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England > Heart of England > Cotswolds

If you're after a bit of English countryside you've seen on a postcard, read about in Jane Austen or sung about in hymns, then the Cotswolds is it - England's Green and Pleasant Land. In fact, the British Government officially designated the Cotswolds an "area of outstanding natural beauty".

The Cotswolds is basically a limestone escarpment eighty-eight kilometres long and forty kilometres wide, a couple of hours drive from London. Most of the Cotswolds lie in Gloucestershire with some crossing the border into Oxfordshire.

In Old English, the 'cots' are the unique cottages built from the local brown stone and the 'wolds' refers to the gently rolling countryside. It's beautiful at any time of the year, but spring and summer are the best times to visit. It's a great mix between the beautiful-and-hugely-popular and the beautiful-but-hidden-away. There are touristy spots but also places offering complete isolation.

The Cotswolds is a stunning region to drive through, spend a couple of days in a country cottage or to take a self guided cycling tour. Even just walking from village to village can be most rewarding.

Click on the headings to find out more: Whitney (10 miles west of Oxford) is the gateway to the Cotswolds. The town has specialised in producing quality blankets since 1669 (the Queen orders hers from Early's of Whitney). Cogges Manor Farm Museum has a 13th Century manor house with domestic farm animals roaming the grounds. A good spot for morning or afternoon tea.


Burford is an enchanting village with a long main street of handsome stone houses and a medieval bridge. The delightful church was the scene of a grisly piece of history in 1649 when Oliver Cromwell's men trapped a group of mutineers inside and executed three of them in the churchyard.


Northleach is a very handsome town with a market square at his centre. Off the square is Oak House, a 17th Century wool house that also has the eclectic Keith Harding's World of Mechanical Music. Pick anything - shoes, dog collars, string, putty - there's bound to be a museum devoted to it in England! About 4 miles southwest is Chedworth Roman Villa with mosaics dating back to 120AD.


Bourton-on-the-Water nestles on the River Windrush with arched bridges crossing it here and there. Worth seeing is the Model Village (behind the oddly named Old New Inn). It's a replica of the whole town, where you can walk through the tiny streets with the rooftops up to your waist. Seek out the Old New Inn and, behind it, you will find a model of the model you're walking though. And, if you look closely you'll see a model inside that model. The English are sticklers for detail.


Just nearby are the charmingly named Upper and Lower Slaughter, Stow-on-the-Wold and Moreton-in-Marsh. The Slaughters were not named after a nasty deed but from the Saxon word for "place of sloe trees". They are extremely picturesque villages. Upper Slaughter is overlooked by a Tudor manor house on a hill and the even prettier Lower Slaughter has an ancient water mill. Stow-on-the-Wold was once the centre of the region's wool industry and is the highest town in the Cotswolds. The Royalist Hotel is supposedly England's oldest inn, having been carbon-dated back to the 10th Century. The White Hart Inn in Moreton-in-Marsh was host to Charles 1 in 1643. Oh, and there are no marshes in Moreton-in-Marsh.


Chipping Camden is a gracious market town, unspoilt and full of thatched roofs and pretty gardens.


Broadway is so called because of its wide main thoroughfare. This is one of the most visited towns in the area but is still surprisingly unspoilt. The medieval Church of St Eadburga is worth a visit as is the Lygon Arms. It was built in the late 1300's. Cromwell is said to have spent the night there in 1851 before the Battle of Worcester (his bedroom is now a lounge room). The hotel was known as the White Hart until the 1830's when the owner, a General Lygon, sold it to his butler. The butler was so appreciative, he changed the name.


Snowshill and Hailes are another two lovely villages, well worth a wander around as you pass through.


Sudeley Castle's chapel, in Winchcombe, is where Henry VIII's last wife, Catherine Parr, is buried. In the village itself, St Peter's Church is famous for its gargoyles. Further south, Painswick is sometimes called 'Queen of the Cotswolds'. If you're looking for a walk-through postcard of a typical Cotswold village, this is it.


A detour from Stroud to Slimbridge and on to the quiet Georgian town of Berkeley is worthwhile. The beautiful Berkeley Castle is where King Edward II met a most uncomfortable end. He was imprisoned in a room where the ventilation shaft was connected to a room in which the rotting carcases of dead animals were kept. He was eventually despatched by being impaled on a red-hot poker. Not all English are polite.


There are numerous other lovely villages that visitors will discover for themselves like Tetbury, Lechlade and Fairford (which has the country's only complete set of mediaeval stained glass windows). The 19th century poet William Morris rated Bibury the "most beautiful village in England".
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