Cotswolds Blog

Self guided cotswold walking holidays- Enjoy a Cotswolds hiking break Cotswolds Adventures self-guided cotswold walking holidays cover many of the beautiful cotswold walks the area has to offer. Our cotswold walking tours include your accommodation, maps, quality route notes and luggage transfers between lodgings. The cotswolds has thousands of miles of public footpaths and many of these...

Hidcote- one of the country’s great gardens   Hidcote is an Arts and Crafts garden in the north Cotswolds, a stone’s throw from Stratford-upon-Avon. Created by the talented American horticulturist, Major Lawrence Johnston its colourful and intricately designed outdoor ‘rooms’ are always full of surprises. It’s a must-see if you’re on holiday in the Cotswolds. Explore the maze of...

Burford Burford is situated in north Oxfordshire, twenty miles north of Oxford, and is considered the southern gateway to the Cotswolds. A beautiful old Cotswold town, its High Street sloping from the high Wolds, where you have beautiful views over the open countryside, down to the willow fringed River Windrush in the pretty Windrush valley. A fine three arched medieval bridge crosses the...

History of the Old Mill at Lower Slaughter A Mill is recorded in the Doomsday Book of 1086 on the site of the The Old Mill. In the 14th Century it had begun to be known as Slaughter Mill and by the 18th Century had become independent of the manorial estate. In its later years The Old Mill, situated on the River Eye came into the ownership of the Wilkins family whose cousins ran John Wilkins...

History of Tetbury The first written record of Tetbury occurs in 681 AD, when Ethelred of Mercia gave 15 acres of land near ‘Tette’s monastery’ to the abbey of Malmesbury. Who Tette was we do not know for certain, but we do know that a woman of that name was abbess of a monastic settlement at Wimborne around this time.  It is possible that the current church of St Mary the...

Malmesbury- An Introduction Atop a perfect flat hill encircled by the River Avon at the southern entrance to the Cotswolds, sits Malmesbury, said to be the oldest continually inhabited town in England. Malmesbury is rightly called the “Queen of Hilltop Towns” being England’s oldest borough with a rich history over 1000 years. Officially Malmesbury can be traced back to the fifth century, but...

History of Painswick Rococo Garden Painswick House was built in the mid 1730s. Its owner, the asthma suffering, Charles Hyett came to Painswick to escape the smog of Gloucester and named his new house ‘Buenos Ayres’. Sadly this move was not enough and he died soon after the House was completed. It was his son, Benjamin, who created the fanciful Garden in a hidden valley behind the...

 What to expect on our Private Cotswolds Tours Our driver-guide will pick up your group (up to 7 people) at 10am from your location of choice in the Cotswolds. We use a luxury Japanese MPV which is very comfortable and its height gives great views over the surrounding countryside. We then drive leisurely through stunning countryside and secret Cotswold villages using traffic free country...

  History of Castle Combe Castle Combe was voted ‘pretties village in England’ in 1961 and it is easy to see why. The Romans are known to have but a fort named ‘Castle Hill’ here due to its proximity to the Fosse Way, which required fonts all along its length for defense. The invading Roman army were quickly forced to move north and left Castle Hill as a mere posting...

History of Lacock Centred around a grid of four streets Lacock has changed little in the past 200 years. The name Lacock has its origins in Saxon times when settlers living by the Bide Brook named it Lacuc to ‘Little Stream’. Lacock was recorded in the Domesday Book as belonging to Edward Of Salisbury, Sheriff of Wiltshire, an ancestor of Ela who founded the Abbey. In medieval...

History of Lacock Abbey Lacock Abbey, dedicated to St Mary and St Bernard, was founded in 1229 by the widowed Lady Ela the Countess of Salisbury, who laid the abbey’s first stone 16 April 1232, in the reign of King Henry III, and to which she retired in 1238. Her late husband had been William Longespee, an illegitimate son of King Henry II. The abbey was founded in Snail’s Meadow,...

  The Cotswold Wildlife Park & Gardens exhibits over 260 different species of animals and is the largest privately owned zoological collection in the UK. The Park is set in 160 acres (0.65 km2) of landscaped parkland and gardens 2 miles south of Burford in Oxfordshire, England. Around 350,000 people visit the park each year.  Walled Garden The Walled Garden (behind the Gift Shop) houses...