The Cotswolds – England’s Golden Land?

England (actually the whole of the UK) is not short of beautiful old buildings and tranquil villages, but for the golden warm colors of the houses and churches, the Cotswolds is very hard to beat. On the same visit to the UK as my Lake District adventure, I managed to spend a day driving around the area loosely considered to be in the Cotswolds trying to capture some of the sights that make this so magnificent.

Designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which covers 787 square miles and is mainly in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, this is a lot to cover in a day, especially as I needed to be at Heathrow airport early the next morning to pick up my wife who was flying in from Washington DC. I loosely based my visit on a 40-year-old Automobile Association driving tour of the area! As far as I could see, not much had changed!

What distinguishes the area above all is the color of the stone that almost all buildings are constructed from. This warm honey shade can’t help but bring a smile to your face! And almost all these villages are either unchanged or very sympathetically extended with buildings in a very similar style. Chipping Campden was the first on my list. Chipping comes from an old English word meaning market, and Chipping Campden was very important in the wool trade. These sheep perhaps believe it still is:

Sir Baptist Hicks was the owner of Campden House, built around 1608, but it was destroyed by Royalists in 1645 during the English Civil War. All that is left now are a gatehouse and two Jacobean banqueting halls, one of which can be seen next to the church above and in more detail by the graveyard in a moodier view of the old building!

Ilmington is a village about 8 miles south of Stratford-upon-Avon and seems to be full of beautiful old homes and cottages. It used to be called Elmington because it had so many elm trees, but over time this shifted to Ilmington. Thanks to Dutch Elm disease, there are no longer any elm trees here, unfortunately. A bit of more recent history, the first Royal Christmas message broadcast by King George V, was relayed worldwide by the BBC from Ilmington Manor in 1934.

Not far away, I found this delightful little thatched cottage in the village of Honington:

On any road trip, you do need to look after your stomach! So my next stop was a pub where I sat outside with a traditional pint of bitter and an even more traditional “bangers and mash”, which is sausages, mashed potatoes and a deep colored gravy. Delicious!

I visited the Rollright stone circle, which is interesting, but this traditional woven Green Man caught my eye. Especially menacing in black and white!

This next one taken in the village of Icomb seems to me to be almost picture postcard worthy. Exactly what you would like to see in an English village:

Stanton has been called the most beautiful Cotswold village of them all! Much of the area of the village was owned by the Stott family from 1906 to 1949. In addition to restoring the properties, these owners built a reservoir in 1907, added lighting to the main street, improved the church, extended the school, built a swimming pool and cricket field. The parish church was built around 1100, and I was particularly taken with the flower surround around the gateway to the graveyard and church:

This next image was actually taken a year later but it is so perfect as a Cotswold village with this magnificent tree standing by the stream running through the village. This is Lower Slaughter – not the most pleasant name perhaps, but well worth a visit.

I also managed to visit the church in Bibury, but this lovely rose set against the stone of the church attracted my eye!

There is no rest though as the day is drawing to a close. So off on a walk to see a folly known at Broadway Tower with the start of a sunset in the distant sky:

This tower was built at the second highest point in the Cotswolds at 1024 feet above sea level and it stands 65 feet tall. It was the brainchild of the famous garden designer, Capability Brown and built for the Countess of Coventry in 1794. Apparently, she wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her home in Worcester, about 22 miles away and sponsored the construction. Indeed, the folly could be seen!

My final stop for the day was in the market town of Burford where I visited the large and very imposing parish church:

A fitting end to the day!

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