Local voices, Strange Things and the guides, written by people who live here.
81 stories
Story · Guides · 6 minute read
Where Harry Potter was filmed around the Cotswolds: Lacock Abbey's cloisters and village, which the National Trust ties to four films, and Gloucester Cathedral's fan-vaulted cloister, with tickets, tours and parking.
Story · History · 9 minute read
Laurie Lee's life and the Slad valley he wrote into Cider with Rosie: the cottage, the Woolpack, his grave at Holy Trinity, the Sheepscombe cricket field and the Wildlife Way.
Story · Guides · 9 minute read
Cotswold Lavender at Snowshill, the lavender farm that opens its fields to visitors, and where to find sunflowers and pick-your-own flowers in July and August: the season, tickets, harvest, best light, dogs, parking and how to photograph a working field without spoiling it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Story · Guides · 5 minute read
Chavenage House near Tetbury played Trenwith in the BBC's Poldark: which rooms you see on screen, the other dramas the house names, its Civil War ghost, and how to book a tour while filming limits the dates.
Story · Guides · 6 minute read
Lacock played Meryton in the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice, with the Red Lion as the assembly rooms: what you can see, the other dramas filmed in the village, and how to visit.
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.
Story · Guides · 10 minute read
Where to see snowdrops in the Cotswolds, from Colesbourne Park's 350 varieties and the five million at Painswick Rococo Garden to Batsford, Rodmarton and Cerney House: when they peak, how each garden opens, what it costs and a winter walk to go with each.
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.
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