How A-List Celebrities Are Disrupting Our Charming Village Life – Here Are Some Hard Truths They Need to Understand!

SOUPED-UP Maseratis blocking the road outside the pub, an influx of criminal gangs and the tacky ‘country’ brand that has become the look du jour.

Welcome to the glorious English countryside – and the multi-millionaire, DFL (down from London) mob who are ruining it. I am sick to the back teeth of it so now it’s time to serve up some hard truths. Buckle (that fake Barbour) up.

Ellen DeGeneres, right, and wife Portia de Rossi have recently turned their backs on their English countryside dreamCredit: Instagram Ellen & Portia’s first UK home was a stunning £15m mansion but it flooded regularly so they sold it and movedCredit: Instagram Ellen and Portia sold their 10-acre Carpinteria property for $96 million back in 2024Credit: BackGrid

My village of by The Sunday Times – is home to just 1,000 people including rock god Bryan Ferry and an award-winning community-run village shop.

Cosy cottages and rolling hills of the South Downs offer the quintessential English landscape and photogenic box tick but it’s the recently reopened village pub that is behind its new, buzzier status with out of towners flocking for their fix of rural rollicks at the weekend.

All of which means this once peaceful rural haven is under attack.

Come Saturday lunchtime and as sure as the cock crows, the on-street parking area around the Grade II listed Swan Inn will be heaving with Ferraris, Porches, Maseratis and tank-like Land Rovers.

Peaceful haven under attack

It’s a brash wake up call for the residents opposite, used to the phone box book exchange being the main hub of activity. Signs asking pub goers to refrain from parking outside their gates are often ignored while the running club has had to change its regular route past the pub because of all the vehicles in the way.

More worryingly, some locals believe the flashy cars, rise in activity and higher village profile are attracting criminals, with gangs caught on home security cameras trying to break into properties recently.

Meanwhile, the visitors pour in; decked out in , all houndstooth blazers and Dubarry boots with a brigade of barking dogs stir crazy from the long drive up the A3 – ready to tuck into the £85 sharing platter of Brill or lamb shank.

Yes, forget any twee notion that the village pub exists to serve the local community – in common with many gentrified boozers, the inflated prices are aimed squarely at an exclusive crowd.

On the odd occasion I decamp to there for a pricey flat white in search of better Wi-Fi – yes, broadband here is as slow as the tractors on the roads – you can’t move for quaffing hoorays making themselves a little too at home while their four-legged friends loll across every inch of floor space.

Meanwhile, those community stalwarts who campaigned for the pub’s reopening – the postman, the school caretaker, the pensioners who hand deliver the village magazine in all weathers and religiously grow their best turnips for the village show, are relegated to the social club. With an
annual membership of £12, yes you get a cheaper drink but also a budget ambience of fruit machines and Phil Collins on the stereo.

The is increasingly becoming a game of two halves, siloed and disconnected. The hoards who swan in for a snap shot of quaint rural luxe and a change of gear from their metropolitan life are blissfully unaware of the challenges.

Ellen and Portia relocated to the UK after Donald Trump was elected as PresidentCredit: Instagram Caroline lives in the ‘new Cotswolds’Credit: Ian Whittaker Visitors’ posh cars are becoming a pain in the countryCredit: Alamy

They tend to play no part in daily life or the efforts that keep everything ticking over; the volunteering, the campaigning for broadband and lower traffic speeds, the laying of gravel to make the wet muddy paths through the surrounding woodland a little less treacherous.

Banners proclaiming “No Farmers, No Food” in protest over changes to inheritance tax feature on every roadside – signs of discontent and the struggle for survival beneath the chocolate box veneer.

Apparently former US chat show host Ellen DeGeneres has gone cold on her English rural dream in the Cotswolds – her home of just over a year.

Yes, the wellies are off and the Wayfarers are back on this Christmas as she and actress wife Portia de Rossi swap Chipping Norton in Gloucestershire for the LA sun – perhaps eyeing up a permanent return.

What probably started as a cashmere-clad chocolate box cottage fantasy has been derailed by a dose of rural reality. Too much mud and a wintry wind chill not to mention storm flooding around their palatial £25 million hilltop manner.

Is it any surprise it’s all proving too much for a cosseted celebrity cosplaying at country life?

You see before it all went wrong the pair couldn’t get enough of the rural cliches in this super rich enclave where neighbours include the , and Simon Cowell.

We had the box-fresh Barbour’s and the Insta-friendly “house sheep” filmed wandering around the couple’s pristine cream interior – high jinks and all very quaint – particularly when you don’t have to do any clearing up.

The award-winning community-run village shop in FittleworthCredit: Brighton Pictures

Down the road from me in the small market town of Petworth – it’s a similar story. Home to Vinnie Jones and an influx of down from Londoners (DFLs), the make up of the town has changed significantly to accommodate outside tastes and budgets.

An independent grocer, an old fashioned but fantastic fish and chip shop have bitten the dust replaced with a sushi delivery business, an overpriced yoga studio, coffee shops and home accessory boutiques. While those watching the pennies will get their basics at the local Co-Op, the money-to-burn urbanites flock to the artisan food shop where a basketful of chi-chi tit bits ‘for supper’ rack up a triple digit price.

Consider what’s happened in the village of Shere in Surrey; the picture-perfect location used in the romcom Christmas classic, The Holiday, is now posing in front of people’s cottages like they’re the ultimate tourist attraction.

The irony of all this is that the very aspects that draw people to the country – the peace and the unique character are at risk by those sucking the life and heart out of things with an Instagram-friendly Soho farmhouse curated version.

The Down from London set make sure they’re dressed for a designer country visitCredit: Getty Village life is being taken over by the new visitorsCredit: Alamy Stock Photo