A chapel in the Cotswolds transformed into a serene holiday home

There are plenty of places to stay in the Cotswolds and the word idyllic is often splashed around to describe them. As an adjective, all it really means these days is that something is more relaxing than your normal life – not hard when you live in London and have been living through a pandemic. However, having spent time roaming the undulating hills of the Cotswolds, part of which was spent at a converted chapel on a hillside near Stroud, the word ‘idyllic’ needs to be reclassified so it can do justice to holiday houses such as Elissa.

Elissa sits proudly above a quiet lane overlooking the River Frome valley, with the pretty villages of Brownshill and Chalford on the other side. A field in front of the house plays host to a pair of galavanting horses and various wildflowers, while to the side and back of the house is woodland, carpeted with wild garlic at the time I stayed there. There’s a neighbour on one side and scattered houses down the lane, which eventually peters out to become a footpath. It’s utterly peaceful, except for the odd horse noise or when one of the guests realises that the pull near the front door rings the still-working church bell.

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Whichever angle you take the chapel in from, it’s spectacular. Built in 1901, the chapel was renovated in early 2021 with help from interior designer Lauren Gilbert Thorpe; inside, a double height living space opens into a master bedroom and bathroom on the mezzanine, the original dark beams forming architectural intrigue and structuring the room’s layout. A staircase – painted in ‘Portland Stone’ by Little Greene to match the panelling that runs throughout the main space – looks as though it’s always been there as it twists up to the spacious bedroom, complete with perhaps the largest bed I’ve ever encountered. The stained glass windows and hymn boards have all been expertly woven into the chapel’s current iteration. The rest of the house is cleverly laid out, with an adorable children’s bedroom on one side as you enter the house, a bathroom and snug space on the other, before you come to the living space up two steps and a kitchen in a vestibule to the side.

While the place is no longer sanctified, it has that peaceful, still quality that churches always do – it is, in a word, serene. A long weekend there, letting the light flood through the enchanting windows to wake you up, taking a morning bath in the copper tub looking out at the woodlands, drinking a first cup of tea outside and watching the mist burn off the valley below, watching the sunset from the wooden hot tub with the embers in the fire pit softly glowing – it all felt like a true escape from normal life, but also a realisation about how I’d like normal life to be. The owners have done a wonderful job at making Elissa feel like a home, not a rental. There are plenty of books on every table and shelf for you to read and so many cosy spots to hunker down in.