Inside the go-slow Cotswolds escape encouraging guests to embrace stillness

It’s a big ask in 2025. Plus, perhaps ironically, there’s the small matter that Hyll photographs beautifully. As I’m shown around the courtyard bedrooms, the boldest renovation in the property, which lean into an earthy colour palette I’ve not seen anything close to in these parts before, I pull out my own phone to snap a few photos.

Murray Orr

Murray Orr

“Without getting too poetic, you do kind of float through the space,” Liam says when I mention how I kept being drawn to sit down on the supremely comfortable beds and chairs during my tour. “It’s all about focusing on a moment. The lighting [in the courtyard bedrooms], for example, is not overhead; it’s personal, intimate lighting which spotlights those comfortable spaces where you might sit with a book or a drink. It illuminates that moment in time, and that makes you present.”

The courtyard bedrooms are grounding, cocoon-like spaces with bold, deep colour-drenching. Youth have their own colour with Denmark-based brand St. Leo, and use the brown paint plaster to create a tactile finish across these rooms and suites. “That connects with the landscape, the rugged hills,” Ollie tells me. “We’ve created the bathroom trays from a stone material. There are all these rustic materials, which feel great, and the way the light plays against them is unique. It’s got almost a primitive element to it.”

It’s a good description of the spaces, one I wish I had come up with myself. The courtyard bedrooms at Hyll have a rawness to them that encourages you to take a deep breath and come back to the present moment. That feeling might be wholly rooted in the bucolic surroundings, but the techniques they’ve used to create it feel more urban. There are natural comparisons to Copenhagen design to be drawn, especially thanks to the Danish materials they used, but Youth are resistant to being compared too closely to their Scandi neighbours.

“Scandinavian design influences everyone in our industry,” Ollie shrugs. “But I think we look more towards Belgian design. It’s a very Antwerp thing to use lighting to create these moments of drama, for example. It’s a bit more raw. And of course Manchester, where we’re based as a studio, is a little raw and unrefined.”

Murray Orr