Did You Know?

The word Cotswolds derives from two words: Cot meaning a sheep enclosure and Wold being a hill thus “sheep enclosures on the hills.” A lot of the wealth in the area comes originally from the wool trade.

The Porch House pub in Stow-on-the Wold can claim to be England’s oldest pub as it dates back to 947 AD.

The Cotswolds stretch across 5 English counties: Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. It measures roughly 800 square miles, stretching southwest from near Stratford-upon-Avon to just south of the City of Bath.

The total length of Cotswold stone walls running through the Cotswolds is longer that the Great Wall of China

In the mid-1600s the first and last battles of the English Civil Wars were fought in the Cotswolds at Edgehill and Worcester respectively. The Cotswolds were strategically important as the King Charles I had his headquarters at Oxford to the southeast and Oliver Cromwell had garrisons and sympathisers at cities to the west.

You can see the tallest hedge in the country in Cirencester. The 300-year-old yew hedge surrounding the Bathurst Estate is over 40 ft tall. It takes around 80 man hours for a team of two to give the hedge its annual cut. 

The Cotswolds are home to 5000-year-old Neolithic stones called the Rollright Stones. You can walk amongst the ancient stone circle of some 70 stones, which was probably used as a council circle by local tribes. These stones are called the King’s Men. Nearby is a smaller set of stones called the Whispering Knights and a funeral stone called the King’s Stone.

When the Romans arrived in AD47 they built many straight roads. The most evident still today is the Fosse Way. Supposedly they made them straight to avoid ambush on corners.

The annual cheese rolling at Coopers Hill, Birdlip involves chasing a 7lb double gloucester round of cheese down a 1 in 1 hill. The first person to reach the cheese gets to keep it.

T.S. Elliot loved to visit the Cotswolds and attributed a number of his poems to inspiration whilst here. He apparently loved to visit Chipping Camden and take long walks in the hills.

There is a long list of grand and beautiful gardens to be seen in the Cotswolds. Perhaps the most important is Hidcote Manor Garden, which was created in 1907 by Lawrence Johnson who became one of the most influential gardeners in England.

William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream was allegedly inspired by a wedding of one of the Berkeley family, of Berkeley Castle in the Cotswolds. Shakespeare himself was born and buried in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

There are about 60,000 thatched roof cottages in England and many of them can be seen in the Cotswolds. The thatch is a lightweight local reed or grass originally making roof construction cheap as well as keeping the cottage snug in winter and cool in summer.