So how did we get here from there?
We started with a tired old building. The good bits of the 17th century were lost somewhere in the dark depths of the 1970s and 1980s, crying out to be found again.
Our owner had a vision of something exciting and different, of creating a hotel that’s better than home for our guests and uses the right design to make it far from predictable.
We wanted to move away from the dark and rustic feel of so many Cotswold hotels. The Old Stocks Inn combines the best of our 17th century heritage – the beams, the Cotswold stone walls and the oddly-shaped rooms – with modern colours and fabrics that feel fresh and inviting.
So we ripped out the fittings, ready to reconfigure the space, removed the old furniture and filled up a lot of skips. At times it felt like we were working on Stow’s biggest jigsaw puzzle, as every change seemed to have a knock-on effect somewhere else and created even more work.
We sandblasted and treated our original wooden beams, restoring them to their former glory and leaving them protected for years to come. We got in an expert plasterer who plastered our ceiling using a traditional horsehair and lime technique, dating back hundreds of years. We had bespoke furniture individually made for the bedrooms and sourced quirky pieces we hoped our guests would love.
And slowly The Old Stocks Inn started to take shape. Every room is unique and we soon realised that you can’t control every aspect of the space, so we didn’t try! We worked with the rooms and allowed them to speak for themselves, taking a traditional material or piece of furniture and adding a twist to make it feel contemporary.
Whether you knew the ‘old’ Old Stocks or whether this is your first visit, we hope you love the way we’ve been sympathetic to the old building and kept its individuality, while giving it that much-needed 21st century update.
Here’s to the future! The story doesn’t end here.
