But first I need to tell you about Debra. Not a pole dancer, btw. Debra is a dynamo from Charlotte who has lived here in Painswick many years. Among her various projects, she is helping with the development of a new musical based on a true story that happened around here not long ago. Heavenly Bodies follows the plight of a tiny but devoted group of elderly ladies determined to keep their small parish church afloat—and crucially to repair the roof. The poor dears are at their wits’ end. Also at wit’s end is a pole dancing instructor (who may or may not have been have been a stripper) looking for teaching space, and everyone has told her NIMBY* But the church ladies are desperate, and they’re like, whatever, needs must. But the town gets wind of it and all hell breaks loose… I mean is this a great story or WHAT. Music and lyrics by the brilliant young Finn Beames. Watch this space…

Funny stories are everywhere here in the Cotswolds. As a small-town Southerner I extra-appreciate that. One night Debra invited me to the pub for drinks with her girlfriends, which was so thoughtful. We got to talking like girls do, and one of them told about how (in her 20s) she tried to explain to her mother why she was not marrying the boy of her (parents’!) dreams. “Well, Mummy,” she began shyly, feeling pressured to justify her decision, “things don’t exactly go the way they should in the bedroom.” Exasperated, her mother huffed, “Oh so you think it’s just all orgasms all the time, do you?”

I’m pretty sure Jo did not believe her mother had ever even had sex, the fact of Jo’s own actual birth notwithstanding. We just don’t like to think about our parents, you know, doing it. Let alone blurt out the O-word at the drop of an engagement… I ‘bout fell out. Also some things just sound funnier in a British accent.

Driving home that night there was the most beautiful sunset across the wold, and I painted it, see above :) “Wolds” are gently rolling hills, and a cot is a sheep enclosure, as in sheepcote. Hence Cotswolds. This is not the pole I’m talking about, but a little study I did of a scene on the way home from Debra’s. It’s cheesy but it really looked like this. Although I moved the telephone pole. My mama always said never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Also true for painting.

*NIMBY = Not in my back yard.

Big news this time last year was that Painswick was named Gloucestershire Village of the Year 2025. There are many wonderful villages in Gloucestershire, so it means something. We are proud.

But honey it was so hot when I got here from London in June. On a call with my Shaman-lead Peru travel group, I shared that I had a past life in air conditioning. But in this Cotswold life, it is open windows and a fan. One night every mosquito in Painswick flew in and bit me, shocking to my English friends. This is gross but:

When I showed this arm to my friend Jonathan, he said I cahn’t remember when I’ve been bitten by a British mosquito.” I said that is because they were all waiting for me. What is the world coming to when British mosquitos have lost their manners?

Painswick is full of artists, and we occasionally have community “art walks” to studios and shops-cum-galleries. Last month I was especially charmed by the watercolors of Sarah Middleton who lives just down the street and is also an art historian and gives lectures and tours. I don’t know if she is related to the PoW Kate, but I love Sarah’s loose, expressive style:

(I bet Princess Kate wishes she could at least now and then have a “loose expressive style,“ but she does have other perks.)

In another spot I encountered these gorgeous stained glass butterflies by artist Sarah Davis. I bought a few but cannot figure where to hang them. Lmk if you have any ideas?

And here I thought I was moving to a sleepy little town…Girl they are busy here. And friendly. I talked about it when I was interviewed last summer for The Times of London in an article gauchely titled “Why Rich Americans are Invading the Cotswolds” (here if you want to see it) The title is ugh, but the piece started with Eve Jobs’s wedding and all the (OK yes rich American) celebrity hoopla, then it got to the regular people like me, not rich but just like it here.

NB: This post (and more) originally appeared last August of 2025 and you can see it on my website here. I’m playing catch-up to real time… bear with me. But the part about the heat wave is also true THIS summer of ‘26, though mercifully without mosquitoes. So far.

*My Shaman friend is Elena Radford and she is a wonderful spiritual guide and healer. It is she who lead the trip to Peru I was on this past spring. You can find her at TheIncaWay.com and I’m happy to speak if you’d like. Email me via FrancesSchultz.com here.

“A modest Georgian house with a garden. An old rectory maybe?”

“That’s what everyone wants,” he said.

“Oh.” I muttered, deflated.

Why on earth I thought I was original escapes me. Or is it simply the resistance on principle to “what everyone wants,” which is supremely unoriginal. But that’s what I wanted.

In any case this brief exchange did discourage me. This house “that everyone wants” would be elusive and beyond reach. So I resigned myself to a more cottage-y dwelling along the lines of my old Bee Cottage in East Hampton, or the fictional Rosehill Cottage in The Holiday. One could do worse.

And yet something in me longed for the more formal architecture of the elegant Georgians, with high ceilings and other comely architectural attributes.

Aside from that, my criteria were to be in a walkable town with a little shop, a good pub, and a nice hotel for future overflow guests. I also wanted people around, neighbors, signs of life. I live alone and that suffices for privacy, thank you. No need to go all Henry David Thoreau here. Oh, and would be nice to have close by decent shopping and a thriving arts scene, and not too far from London, please.

I did mention last post that I had Blenheim Palace tastes and Little-House-on-Prairie funds? So a little-ish something in a village would do, and I’d know it when I saw it. Or so I thought.

If you are going to have a disastrous start, it may as well be in a pretty setting. This one was out of a fairy tale, albeit a cautionary one.

But first, meet my friend Jonathan, because he is part of the story. A friend since we met in London in the ‘90s, he lives today guess where. Jonathan is a doll, hilarious, and the best company ever. He knows great people and has been a huge help to me.

About a year and a half ago, Jonathan happened by a listing for an old mill house in the window of an estate agency, as they are called there. He emailed it to me and I was smitten. Surrounded by water and willow trees, visited by the occasional swan, it was a Cotswold fantasy, and in my price range. I went, I saw, I offered. Complications ensued. When a property is on and off the market for several years, as I had discovered was the case, something is usually up. Or at best sideways. Nevertheless, I persisted for months, many calls and emails, and some $15,000 in lawyers, inspections, etc. Then I let it go. Sooooo sad.

But here’s the thing. The whole time I had a pit in my stomach like I’d swallowed a cannonball. If I learned anything in two years’ training with life coach Martha Beck, it is that the body does not lie. It feels what it feels and knows what it knows. The trouble is the brain and how it harangues you you, like, “WTF are you doing buying a house in a foreign country? … Wait! You just got divorced.…Rent first!… What’s wrong with Connecticut?… Are you nuts? …” Etc. You may relate?

Here’s the other thing. Problematic as it was, the whole process did put me the wiser. The cannonball became a butterfly. I still wanted a house.

Shortly before the rabbit hole of House Number Wrong, I had met “house hunter,” aka buying agent, Katy Campbell. The property biz is different in England, and house hunters are a thing in desirable areas like the Cotswolds, where it pays to be tuned in and connected. Katy and I had spoken, but she had not been involved in the mill house. We re-connected by email and then in person that summer while I was renting in Gloucestershire. (See? I did rent…) Katy was also adorable, great company, and inspiring. I love that she has found a way to make a living at what she loves AND has written two books about English country houses

House hunting was soooo fun, I didn’t want it to end.

Until it did. The last house we saw was a fluke. It hadn’t been part of that day’s plan, and Katy had told me nothing about it. Also it was slightly beyond the popular perimeter of the “3-Bs” towns of Burford, Bibury, and Bourton-on-the-Water. Mind you I had only a vague sense then (and now, to be honest) of where was considered fashionable. Location mattered, but so did my budget and boxes to tick.

Did I mention I loved topiary? Like weirdly, really like it?

Anyway so we are driving west into the hillier part of Gloucestershire, so pretty there, up, down, and around. That is what a “wold” is—a landscape of gentle, open rolling hills. And a “cot” refers to a shelter or enclosure for sheep. Cots+wold = now you know.

We arrive in Painswick, whose town square comprises the beautiful St. Mary’s church and churchyard, and, as Sir Walter Raleigh is my witness, a veritable forest of topiary.

We walk along a path through the carefully clipped, Dr Seuss-y yews which part to reveal a picture-book row of houses along a lane by the churchyard, crowned by a handsome if small Georgian house. Inwardly I sighed. If only. As in, if only it were available…

Except that it was available. Omgomgomg. Georgian, yay! Garden, yay! Doesn’t need renovating, double-yay! In a walkable town with a bodega. A pub. A lovely hotel for guests and a(nother) pub with less expensive rooms. Biggish towns nearby with restaurants and shopping. And yes, it was even, if briefly, the church rectory.

A few compromises, yes: 2.5 baths for 4 bedrooms, of which 2 are attic rooms, and the kitchen is removed from the living spaces. No off-street parking place (kind of a huge pain). And there was the tiny matter of location. At Painswick’s 100 miles from London compared to the expat-popular Burford’s 78 miles, it wasn’t that far… right? Nothing’s perfect. I could see myself there. (More “before” photos on my website here.)

Greg McKeown, in his brilliant book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, wrote “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a no.” The owners, an artist and his creative wife, accepted my offer right away. When the universe gives you a clear yes, She makes it easy. Which is not to say She doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Weeks later at a fashionable hostess’ dinner party in a definitely fashionable area, someone inquired where my newly purchased house was.
“Painswick,” I chirped brightly.
Replied she instantly, “Oh that’s much too far.”

Painswick… is not too far, dammit.

NOTE: The above is an edited version of an earlier post on my website here, where you can also see “before” interior photos of Lovedays House. In case you were curious…

For a while now there has been talk (and press) about Americans coming to the Cotswolds. Pre-Ellen DeGeneres’s Cotswold purchase last year and J.D. Vance’s Cotswold visit last summer, there was in early ‘23 an Airmail piece Yanks-on-the-Wold, Most recently is this one from CNN published on Christmas Eve, featuring me among others, with the sub-head “There Isn’t Much We Miss.” That line, btw, is from someone else in the article, not me. In the several pieces I’ve been interviewed for there is sometimes a sub-text of dissatisfaction with the United States as a reason for coming to the Cotswolds. I always try to make it clear that: 1) I live in New York City and visit the Cotswolds, mostly in summer, and 2) am proud to be an American. One administration doth not a country make. Other pieces, including the first one I was interviewed for in the Times (of London), refers to Americans as invaders. Oh well. Others compare the Cotswolds to the Hamptons, like this one for Business Insider, which incorporates my story “as told to” the lovely reporter and made sense as I also had a house in the Hamptons (see below).

I talk to reporters because I hold no state secrets or even much gossip and am usually happy to help fellow journalists. Also because down the road I plan to write a book that I hope also to sell to help pay for the curtains in the house in the Cotswolds. And now we are back where we started: Why did I buy the house?

The short answer is I fell in love. With a house. I was already in love with a place and a people, but the house was a pipe dream.

Now it is real. And its name, after the family that built it in the 1740s, is Lovedays House. Doesn’t sound real but is.

With Frexit (Frances + exit), my marriage ended and I left California to return to New York. One door closed and another opened…in England. ICYMI, see previous Substack post here, or the original on my website Lordy Mercy I’ve Done It Now.

I had always wanted to live abroad. And as fond as I am of many parts of the world, England called to me. I love nearly all things English, even the weather (I know). I love its proximity to Europe. And I love the English and their sense of humor. I feel at home there.

The want, however, comes from something deeper. I love houses and all to do with them. Always have. That I have Blenheim Palace taste and Little House on the Prairie budget is a bore but not a block. The idea of doing up a house–apartment, room, doll house, shoe box–has always blown my skirt up.

The heart wants what the heart wants. I bought a house in the Cotswolds because I just plain wanted to. It felt right. I would enjoy the process and the people I met along the way. I knew that it would, though I cringe at the cliché, bring me joy. I’ve done enough work on myself to trust those feelings.

And yet.

It is said that one should not make any major decisions for a year after a major loss. And divorce, whatever else it is, is a loss.

So was the sale of Bee Cottage a few years earlier. Bee had always been there for me and was always somehow healing. That house and garden were a place that both embraced and challenged me. It always beckoned to try something new (hey dark shiny tiny turquoise guestroom!) and forgiving when it whiffed (helloooo purple pleated lampshades).

Tell me about your house and I’ll tell you about your life. Our living spaces are both canvasses to create upon and mirrors to reflect us. As we make our living spaces, they make us, too, by showing us who we are. With the sale of Bee, I lost my sensei.

The California house, impressive as it was, never wholly took me in. I had made my peace with it, but in retrospect it was inevitable that house/husband/and I would have to move on together, or I would move on alone. Which I did.

Spiritually, I needed to create a new relationship to my now-self and my now-life, and the best way I knew to do that was with a house. I did it with Bee Cottage in East Hampton, and I reckoned I could do it again in England. To feel connected to and supported by your living space is a creative, dynamic, and empowering way to live, and being able to create that at the scale of an entire house is a gift and a privilege. It is also a risk.

And just so you know, between the time I left California in October 2022, and I closed on Lovedays House in September 2023, it was 11 months and 22 days. Close enough.

Now two years later here I am with a house, having spent all kinda time, money and angst, and I’m still happy about it. Work has mostly finished on the interiors, though does it ever really? More on that later. Yes of course it could still turn out a gigantic WTF-was-I-thinking disaster. But I guess the worst that can happen is I sell it. … Actually, not true: A lot could go wrong. But I’m still with it, and we’ll see. I hope you will come along with me, and we’ll see together.

Have you ever done anything completely crazy? I mean since you were older than, like, 15. Like buy a house you probably cannot afford? In a foreign country?

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