Strange Things in the Cotswolds

Customs, legends, ghosts and odd corners of history: the strange side of the Cotswolds, with the record and the legend kept apart.

Burnt Norton: a fire and a poem

Story · Strange Things · 3 minute read

In 1741 Sir William Keyt set fire to his mansion near Chipping Campden and died in the flames. Nearly two centuries later the ruin gave T. S. Eliot a poem.
Cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

Every spring bank holiday people hurl themselves down Cooper's Hill near Gloucester after a Double Gloucester cheese. The race is old, unofficial and dangerous.
Dicky Pearce, the jester of Berkeley

Story · Strange Things · 3 minute read

In Berkeley churchyard, below the Cotswold edge, a chest tomb remembers Dicky Pearce, the Earl of Suffolk's fool, killed in revelry at Berkeley Castle.
Ley lines and the Rollright Stones

Story · Strange Things · 5 minute read

Alfred Watkins saw straight old tracks across the English landscape in 1921. Later writers made them lines of mystic energy. Here is what is actually known.
Mummers' plays in the Cotswolds

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

The Christmas mummers' plays of the Cotswolds: Marshfield's Paper Boys on Boxing Day, the Chipping Campden mummers, and the Gloucester play revived in 1969.
Pagan Cotswolds? What the record says about old customs

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

Maypoles, wassails, well dressing and cheese rolling are often called pagan fertility rites. Here is what historians have actually found, and what is a modern myth.
Pig Face Day at Avening

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

Every other September, Avening carries a pig's head in procession, a feast its legend ties to Queen Matilda, a spurned Saxon lord and the founding of its church.
Robert Catesby, Chastleton and the Gunpowder Plot

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

The leader of the Gunpowder Plot, Robert Catesby, lived at Chastleton on the Oxfordshire edge of the Cotswolds before selling it in 1602, three years before the plot.
Templars and Hospitallers in the Cotswolds

Story · Strange Things · 5 minute read

The crusading orders held land in the Cotswolds: the Templars at Temple Guiting until their fall in 1308, and the Knights Hospitaller at Quenington until 1540.
The Campden Wonder

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

In 1660 a Chipping Campden steward vanished and three people were hanged for his murder. Two years later he came home, with a tale of Turkish slavery.
The ghost of Charles I in the Cotswolds

Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read

Two Cotswold houses have stories of Charles I: the Court House at Painswick, where tradition says he stayed in 1643, and Chavenage, near Tetbury, where legend says his ghost drove a hearse.
The lovers of Stanton Harcourt

Story · Strange Things · 3 minute read

In the summer of 1718 two young harvest workers, engaged to marry, were killed by lightning at Stanton Harcourt. Alexander Pope, staying nearby, wrote their epitaph.

Customs you can still see

The Cotswolds keep some of England's oddest customs. Runners chase a cheese down Cooper's Hill and carry woolsacks up a hill in Tetbury. Bisley's children dress the village wells on Ascension Day, Avening carries a pig's head in procession, and the Marshfield mummers fight and die in the street every Boxing Day. In midwinter there is wassailing.

Legends and the record

We like a good legend, but we keep it apart from the facts. Read about the man who came back from the dead in Chipping Campden, the lost lord of Minster Lovell, the ghost of Charles I, the Templars and Hospitallers, and whether Cotswold customs are pagan at all. On the darker side of the record are wife sales in the Oxfordshire market towns, the lovers of Stanton Harcourt, Robert Catesby and Chastleton and ley lines at the Rollright Stones.

Odd corners

A sundial in Woodstock that writes seven as IIV, a jester's tomb at Berkeley, a monk who flew from Malmesbury Abbey, wall paintings of St James at Stoke Orchard, and the fire that gave T. S. Eliot Burnt Norton.

Where to see them

Many of these places are free. The wells at Bisley are on Wells Road, Minster Lovell Hall is open in daylight, Belas Knap is a steep climb of just over half a mile from a small lay-by on the lane above Winchcombe, and the St James paintings are in the small church at Stoke Orchard, which has no regular opening times but holds a service at 9.30am on the second and fourth Sundays of the month; otherwise check with the parish before you make a special trip. At Malmesbury, the Athelstan Museum tells the story of Eilmer, the monk who flew. The Rollright Stones, with their legend of a king and his knights turned to stone, ask a small fee.

How we tell these stories

Every Strange Things story says what is on record, with its source, and where the legend begins. Where a famous tale turns out to have no evidence, such as the Tolkien door at Stow or Morris's line about Bibury, we say so, and we drop stories we cannot stand behind.

Strange places to visit

Where the stories happened, and what you can see there now.

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.
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
Minster Lovell Hall and Dovecote

Historic houses and heritage · Witney

The ruins of a fifteenth-century manor house by the River Windrush between Burford and Witney, with a round dovecote, free to visit in daylight.

Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly

Verified Oct 2026
Court House, Painswick

Sight · Historic building · Painswick

The Court House is a gabled stone manor house of 1604 on Hale Lane, beside Painswick churchyard, with a panelled court room and a bedroom named after Charles I. Listed Grade I, it is a private home seen from the lane and the churchyard.
St Mary Magdalene, Woodstock

Sight · Church · Woodstock

St Mary Magdalene is Woodstock's church on Park Street, founded with the twelfth-century town and long a chapel of Bladon, with a Norman zigzag doorway, a classical tower of 1784 to 1786 with chimes of 1792 made to play tunes, and a sundial with odd numerals. Grade II*.
Knights Hospitallers' Gateway, Quenington

Sight · Historic building · Cirencester and the Coln Valley

The fourteenth-century gatehouse of the preceptory the Knights Hospitallers founded at Quenington in about 1193, partly rebuilt in the early sixteenth century, beside St Swithin's church. Grade I; on private land, seen from Church Road.