Morris dancing can be found in many parts of England but it is in the Cotswold that it is particularly associated and where it can be seen at its most developed...........
Visitors to Stow-on-the-Wold call in at the Tourist Information Centre for a chat, buy postcards, maps and walking books. Many visitors ask about the town and its lovely old square and want to know about its history and what helped to create such interesting architecture.........
If you do much walking across the Cotswolds, eventually you will pass through a deserted village. Some sites are easily missed but others are more obvious. It is the bumps and hollows covering an acre or two that tell you that you are on a medieval main street. Typically, you will be walking in a hollow way........
Most of the place names in the Cotswolds are Anglo-Saxon in origin dating from the 8th century onwards. The place name nearly always carries an element of a personal name as a prefix taken from the Saxon landowner or the farmer who worked the land. Part of the name may end in ley meaning woodland clearing or........
The English Civil War fought between 1642 and 1646, was a mobile war with rival armies forever on the move. This war did not consist of one or two major battles to decide the issue but continued for four years with sieges, skirmishes, small and very large battles ranging from the distant north to the far south west of England........
However, in our part of the Cotswolds the hill top tracks continued to be used and formed the basis of our local modern road system. Of the eight roads that radiate from Stow-on-the-Wold for instance, most make good use of the high ground, following the line of very ancient Neolithic and Celtic tracks........
Odd as it may sound, the Cotswold Lion is a sheep and it is the reason why people visit the Cotswolds, though they may not know it. They don't come to stare at sheep of course, but when visiting this lovely part of England they are perhaps, unaware that wool manufacture and its subsequent decline left us with a living history of farms and cottages, market towns and villages.........
I was 14 years old when I first came to the Cotswolds. My brother, aged 12, and I set out from Leeds during the school summer holidays in 1952 for a cycle tour round England staying at Youth Hostels each night..........
I have lived in Bourton-on-the-Water for 30 years and think it a wonderful place. It's full of nice people living in one of the prettiest villages in England surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside. Let me tell you a little of its history.
The name Bourton comes from the Saxon word BURGH which means a fort or camp and TON which means a village or settlement. If you put the two together, you get 'the village beside the camp'. There is evidence of far earlier settlements in this part of the Cotswolds. Stone Age and Bronze Age burial mounds are common throughout the area. On the northern edge of the village is the sight of a Stone Age encampment, which was subsequently occupied by later civilisations. Iron Age currency bars from about 300 BC were found on the sight during excavations carried out in the last century. They are now in the British Museum..........
Archaeologists working on sites that include Roman Villas have found stone slates which are almost identical to those used today for the roofs of so many Cotswold houses...........
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..........
When traveling around the Cotswolds and The Vale of Evesham on a summer evening, with the sun low in the sky, its impossible not to notice rows of humps in the fields. There are line upon line of them, some straight and many that curve slightly. What you are seeing are the remnants of an ancient ploughing method that we call ridge and furrow............
Seven miles from Stow-on-the-Wold in a north-easterly direction, on the road to Long Compton, and near the village of Little Rollright, is a circle of standing stones, the most easterly in England. Other stones stand close by...........
The gypsy horse fair attracts hundreds of sightseers to Stow twice a year. Gipsies gather from all corners of England for a meet and greet and hundreds of horses are paraded and sold, all in one day. It's quite a site! So how did it all begin and why Stow-on-the-Wold. As you might expect, when dealing with a Cotswold tradition, you have to go back a very long way...........
The Cotswolds are a line of hills stretching from about 7 miles south of Stratford-upon-Avon in a south-westerly direction to Bath, a distance of 70 miles. It is bordered to the east by Banbury and Oxford and to the west by Cheltenham and Gloucester. Often described as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the largest in England and Wales. It is characterised by picturesque villages built of warm coloured limestone, sitting besides clear, fast flowing streams, set in a stunning landscape. So how did this all come about?..........
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