RENAISSANCE WOMAN

Carole Bamford's pioneering approach to sustainability is reflected in the way she runs Daylesford House, her bucolic Cotswolds. home.

- CHARLOTTE BROOK

As a purring, pistachio-green Land Rover Defender sweeps me up a curving drive lined by delicate violets and crocuses standing to attention, my destination comes into view: a beyond-beautiful golden-stone Georgian villa. This is Daylesford House, the palatial Cotswolds home of Lord and Lady Bamford: he, Anthony, is the successful chairman of JCB; she, Carole, is the creative visionary and chatelaine—a self-starting champion of sustainability, entrepreneur and tastemaker extraordinaire.

In the past 20 years, she has transformed the 2,500-acre estate into a ground-breaking example of regenerative farming and built a lifestyle empire that has shaped the way swathes of her fellow countrywomen want to live, eat, dress and decorate. Her two brands—Daylesford (food, restaurants, hotels and homeware) and Bamford (beauty and fashion)—blend English-country eco-elegance with stealth luxury; even the produce stalls attract A-list grocery shoppers such as Kate Moss and Princess Eugenie.

The Bamfords bought the estate in 1988 and, although they still spend time at their old country house, the Elizabethan jewel Wootton Lodge in Staffordshire, Dayles- ford has become their family hub and business headquarters. Today, it is a living moodboard for Bamford’s aesthetic. A snow-white Orpington hen courteously clucks a greeting as I pass the crenellated orangery —a glorious example of late-Georgian gothic architecture—in which lemon-trees reach for the roof and a table is laid with peony-pink linen and posies of poppies. Up a few steps to the house, I walk through the double doors with their Doric columns, and am hit by a wall of scent.