How this pub became a "mental health spa"

When Matthew Freud decided to enter the hospitality world, purchasing an inn (dating back to the 16th century) and the neighbouring former Post Office in the picturesque Cotswolds village of Burford, his vision was not about bucolic luxury and fluffy bathrobes. Instead, he envisioned a convivial retreat where one would benefit from mind-expanding activities, nourishing food and good company.

Freud set about creating a gorgeous environment (18 rooms), with plenty to do over and above the regular country-hotel offer of massages and hikes. “A mental-health spa is the best way to describe Bull – A Coaching Inn, somewhere where you can experience human connection through learning,” says Freud of a rolling programme that might include a morning of breathwork and meditation, workshops in perfumery or acting, a lesson in bee-keeping or Padel tennis, topped off by an evening book club or a Night on the Tiles session making ceramics with his artist niece, Martha Freud. Flourishing is the end goal of these action-packed two-day stays, devised to seduce you into a flow state – where anxieties and status-jockeying slide away and you have a moment to explore and catch your breath.

The design of Bull and its outlying workshop buildings, called Coach House (a five-minute stroll), is beautifully soft on the eye, with terracotta and slate-grey walls, linen curtains, marble-tiled bathrooms, sumptuous beds, rugs, and dried oak branches arranged in vessels. Walls are hung with provocative art (Damien Hirst, Harland Miller and Jean-Michel Basquiat included) and a selection of Freud’s own photography collection.

There are four dining options (the room price includes the workshops, food and soft drinks); one can enjoy sushi at Hiro, presided over by Hiromi (formerly of Nobu in Ibiza, with 18 years working with Nobu Matsuhisa); tuck into meat and fish on the grill at Guy Ritchie’s tented dining area, Wild; or graze casually outside on the terrace. The evening is dominated by a communal supper at Horn, with no menu (“It’s family dining style, with people serving one another as the conversation flows,” says Freud), after which the night might segue into poker, backgammon or chess with one’s newfound learning buddies.

Freud is as invested in the venture as much as in the village that he has made his home since painstakingly restoring Burford Priory, a Jacobean estate where some of the activities take place. The kitchen at Bull, meanwhile, benefits from the produce from the Priory’s vegetable and cut-flower garden, which has been brought back to splendour by Freud’s partner, fine jeweller and horticulturalist Sheherazade Goldsmith.