Chipping Campden - Cotswold Charm

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Four Star holiday cottages
at Chipping Campden
in the North Cotswolds

LANDMARKS

The historic town of Chipping Campden in north Gloucestershire is set on the edge of the Cotswolds in a gentle valley, surrounded by rolling hills given over to agriculture and sheep farming that typify the North Cotswolds.

Walk along Chipping Campden High Street and a step back in time to the Middle Ages. Old coaching inns like the 16th century Kings Arms and the historic Noel Arms Hotel have been welcoming guests for many centuries and still display many of their original features. Some of the golden stone houses, date back to the 14th and 15th centuries and are some of the finest examples of our English heritage.

John Masefield wrote the following lines in his poem 'On Campden' :
On Campden Wold the skylark sings,
In Campden Town the traveller finds
The inward peace which beauty brings
To bless and heal tormented minds

01 Views from Cross Hands, down Conduit Hill and Westington to Sheep Street, arriving in High Street

	Driving into Chipping Campden from the Evesham to Oxford road, you turn at Cross Hands, where you will find a replica of the medieval finger board (itself possibly a copy of a Roman item) that was put in the Campden Museum back in the 1960s and can now be found in the Old Court Room of the Old Police Station.
	As you have gone over the crest of the hill and down past a quarry on your left, you come down to a fairly level piece where the vista opens up and you start to see Chipping Campden laying in the fold with Ilmington Hill in the distance. The remnants of Brailes Clump can be clearly seen to the right just off the picture.
	Chipping Campden and St James Church become visible at the brow of Conduit Hill and the flat top of Meon Hill with its historic hill fort/encampment can just about be seen to the right and just behind the church.
	At the brow of Conduit Hill, you find the crescent roof of the Water House or "conduit" where 3-springs converged. This fed the horse troughs down the hill before ending up at the Almshouses and probably the old Campden House back in Jacobean times.
	Just around the bend and at the end of the coppice on the left, there is a gateway on the right that looks out over Poplars Farm towards Campden and the church nestling in the valley with Meon and Ilmington Hills in the background.
	There is a track on the left that leads up to the top of the ancient Forty Acre field. The gateway there offers rarely seen views of Campden with the ridge and furrow of the old orchard to the left, Top Farm and our cottages in the mid foreground and the award winning Littleworth Estate to the left.
	From the same spot, this is the view of Campden just to the right of the above picture. St James Church, with the remains (Banquetting house, etc.) of the historic Campden House to its right and Ilmington Hill in the background.
	A few yards down the hill, the hamlet of Westington comes into sight.
	View of Blind Lane from its junction Westington. The house on the left is on the site of the old Blacksmiths Cottage, then behind the wall you will find that we are currently rebuilding the Ewe Pen, Top Farm's old cowsheds/barns are then on the right and the roof of the farmhouse can just be seen between the two.
	A nice view that has barely changed in our lifetime, the much photographed Bishops Cottages in Westington, the home of the local magistrate in our youth. The box hedge (in which we played hide and seek as children) on the righthand side of the road has not changed in our time.
	Just 100 yards further on, but looking back at where we have come from, is The Green at Westington. The long thatched Woodruff House is in the background, its box hedge having beeen cut back in relatively recent years to reveil its stonework. The triple globe lampost on The Green was brought there from Westiminster Bridge by our great grandfather when he moved back out of London in about 1865.
	Another 100 yards on and taken from the junction with Sheep Street, this view without the old hedge growing in the raised garden at top of the wall, will have changed again because Shepherd Close raised the wall to preserve their privacy. The houses in the middle of the picture include the old Westington Manor.

02 - Dovers Hill

A mile or so of hillside forms a natural amphitheatre on a spur of the Cotswold scarp with magnificent views over the Vale of Evesham through to the Black Mountains and even the Wrekin on a very good day.

The viewpoint includes a brass topograph that describes and identifies the views you can see. Further down the bank, the trainesd eye may be able to identify the remants of a Roman vineyard and substantial herd garden.

Owned by the National Trust, the hill is the original site of the Cotswold Olimpics dating back almost 400 years. Wheelchair access.

LANDMARKS