Asthall Manor
Parks and gardens · Swinbrook and Asthall
The Jacobean manor at Asthall where the Mitfords lived from 1919 to 1926, with a garden by Isabel and Julian Bannerman open on set afternoons in February, May and June.
Verified Nov 2026
Things to do in the Cotswolds
90 places · every place verified by us
Palaces and castles, Roman remains, wool churches, gardens, steam trains and farm parks. Here are the places worth planning a day around, with what they cost in 2026.
90 places
90 places
-
-
Athelstan Museum
Museums and galleries · Malmesbury
Malmesbury's free museum in the Town Hall, with the stories of King Athelstan and Eilmer the flying monk, a wheelchair lift and dogs welcome.
Dog-friendly · Rainy days · Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Bampton Community Archive
Museums and galleries · Bampton
Bampton's village archive in the Old Grammar School, the building that played Downton's cottage hospital, with an exhibition room, a shop and the Downton Mile map.
Rainy days
Verified Oct 2026
-
Batsford Arboretum
Parks and gardens · Moreton-in-Marsh
A 60-acre arboretum on the Batsford estate near Moreton-in-Marsh, with a free visitor centre, café and garden centre, open every day and best in spring and autumn.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
-
Beaufort Polo Club
Sport and activity · Tetbury
A polo club at Westonbirt near Tetbury, home of the Tomlinson family, where spectators watch free through the summer season, from late April to September.
Dog-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Belas Knap Long Barrow
Historic houses and heritage · Winchcombe
A Neolithic long barrow on the hill above Winchcombe, with a false entrance and side chambers, free to visit and on the Cotswold Way.
Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Berkeley Castle
Historic houses and heritage · Dursley
The castle in the Severn vale where Edward II is said to have been murdered in 1327, home of the Berkeley family since the late twelfth century, open Sunday to Wednesday in season with guided tours, gardens and a restaurant in the walled garden.
Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Bibury Trout Farm
Family days out · Bibury
A working trout farm on the River Coln at Bibury, founded in 1902, with a café, a shop, catch-your-own fishing and its own pay car park.
Family-friendly · Dog-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Birdland Park and Gardens
Wildlife and nature · Bourton-on-the-Water
A bird park on the Windrush at Bourton-on-the-Water since 1957, with what it calls England's only breeding King Penguins, flamingos, pelicans and a nature reserve.
Family-friendly · Dog-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
-
Blenheim Palace
Historic houses and heritage · Woodstock
Vanbrugh's palace at Woodstock, Churchill's birthplace and a World Heritage Site, with Capability Brown's park, formal gardens and a ticket that lasts a year.
Family-friendly · Dog-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
-
Bourton House Garden
Parks and gardens · Moreton-in-Marsh
A garden at Bourton-on-the-Hill near Moreton-in-Marsh, open Tuesday to Friday from April to October, with under-16s free.
Verified Oct 2026
-
Broadway Museum and Art Gallery
Museums and galleries · Broadway
A museum and gallery in Broadway's Tudor House on the High Street, with John Singer Sargent's portrait of Elizabeth Eberstadt among its paintings, free for under-16s.
Rainy days
Verified Nov 2026
-
Broadway Tower
Historic houses and heritage · Broadway
James Wyatt's folly of 1798 on Beacon Hill above Broadway, with a museum in the tower, a red deer park, two cafés and a Cold War nuclear bunker.
Family-friendly · Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Burford Tolsey Museum
Museums and galleries · Burford
Burford's small free museum in the Tolsey, the sixteenth-century market house on the High Street, run by volunteers and open on summer afternoons.
Verified Oct 2026
-
Buscot Park
Historic houses and heritage · Lechlade-on-Thames
A late eighteenth-century house near Lechlade, run by Lord Faringdon for the National Trust, with Burne-Jones's Briar Rose paintings, the Faringdon Collection and Harold Peto's water garden, open on spring and summer afternoons.
Verified Oct 2026
-
Castle Combe Circuit
Sport and activity · Castle Combe
A 1.85-mile motor racing circuit half a mile from Castle Combe, racing since 1950, with race days, action days, track days and driving experiences from spring to November.
Verified Nov 2026
-
Cattle Country Farm Park
Family days out · Dursley
A family farm park at Berkeley Heath Farm in the Severn Vale below Dursley, with two indoor play barns, outdoor play, a summer boating lake and farm animals, opened by the Cullimore family in 1992.
Family-friendly · Rainy days
Verified Nov 2026
-
Cerney House Gardens
Parks and gardens · Cirencester
A family garden at North Cerney, near Cirencester: a Victorian walled garden with borders and an organic kitchen garden, 40 acres of woodland walks and a self-service tea room, open almost every day of the year.
Dog-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
-
Charlbury Museum
Museums and galleries · Charlbury
Charlbury's volunteer-run museum beside the Corner House on Market Street: five rooms on the town's history, from Stone Age arrowheads to gloving, open at weekends from April to October.
Rainy days · Car-free
Verified Nov 2026
-
Chastleton House
Historic houses and heritage · Moreton-in-Marsh
A Jacobean house near Moreton-in-Marsh, built on the estate Robert Catesby sold in 1602, where rules for croquet were written.
Verified Oct 2026
-
Chavenage House
Historic houses and heritage · Tetbury
An Elizabethan manor near Tetbury, finished by 1576 and home of the Lowsley-Williams family since 1891, known on screen as Trenwith in Poldark. Visits by reservation only, and few in 2026 because of filming.
Verified Nov 2026
-
Chedworth Roman Villa
Historic houses and heritage · Northleach
A Roman villa found in woods near Northleach in 1864, with mosaics, two bath suites and a water shrine, owned by the National Trust.
Family-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
-
Cheltenham Racecourse
Sport and activity
Prestbury Park, home of jump racing's Cheltenham Festival and the Gold Cup, with meetings from October to April and a race-day bus from the station.
Car-free
Verified Nov 2026
-
Cirencester Roman Amphitheatre
Historic houses and heritage · Cirencester
The grassy banks of a Roman amphitheatre built early in the second century to hold about 8,000 people, free to visit in daylight on the edge of Cirencester.
Dog-friendly · Car-free
Verified Oct 2026
Palaces, castles and great houses
Blenheim Palace at Woodstock, a World Heritage Site and Churchill's birthplace, is the grandest; its ticket lasts a year. Sudeley Castle near Winchcombe, where Katherine Parr is buried, opens daily from mid-March to the start of November. Snowshill Manor, Charles Wade's house of curiosities, and Lacock Abbey, where Fox Talbot made the earliest surviving negative, belong to the National Trust. Kelmscott Manor, William Morris's country home, opens from April to October. Our guide to country houses and castles has the opening days for each.
Romans and prehistory
Cirencester's Corinium Museum shows Roman mosaics from a town and district where more than 90 are known, and its amphitheatre, which held about 8,000 people, is free to walk into. Belas Knap, a Neolithic long barrow above Winchcombe, is free and open in daylight. Our guide to the Roman Cotswolds goes on to Chedworth.
Churches
The wool churches are free and open most days: Chipping Campden, Northleach with its merchants' brasses, Fairford with its complete set of medieval glass, and Cirencester's great porch on the Market Place.
With children
The Cotswold Wildlife Park near Burford, Birdland and the Model Village at Bourton-on-the-Water, and Adam Henson's Cotswold Farm Park near Guiting Power are the family favourites. The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway runs steam trains between Cheltenham Race Course and Broadway from spring to late autumn. More ideas are in the Cotswolds with children, and for a wet day, the Cotswolds on a rainy day. Our Cotswolds weekend with children fits the Farm Park, Bourton and the Wildlife Park into two days.
Gardens
Hidcote, near Chipping Campden, is one of the best-known Cotswold gardens, and Kiftsgate Court is close by. Painswick Rococo Garden was restored from a painting of 1748, and Westonbirt, the National Arboretum near Tetbury, is open every day but Christmas Day. See our guide to the great gardens.
Free things to do
Many of the best things cost nothing: the Museum in the Park at Stroud, the Oxfordshire Museum at Woodstock, the Athelstan Museum at Malmesbury, Cirencester's amphitheatre, Minster Lovell Hall, the Tolsey at Burford and every circular walk the Cotswolds National Landscape publishes. Our short walks and half-day walks are a good place to start, and our Strange Things stories find the oddest corners. Our guides to free things to do in the Cotswolds and the best viewpoints have the full lists.
Events through the year
The big days out are the Cheltenham Festival, four days of jump racing in mid-March; the Badminton Horse Trials in early May; the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in July; and the Moreton Show, an agricultural show near Moreton-in-Marsh, in early September. Around the late May bank holiday, Chipping Campden holds Robert Dover's Olimpick Games and the Scuttlebrook Wake, and Tetbury its Woolsack Races on the bank holiday Monday. Check each organiser’s date before you go.
For music, the Chipping Campden Music Festival fills St James's Church for a fortnight in May, and the Guiting Music Festival brings ten days of concerts to Guiting Power at the end of July. From November, Blenheim and Westonbirt open their Christmas light trails; our guides to when to visit and Christmas in the Cotswolds have the rest of the year.
In September, Heritage Open Days open private houses, chapels, museums and town halls free for ten days, from Cirencester to Witney.
Region by region, see things to do in the North Cotswolds, the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, Cirencester and the Coln Valley, Stroud and the Five Valleys, the Cotswold Edge and the South Cotswolds. For a plan that takes in most of them, our touring route by car is a three-day loop from Burford.
Sights worth a detour
Free to see from the path or the street, from Arlington Row to the top of Cleeve Hill.
-
Arlington Row, Bibury
Sight · Historic building · Bibury
Arlington Row is a terrace of stone cottages above the mill stream in Bibury, built as a wool store in the late fourteenth century and turned into weavers' homes in the seventeenth. Grade I and owned by the National Trust, the cottages are lived in and seen from the path.
-
Market Hall, Chipping Campden
Sight · Historic building · Chipping Campden
The open arcade of 1627 in the middle of Chipping Campden's High Street, built by Sir Baptist Hicks as a sheltered market for butter, cheese and poultry, saved from sale to America in the 1940s and now the National Trust's. Grade I; the Cotswold Way starts beside it.
-
The Rollright Stones
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · The Oxfordshire Cotswolds
The Rollright Stones are three prehistoric monuments on a ridge on the Oxfordshire and Warwickshire border, built over nearly 2,000 years: the Whispering Knights burial chamber of about 3800 BC, the King's Men circle of about 2500 BC and the King Stone. Open daily; small fee.
-
Tyndale Monument, North Nibley
Sight · Monument · Wotton-under-Edge
The Tyndale Monument is the tower on Nibley Knoll above North Nibley, built in 1866 by S. S. Teulon in memory of William Tyndale, translator of the first printed English New Testament. Grade II*; usually open to climb, free, with a key nearby if locked.
-
Cleeve Common
Sight · Common or park · The Cotswold Edge
Gloucestershire’s largest common: more than 400 hectares of open limestone grassland on the Cotswold Edge above Cheltenham, with the highest point of the Cotswolds at 330m, an Iron Age hillfort, a Bronze Age cross dyke and views to the Malverns and the Black Mountains.
-
Painswick Beacon
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · Painswick
Painswick Beacon is a hill north of Painswick, about 280m high, crowned by a large Iron Age hill fort with triple ramparts. Royalist troops camped here in 1643. It is open common land on the Cotswold Way, shared with a golf course, with views over the Severn Vale.
Events through the year
Racing, eventing, an airshow, a country show and the Christmas light trails.
-
Cheltenham Festival
Event · Cheltenham Racecourse, Prestbury ·
Four days of jump racing at Cheltenham Racecourse in mid March, with 28 races and the Gold Cup on the Friday; the 2027 Festival runs from Tuesday 16 to Friday 19 March.
-
Badminton Horse Trials
Event · Badminton House park, Badminton ·
Five days of eventing in the park of Badminton House in early May, with dressage, cross-country on the Saturday and show jumping; in 2027 from Wednesday 5 to Sunday 9 May.
-
Royal International Air Tattoo
Event · RAF Fairford ·
Three days of military and civil aircraft on the ground and in the air at RAF Fairford each July; in 2027 from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 July, with under-18s free with an adult.
-
Moreton Show
Event · The showground, Batsford Estate, Moreton-in-Marsh ·
The north Cotswolds' agricultural show, on a Saturday in early September on the Batsford Estate near Moreton-in-Marsh, with livestock, horses and free entry for children; next on Saturday 4 September 2027.
-
Robert Dover's Cotswold Olimpick Games
Event · Dover's Hill, Weston Subedge, Chipping Campden ·
Shin-kicking, tug of war and running races on Dover's Hill above Chipping Campden on the Friday evening after the late May bank holiday, games first held in 1612.
-
Christmas at Blenheim Palace
Event · Blenheim Palace, Woodstock ·
A light trail of more than a million lights through the gardens and grounds of Blenheim Palace, with Cinderella told in the State Rooms, from mid November to early January.
Good to know
- Seasons
- Many houses and gardens close from November to March. Check before you go.
- Book ahead
- Blenheim is cheaper online, Highgrove is by booked tour only, and Kelmscott sells half its timed tickets online and keeps the other half for visitors who turn up on the day.
- By bus
- Westonbirt and Court Barn give discounts to visitors who arrive by bus.
- Memberships
- National Trust members go free at Snowshill, Lacock and Hidcote; English Heritage runs Hailes Abbey and Belas Knap.
Ideas for your next day out
What is open, what is on and what is in season, about once a month.
Questions
What is the best thing to do in the Cotswolds?
For most first visits, a walk between villages such as Bourton-on-the-Water and the Slaughters, with a great house such as Blenheim, Sudeley or Snowshill Manor.
What can you do for free in the Cotswolds?
Walk, visit the wool churches, the Roman amphitheatre at Cirencester and Minster Lovell Hall, and the free museums at Stroud, Woodstock and Malmesbury.
What is there to do in the Cotswolds with children?
The Cotswold Wildlife Park, Birdland and the Model Village at Bourton, the Cotswold Farm Park and the steam railway.