Thyme, the bucolic country retreat in the Cotswolds, is the realisation of Caryn Hibbert and her family’s passions and principles – and their home is at the very heart of it, Jessica Jonzen discovers.
THE LODGE AT THYME
When Caryn Hibbert picked up a copy of Country Life back in 2002, little did she know she was about to set eyes on the house which would change her, and her family’s, lives.
Southrop Manor, an eight-bedroom Grade II*-listed manor set within the bucolic Leach Valley in Gloucestershire would, by any measure, provide a complete change from London. “But we could never have imagined what it would become,” says Caryn.
That is Thyme, the much-loved boutique Cotswold retreat described as ‘a village within a village’ and a true family affair. Since 2007, it has gently evolved to include an award-winning 32-room hotel, a restaurant, spa, cookery school, pub, and boutique, all set within the ancient stone barns, houses, and cottages built with stone dug from the very land they are built on.
But creating a business from their home was never part of the plan. While based in London, Caryn worked for the NHS as an obstetrician and gynaecologist while her husband, Jerry, was a successful animation director (Tony the Tiger from the Kellogg’s Frosties adverts, and the children’s cartoon Fireman Sam are both part of his oeuvre.) It was “incredibly demanding” juggling her role with mothering three young children and Caryn knew she had to make a choice. “I loved my work, but I wanted to be a mummy and a homemaker,” she says. “I thought I’d go back to medicine, but I felt weirdly liberated after I left, and I realised there was a big world out there.”
Having grown up in the Staffordshire and Leicestershire countryside with her scientist father, Michael Bertioli, and passionate plantswoman mother, Patricia, Caryn felt a powerful pull towards nature. “I loved London but I’m a country girl at heart and knew I didn’t want to raise my children in the city.” Despite having grown up in Oxford, Jerry took more convincing. “He loved being in London, so I really had to push him to agree,” Caryn says.
But the manor proved to be an appealing draw, and they decided to take a look. Driving into the village of Southrop, they realised that Jerry’s cousin farmed nearby and turned out to be the person showing them around the house. “It all felt quite serendipitous, and with Jerry’s mother nearby, he felt confident we had roots here already.”
THE NORMAN ARCHWAY LEADING TO THE DINING ROOM
And one couldn’t help but be captivated by the house itself. Listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 when it served as a monastery, its millennium of history is boldly stated by the intricately carved Norman archway in the entrance hall. Once the home of Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to both Elizabeth I and James I and the principal discoverer of the Gunpowder Plot, the manor was then acquired by Nicholas Wadham in 1608 – the namesake of Wadham College, Oxford, which owned the estate until 1926.
During that decade, much of the manor was refashioned by the architect Norman Jewson, who embellished its maze of rooms in the Arts and Crafts style, and controversially moved the Norman archway into its current position. Was there much work to do when the Hibberts moved in? “I think we can safely say yes,” Caryn smiles. While the house has a great number of rooms, it lacked the convivial large kitchen and living space their modern family needed. They worked with English Heritage to redesign the kitchen, merging it with a former pantry and corridor to form a spacious and welcoming room leading out onto the magnificent gardens. The family have changed little else.
The same cannot be said about the rest of the estate’s buildings, which have undergone extraordinary yet sensitive restorations over the years. Just weeks after the Hibberts bought the manor, the neighbouring agricultural buildings became available to buy. This included the ancient Tithe Barn and the magnificent 19th century Ox Barn which would have been state-of-the-art when it was originally built but had been allowed to fall into disrepair and was being used by local teenagers as somewhere to skateboard.
Planning permission had been granted to turn the buildings into residential properties, something which the local community had campaigned hard to prevent. So, Caryn’s father, Michael, the entrepreneurial physicist behind the firm Druck who passed away last year, bought them. “He was at a stage in his life where he wanted a project. He loved old agricultural buildings and had an idea to do these up so we could have an income from them to support the house,” says Caryn. “There was no thinking about what we were going to do with them, in fact I remember initially thinking ‘what would we want these for?’”
Michael undertook the meticulous restoration personally, preserving the grand stone archways and the magnificent Douglas Fir beams. He ensured the architectural integrity was maintained while integrating modern technology to guarantee the estate’s future sustainability. Over time, the other buildings on the estate began to reveal their potential.
THE OX BARN RESTAURANT AT THYME
“I didn’t plan to set up a business but suddenly we had these buildings and there was an opportunity and a need to make it commercial,” says Caryn. That began in 2007 with the cookery school, where City workers would come from London for the day, pick their own vegetables and cook them for lunch before returning home. “The ‘slow food’ movement was beginning to take hold, people were more interested in the countryside, in where their food came from, and in cooking. It was something we could talk about easily because it is how we live.”
Guests started wanting to stay and there was an opportunity to buy the Farmhouse which would provide more accommodation than the existing cottages and the evolution of Thyme began. Caryn’s original intention to be a homemaker remained; it just grew in scope. “I knew we could offer something different; I wanted people to be immersed in our way of living.”
Caryn’s love of English country house style has informed the decoration of the hotel’s rooms. “I’ve indulged my passion for pattern, flowers, eclectic collections of furniture and lovely fabrics. One of the things I have learned is to do what you like – don’t listen to anyone else. You’re always going to get differing opinions but if you like something, you’re guaranteed that someone else will like it as well and the more confident you are with that, the freer you are to be creative.”
Antiques from Lorfords and France bolster Thyme’s gently evolved aesthetic, adding to its authenticity, while an array of natural paint colours from Edward Bulmer are perfectly in keeping with Caryn’s principles about conservation.
The Hibbert’s children, Charlie, Tom, and Milly, grew up with the business and surrounded by their family’s passion for conservation, nature, design and living well, and so it is no surprise that two of them have joined the family business. “My middle son is probably the most sensible of all because he lives in London, works in the City and when he comes back he’s ‘quality control’!” Caryn laughs.
THE EXTERIOR OF THE OX BARN AT THYME
Realising that Thyme needed a restaurant on-site to “give it a heart” (they originally used their pub, The Swan, in Southrop as the restaurant) Caryn immediately thought of Charlie, a talented chef who worked for Jeremy Lee at Quo Vadis in Soho. In 2016, Charlie left London to lead the design of The Ox Barn and opened it in 2018 as its Head Chef, sharing his passion for cooking with seasonal ingredients grown in Thyme’s own kitchen gardens.
Milly, with her experience in design, visual merchandising and marketing, returned home in 2018 to collaborate with Caryn in launching retail at Thyme and co-founding Bertioli – Thyme’s scent, beauty, and lifestyle brand, named in honour of Caryn’s father and inspired by Caryn’s botanical watercolours of plants from the estate. She played a crucial role in the brand development and marketing for both brands and has now taken the reigns as General Manager.
Today, Thyme quietly hums with life and creativity and employs 150 people. “Thyme is an extension of our home, and we live and breathe it so it’s a challenge not to bring work back with us,” Caryn admits. “It’s a big responsibility and we’re only happy when we know that it is all going well so everything is intrinsically linked – there’s no getting away from it and it’s definitely not easy and make make mistakes along the way but the more established the team becomes the easier it gets.”
Southrop Manor has, by accident rather than design, enabled Caryn to explore her and her family’s passions and principles and to share them far and wide. “There are probably easier things we could have done but they definitely wouldn’t have been as nice and wouldn’t have been so constructive to the community – I think we genuinely are that now. Life is a journey, and I’ve realised that I’m somebody who always looks forward and this place has allowed me to do that. It’s everything we love.”
CARYN HIBBERT IN HER GARDEN AT SOUTHROP MANOR
(LEFT) THE PRIVATE GARDENS AT SOUTHROP MANOR; (RIGHT) THE IRON GATE CARYN COMMISSIONED FROM A LOCAL BLACKSMITH
(LEFT) NATURALISTIC PLANTING IN THE GARDENS AT THYME; (RIGHT) ONE OF THE BATHROOMS WITHIN THE FARMHOUSE AT THYME
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