Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm Shop was already drawing a queue at 9:30am on a Tuesday, with visitors still waiting outside when the doors opened in Chipping Norton. The surprise was not that people came, but that they were there at opening time, from across the UK and Europe, for a farm shop many travellers now treat as a destination.
The renewed attention comes as Clarkson’s Farm has returned for a fifth season, putting the Cotswolds site back in front of viewers and sending more people searching for the shop behind the show. The shop’s Instagram following is close to 3 million, and the scale of that audience was easy to see on the ground: signs around the site point visitors toward the Prime Video series, while the grounds themselves are part farm attraction, part pilgrimage site.
Opened in 2020 after the Diddly Squat team grew tonnes of potatoes, the shop now sells the kind of produce that makes the place feel both rural and theatrical. Fresh fruit and vegetables were on display alongside pork-based products, Hawkstone Brewery drinks and fresh milk. The writer left with a carton of chocolate milk and a packet of lightly salted crisps, a modest haul in a shop where the bigger draw is the setting as much as the stock.
That setting extends beyond the counter. Next to the shop sit an ice-cream van, a bar and a seating area, turning the visit into something closer to a day out than a quick stop. The bar serves alcoholic drinks including Hawkstone, as well as brunch and lunch plates such as bacon, sausage and fried egg buns. Its menu also includes The Big View, a beef burger with onions caramelised in Hawkstone lager, which the writer noted as “the off the telly one,” alongside vegetarian, plain and sausage options.
Even the shop’s more playful merchandise has become part of the attraction. Candles on display carried the slogan “This Smells Like My B*****ks”, with Clarkson saying the wax was made from his own farm bees and blended to smell like his old car seat. It is the sort of product that sounds like a joke until you see tourists queueing for it on a Tuesday morning.
There is also a line between visitor and farm life that the site makes clear. Some parts of the grounds can be signed and written on by visitors, while other areas remain off limits, and the trip was described as dog friendly. For Clarkson, that arrangement has turned a working farm into a place people travel to see; for everyone else, the question is not whether the shop is busy, but how much longer a queue at opening time can keep growing before the novelty wears thin. The fact that it was still there at half past nine suggests demand around Diddly Squat is nowhere near slowing down.
