Local voices, Strange Things and the guides, written by people who live here.
81 stories
Story · Guides · 11 minute read
The Cotswolds with children, by age: the big family days out with how long to allow and what they cost, short walks with a river or a tower, rainy days, farm stays and family rooms, eating out, a sample day and weekend, and the school holiday crowds.
Story · Guides · 15 minute read
Five Cotswold villages take most of the visitors: Bibury, Bourton-on-the-Water, Castle Combe, Broadway and the Slaughters. Here is when each is busiest, what the councils have done about it, the best and worst hours, and the quieter village on the same river or ridge.
Story · History · 8 minute read
The Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln through the Cotswolds: its line by Cirencester, Northleach, Stow, Moreton and Stretton-on-Fosse, where it is the A429 and where a green lane, the Saltway and the roads that cross it, the towns it made, and walks on it.
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.
Story · Guides · 12 minute read
Eighteen Cotswold gardens by kind and season: Hidcote, Kiftsgate, Sezincote, Batsford, Westonbirt, the Rococo Garden, Colesbourne's snowdrops, Rodmarton, Highgrove and more, with who made each, the best month, how long to allow and the dog rules.
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.
Story · History · 8 minute read
Where the six Mitford sisters grew up in the Cotswolds, from Batsford to Asthall Manor and Swinbrook, the graves of Nancy, Pamela, Diana and Unity at St Mary's, the Swan, and the politics that divided the family, told plainly.
Story · Guides · 10 minute read
Corinium at Cirencester, Chedworth Roman Villa, the amphitheatre, the Fosse Way and the villas you can and cannot see: where to find Roman Britain in the Cotswolds, by car and by train.
Story · Strange Things · 4 minute read
A small church in the vale below Cleeve Hill holds 28 scenes from the life of St James, painted around 1200, the only such cycle in England.
Story · Guides · 11 minute read
Northleach, Chipping Campden, Cirencester, Fairford, Burford and the other Cotswold churches rebuilt on medieval wool money: how the trade paid for them, what to look for in each, when they open and a route by car or on foot.
Story · Strange Things · 5 minute read
The ruined hall on the Windrush at Minster Lovell, the lord who vanished after the battle of Stoke, a skeleton said to sit at a table, and a bride in a chest.
Story · Strange Things · 3 minute read
High on Woodstock's church and in a niche on its Town Hall are two near-twin sundials, one of which writes seven as IIV and eight as IIIV.
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