Soho House’s Owner Clashes With Costswold Residents

Few locations in England are as immediately evocative as the Costwolds. Travel expert Rick Steves, for one, has written about his love for the region. “There’s a quirkiness here, too — a time-passed, impoverished-nobility, clueless-aristocracy, provincial-naivety of the region — that charms me to no end,” he wrote. But even an idyllic setting like this one can be at the center of a controversy, and currently, that’s precisely what’s happening.

As Air Mail’s Lara Wildenberg reports, Ron Burkle — whose holdings include Soho House — has found himself at odds with some Cotswolds residents over his plans to build a home in the region. Burkle intends to build a manor house there, dubbed Serpentine Lodge, but has faced pushback from residents and local governments alike. As Wildenberg writes, Burkle’s initial plans for the house were rejected by the West Oxfordshire district council in 2022.

Burkle submitted new plans in August, but some locals are still unhappy with the aesthetics. Air Mail quotes one resident who accused the design of using “design elements from numerous stately homes, large public buildings and Oxford colleges” and referred to the overall effect as “a design more suited to Disneyland.”

Another testimony quoted in Air Mail opted for a blunter approach, referring to the plans as “a proposal of truly outstanding grotesquery.”

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Whether those objections will be sufficient to see this new design for Serpentine Lodge rejected remains to be seen. Given that Burkle has made some surprising real estate purchases before, this may not affect him too much — and his difficulties may speak to the difficulty of carrying out any new construction in a region as rich in history as the Cotswolds.