American industrialist, and part-time anti-Semite, Henry Ford, certainly liked the English country cottage look. He tried to buy a whole street of them - Arlington Row, in the Cotswold village of Bibury. The terrace cottages have stood in the village since the 14th century (they were originally used to house sheep and were converted into weavers' cottages in the 1600s) but that didn't stop Ford from wanting to uproot them and ship them to the United States.
When his request was refused he went to the nearby village of Chedworth, bought the 350-year- old Rose Cottage and had it taken apart and sent to Greenfield Village, Michigan, where it was reassembled complete with an English cottage garden.
Those of us with shallower pockets than Ford will have to make do with visiting the verdant English countryside to look at them.
The English country cottage has become a veritable symbol of bucolic British life. The best examples are to be found in the Cotswolds, a largely rural area, incorporating Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and parts of four other counties.
So, what is it about Cotswold cottage architecture that captured the imagination of a hard-nosed motoring tycoon?
There's its charming simplicity, born of the organic materials - stone and wood - used in the construction. Indeed the honeycomb limestone from which the cottages are assembled seems to glow in that distinctive English light, providing an ethereal quality.