Check Out Lastminute Bargain Break, short break deals and last minute holidays for hotels, b&b, inns/pubs and holiday cottage lets in and around the Cotswolds
on Accommodation

The Local Time is Monday, 12-May-2008 13:49:05 BST

COTSWOLD BLOGS -
Cotswold Dry Stone Walls

Search Cotswolds.Info Website
SEARCH
CHAT
ADVERTISE
YOU ARE HERE: Main Home Page > Cotswold Blogs Cotswold Dry Stone Walls E-mail This Page
 


CORPORATE ADVERTISERS

This advertisement is being seen at least 4000 times per day by people wanting accommodation, tours, and Cotswolds information.

Don't miss out on this valuable advertising space!!

Contact - webmaster@cotswolds.info

 
Specially Chosen Cotswold Press Articles from around the World

RSS News Feed from telegraph.co.uk  This Feed is brought to you by Cotswolds.Info

Specially Chosen Cotswold Press Articles from around the World

Special interest articles about the Cotswolds published in the World Press
04/15/2007
Lords of the Manor
When I called Lords of the Manor to book the table, the French voice on the phone tactfully suggested that jeans and trainers would be inappropriate for the dining room. I couldn't agree more I'm so over jeans and trainers. A dress code that might have come across as incredibly square a year ago, suddenly sounded quite hip. Lords of the Manor is the restaurant in the hotel of the same name in the village of Upper Slaughter, near Stow-on-the-Wold. It's the quintessence of Cotswold..........
04/15/2007
England's Cotswolds Peaceful, Charming
PAINSWICK, England -- The main road through this picturesque village says a great deal about the timeless quality of the Cotswolds, a region of low, rolling hills in England's West Country. A vision of tranquil English village life, the street is lined with charming, centuries-old stone houses and a half-timbered post office that dates from the Middle Ages........
10/10/2006
The Pudding Club - A Paean To English Puddings In The Cotswolds
But, as food preferences evolve, Britain’s great puddings, even the sweet variety, were being overlooked in favor of Black Forest cake and strawberry cheesecake. In 1985, to preserve this important piece of culinary heritage, Three Ways House Hotel, a historic hotel in the low hills called the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, 90 miles from London in southwest England, established the Pudding Club. The goal: to preserve the pudding from drifting into obscurity.......
09/02/2006
The Cotswolds and beyond
What turned out to be one of our 'funnest' trip in years, unfortunately started out in a very stressful manner. But that's life. So let me tell you how it all began:
My partner Dianne Marie and I arrived at Heathrow Airport outside London, some 13 hours after leaving San Francisco. We immediately rented a car and attempted to drive to The Cotswolds. Yes, I said "attempted," because it took us forever to get there.


09/13/2006
Mindful of politics, culture in England
ED JONES is editor of The Free Lance-Star. He can be reached at 540/374-5401 or at edjones@freelancestar.com.


GLANCE AT THE stone walls inside the little old church in Sherborne, England, and you'll notice a roster of vicars who have graced the pulpit there. The list goes back 900 years.

But it was a reference of more recent vintage that caught my eye last week as I strolled around the sanctuary. A needlepoint pad for kneeling worshippers offered a simple but touching message: "God bless America. Stand beside her, and guide her. September 11, 2001."

That evening, as my wife, Peggy, and I were watching the BBC news in our rented cottage in the Cotswolds, 75 miles west of London, we heard about a survey that found that most Britons think it's time to put distance between their country and the United States in the war on terrorism.

Those sentiments surfaced as newspapers and TV reporters swarmed around the Labor Party infighting that forced Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush's most loyal and articulate ally in the post-9/11 period, to promise to step down from office within the next year. Blair, the fresh, boyish leader of the Brits a decade ago, has become stale..........

08/30/2006
Reading to avoid ignorant-American status
ED JONES is editor of The Free Lance-Star. He can be reached at 540/374-5401 or at edjones@freelancestar.com


I'M NOT PROUD of it, but I might as well confess. I recently purchased my very own copy of "British History for Dummies."

Now granted, there are many areas of expertise in which I would quickly qualify as a dummy. Plumbing and cooking are two that come to mind.

But being a dummy on British history hurts.

After all, I took a course on the Tudors in college. I subscribe to The Spectator, a weekly opinion journal from Britain that keeps me on top of politics across the pond.

I once had an electronic subscription to The Times of London. I still read an array of newspapers and magazines about the Church of England.

But as my wife, Peggy, and I prepare for a short trip to the Cotswolds, that rolling slice of England three hours west of London, I still feel like a dummy............

01/04/2006
All of Stratford's a Shakespeare stage
The Free Lance-Star


By MARY ELLEN BOTTERTHE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Hamlet proclaimed, "The play's the thing."

The Royal Shakespeare Company will prove that's true.

The troupe is sponsoring a yearlong festival at Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare's hometown, at which all of the Bard's 37 plays plus his sonnets and long poems will be performed.

It will be the first time that all of the works will be presented in a single event.

The festival will open on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, and continue into April 2007..............

05/26/2002
Walk Along River Thames Left Indelible Impressions
After spending the better part of last month in England, walking along the River Thames, a few random observations (mostly ecologically inspired) seem in order this week. So, with a tip of the hat to author Bill Bryson, who was encountered out there in a Cotswold field, here are some of my own "notes from a long, long river.".......
 
 
 
 


ARTICLES BY RALPH GREEN OF THE VISITOR INFORMATION CENTRE AT STOW-ON-THE-WOLD

Morris Dancers - August 2007

Stow on the Wold - March 2007

Deserted Cotswold Villages - September 2006

Cotswold Place Names - July 2007

The Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold 1646 - April 2006

Tracks and Roads across the Cotswolds - October 2005

The Cotswold Lion - May 2005

An Early Cotswold Visit - January 2005

The History of Bourton-on-the-Water - September 2004

Cotswold Roofs - April 2004

Cotswold Dry Stone Walls - February 2004

Cotswold Ridge and Furrows - October 2003

The Rollright Stones - June 2003

The Gypsy Horse Fair at Stow-on-the-Wold - March 2003

The Cotswolds - In the Beginning - February 2003

Get the XML feed for these Cotswold Blogs Cotswold Blogs
Cotswolds RSS Blogs

Add to Google

AddThis Feed Button

Ralph Green

Ralph Green lives in Bourton-on-the-Water and used to work for many years at the Stow-on-the-Wold Visitor Information Centre

For more Cotswold Articles:-


Cotswold Dry Stone Walls


I never thought much about the dry stone walls that mark out the Cotswold Hills until I started working in the Tourist Information Centre in Stow-on-the-Wold.

cotswold dry stone wall

One day an American visitor called into the Centre and started to tell me how, on a previous visit, he had been so struck by the beauty of our walls and the fact that no mortar was used that he decided to try his hand when he returned home. It hadn't been as easy as it looked but he stuck at it and eventually created something to be proud of. His neighbours had shown great interest and the local press had reported on his endeavours. Since that meeting, many visitors have mention our walls and how they contribute and enhance our beautiful Cotswold landscape. This caused me to look at our countryside with a different eye and made me realise that this feature, which I had ignored for so long, held everything together, and gave the hills and valleys some sense of unity.

Such as been the continually interest of visitors in dry stone walls, we decided to research the subject and print up a simple leaflet to hand to anyone who wanted to take something away with them.

Typical dry stone wall in the Cotswolds

Dry stone walls are found in many parts of the country, wherever stone is abundant, but nowhere is the material more suited to the job than on the Cotswold Hills. It is quarried and delivered to the sight with two sides roughly parallel.

Building starts by removing the turf and setting large blocks as foundation stones, usually beginning at the gateways. The wall is 2 ft. wide at the bottom and narrows to fourteen inches at the top; this narrowing is called a `batter'. As the wall grows it is filled in the middle with small stones and every so often a'bonder' or 'througher' is put in to hold the two faces together. Sometimes these are left sticking out to serve as a stile. Each stone is tilted slightly downwards to the face of the wall with a packing of small stones to throw out any water that gets inside. At the required height, rows of stones are set upright to complete the wall. In villages and around churchyards these are often 'dressed' as rectangular blocks to give the wall a more finished look. As no cement or earth is used the air can get through and the wall remains dry. A properly built wall will last many hundreds of years with only a little attention.

The beauty of the Cotswolds

There were two great wall building periods on the Cotswolds, at the time of the enclosures in the 18th century and the times of depression in the 19th century when the great landowners built walls around their estates to provide employment for those who were out of work. The craft, or is it an art? of dry stone wall building goes back 5,000 years to the Stone Age, when many of the long barrows on the Cotswolds had dry stone walls at their entrances and along the sides.

Since meeting the visitor who tried his hand at building a dry stone wall, I have met one other person who built a wall and another who was going home to have a go. They were all from the U.S.A. so perhaps somewhere at the edge of the Rocky Mountains are foothills that are slowly been turned into the Cotswolds!

Harmony in the Cotswolds

Those of us who live in the area give little thought to walls, but in their way, they contribute as much to the beauty of the Cotswolds, as do our attractive villages.

For those who would like to learn how to construct dry stone walls by either volunteering, attending a course or via a working holiday please see details at www.cotswolds.info/activities-walking-cycling-golf.shtml#dry_stone_walling.


USE GOOGLE'S POWERFUL ENGINE TO SEARCH
COTSWOLDS.INFO  WEBSITE
Google
 
www.cotswolds.info - The World's largest Internet resource for the Cotswolds

Cotswold Dry Stone Walls

This page last modified Wednesday, 30-Apr-2008 07:40:27 BST