplant, attracted by the

London level of infrastructure, namely

superfast broadband, gastropubs and

food shops. She owns her view, which

cannot be said for another Cotswolds

newbie. “She had this beautiful view,

then a developer came along and

plonked a bunch of houses right in

front of her,” Quek says.

The council seems ill-equipped to

deal with the new crop of residents

(some of them property developers)

trying to upgrade, expand and even

“flip” their investments. Complaints

don’t bother these incomers: they’re

not exactly going to show up in

church. “And I worried my kitchen

extension would be a nuisance,” says

another friend, whose neighbour is

permanently adding to his

s s f a c t 2 B p c S D o w a z W

1990s for those born after 2000 —

when it became “empowering” for

female celebrities to be photographed

naked for men’s magazines. Ariel Levy,

the New Yorker writer, was in her

twenties when she wrote Female

Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of

Raunch Culture. Levy is a harsh judge

of the beginnings of fitness pole.

“Spinning greasily around a pole,”

she writes, “is more a parody of female

sexual power than an expression of it.

How is resurrecting every stereotype

of female sexuality that feminism

endeavoured to banish good for

women?” I put this to Crosby Wilsher.

She says, by contrast, pole is “feminist

in every way”.

“You’ve got all these different bodies

and sizes, and you’re there in your bra

and pants with no judgment. If you do

the smallest move, everyone is

clapping, cheering you on, lifting you

up. It builds a community among

women that builds up your body

image. Obviously, you don’t have to do

the sexy stuff. I prefer strength. But if I

want to put some heels on and engage

with that part of my femininity, I can.”

Cooper responds: “I think pole itself

is politically neutral. It’s just people

dancing around a pole. A lot of the

negative ideas around it, what you call

the troubling roots, a lot of that is

based purely in misogyny. Because

we’re not promoting anything. We’re

not saying you should be doing this.

We’re just up there on our own

showing our bodies off, doing

amazing things.”

It’s true that the roots of ballet in

19th-century Paris were similar in

some ways to the start of pole dancing.

Ballerinas were often impoverished

suspected prostitutes, vulnerable to

sexual exploitation from wealthy male

subscribers. “The ballet is... what the

bar room is to many a large hotel,”

Scribner’s Magazine said in 1892,

with a leer.

What is the difference between their

pole fitness and sex work pole? Cooper

says you can feel “sexual without

feeling sexualised”. De Brugha talks

about sex work pole being more

mentally and emotionally taxing,

while their sport is more physically

taxing, with more acrobatic moves,

and “you’re not trying to sell yourself”.

I ask why they didn’t choose an

exercise that was similar but with

none of these sexual politics, such as,

say, circus. Cirque du Soleil, it should

be noted, has recently added a pole

dance to its act. “There’s a lot of

respect for sex workers within pole,”

Cossey says. “It’s a sport that

originated from strippers, and thank

you to them for originating this

activity that we love doing. A lot of

university pole clubs do fundraisers for

sex workers.”

Crosby Wilsher says: “It’s OK doing

pole as long as you don’t just

disassociate yourself from sex work.

We shouldn’t leech off that culture if

you’re going to disregard [it].”

Most want to keep a tricky balance

between respect from the sporting

world and respect for strippers.

However, Cooper thinks that as the

pole boom continues, the more “it will

just become kind of neutral, like any

sport”. The students have given a little

flexibility to my rigid thinking. After I

speak to them, I have a go on their

pole. I can only hold up my body

weight for a few seconds. For that

moment I cling and swing, hanging on

to the pole with the desperate

ungainliness of a woman making sure

she does not miss the bus.

lamp-posts when late home from the

student union. When I point out to the

King’s students that, while we talk,

they are all fiddling with their hand

calluses, they laugh. “That’s so

embarrassing.” Polers talk of the joy of

acquiring the strength to manipulate

one’s body in any direction and in

gaining a set of friends that are

marked by their open-mindedness to

all-comers. “Because it is stigmatised,

people coming into it are more open,”

Crosby Wilsher says.

The next step is telling their family.

“Everyone has a reaction,” Crosby

Wilsher says. All have supportive

parents — “My parents bought my

first pole,” De Brugha says — but

some hesitated to tell their

grandparents. Cooper says he is not

telling his: “It’s drama that can be

avoided.” Hill remarks that his

grandfather, aged 78 and living in

Devon, had no idea what pole fitness

was at first and was “slightly confused”.

“Now he’s very respectful,” Hill says.

“When I needed some pole shorts,

which are quite small, my grandad

bought them for me for Christmas.”

I tell them I graduated into ladette

culture in the 1990s — we have to

pause while I explain “ladette” and the

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Southampton, New York

Daylesford farm shop, near

Stow-on-the-Wold

GREY HUTTON FOR THE TIMES; GINGER_SNAPPERLY/INSTAGRAM