Upper and Lower Slaughter, then on to Wych Rissington

The three villages to visit today were in close proximity and just required judicial parking, and some walking - no problem, we thought! We aimed for Lower Slaughter, which was not a huge distance from Stow on the Wold, as our starting point.

The village is built on both banks of the River Eye, a slow-moving stream crossed by two footbridges, which also flows through Upper Slaughter. There is a ford where the river widens in the village and several small stone footbridges join the two sides of the community. While the mill is built of red brick most of the 16th and 17th century homes in the village use Cotswold limestone and are adorned with mullioned windows and often with other embellishments such as projecting gables.

The water fountain in the heart of the village

The river Eye

At the west end of the village there is a 19th-century water mill with an undershot waterwheel and a chimney for additional steam power.

From here we headed across a field to Upper Slaughter, passing this gate with a plaque on it which conjured up some memories.

Memories of past tragedy.

Across the river into Upper Slaughter - love the bridge!

Very narrow, as you can see. 

We made a bee line for St peter`s Church where there has been a church since at least the 12th century, and possible as early as the 11th century. The first rector is recorded in 1251 and appears to have been an Italian.

 

St Peter does seem to have had some interesting rectors over the centuries; In the 14th century, three rectors in a row had permission to be absent from the benefice (i.e. they were absentee rectors).

Later that century the rector was a notable 'Chop church', that is, he was known to exchange benefices with other rectors. 'Chopping' was the practice of buying and selling benefices to the highest bidder, or in some cases, trading benefices between rectors for personal gain. No wonder the church was so rich in that era!

The tower of St Peter is built into the south-west corner of the nave, while the north aisle runs the entire length of the nave. Most churches have the tower on the west end. Saxon stonework is incorporated into the lower part of the tower's west wall.

The lovely altar in St Peter`s Church

Under the tower arch is a deeply cut 15th-century font. It is so large that it may have originally been a 12th-century tub font, cut down in the late medieval period to its current shape. The carving is very worn, which is not surprising when you consider that from 1877 it stood in the churchyard for 20 years before it was brought back inside the church.

So, back to Lower slaughter and a short drive to Bourton-on-the-Water, and from there a walk to Wych Rissington.

 

The start of the pathway leads to open fields. About one and half miles I believe.

We arrived at another pretty Cotswold village - Wych Rissington

So peaceful. We saw just one car as we walked the length of the village to the church.

The Victorian drinking fountain on the village green. Also used as a place for memorial flowers to be placed today.

St Laurence’s Church dates from the 12th Century. The tower, though short, rises in four diminishing stages, with a doorway in the first, a lancet in the second, and small lancet bell-openings in both the third and the fourth. It is very noticeable that as you approach the church, it has a very squat appearance.

One claim to fame for this church was that Gustav Holst, the celebrated composer, fresh from school in Cheltenham, was an organist here in 1892/3 and the organ he used is still in use. How about that for fame! Although there were doubtless many interesting things about this church, this fact for me was one of the best.

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Castle Combe

Castle Combe has been called 'The Prettiest Village in England' and with good reason; visitors have been coming to enjoy its charms for at least a century and the small street leading from the Market Cross down to the By Brook is as picturesque today as it ever was.

Castle Combe has featured regularly as a film location, most recently in The Wolf Man, Stardust and Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse. It was also used in the original Dr Doolittle film.

The village houses are all typical Cotswold type, constructed in stone with thick walls and roofs made from split natural stone tiles. The properties are many hundreds of years old and are listed as ancient monuments. Strict rules apply to preserve the beauty and character of Castle Combe for later generations to admire.

By the Middle Ages, the village in the valley had become an important center for the wool industry. The spinsters and weavers lived in the cottages (hence names such as "Weaver’s House") and the river, still known as By Brook, provided the power to run the mills.

I must confess that the first thing that sprang to my mind when the village was mentioned was the race circuit! Not some beautiful village such as this.

View from the river bridge

By Brook - the river running through Castle Combe

The Market Cross

This historic monument is in the center of the village. It is believed to date from the 14th century when the privilege to hold a weekly market was first granted. 

Just below this there is also a structure sometimes referred to as the 'buttercross', which was in fact for tethering and mounting horses. Nowadays for the tourists to sit on!

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Lacock Abbey and Village

When we put Lacock Abbey on our list of places to visit, it was not apparent (I didn't read it all!) that this was hardly a ruin, but a massive house with a spectacular history.

It started, in the 12th Century, with Ela, 3rd Countess of Salisbury. She was born into a very privileged family and when her father, William FitzPatrick (2nd Earl of Salisbury) died, Ela, who was just nine years old, inherited her father’s title, fortune, and lands.

As an heiress, Ela came under the protection of the King. He arranged a marriage for his young ward to his half-brother, William Longespée. Living at what we now know as Old Sarum, William and Ela had eight children, one of whom, Nicholas Longespée, became Bishop of Salisbury.

William died in 1226 while Ela was still only 39 years old. She took over his role of Sheriff of Wiltshire on a temporary basis and was later appointed as Sheriff in her own right. All the couple’s wealth, land and title reverted to her. From this time, she started planning the founding of what was to become Lacock Abbey; by 1229 she had taken the first step of giving land at Lacock to the church.

The founding of the abbey dedicated 'to God and the Blessed Mary and Saint Bernard' was partly as a tribute to her husband, and partly as a sanctuary where she would later retire as a nun.

On 16 April 1232, Ela laid the foundation stone of Lacock Abbey and building work began. Ela joined Lacock Abbey as a nun in 1238. Three hundred years later, the convent closed. In 1539 to be precise, as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 

Our first glimpse of the Abbey through the trees.

Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, the Abbey was purchased by Tudor courtier Sir William Sharington, who converted the building into a family home. The church was knocked down and the stone was used to extend the building to form the house it later became.

The house later passed into the hands of the Talbot family through marriage, and during the 19th century became the residence of William Henry Fox Talbot, who made history by capturing the world’s first photographic negative in the building’s South Gallery, lending the Abbey its name as the birthplace of modern photography.

William Henry Fox Talbot inherited Lacock from his father in 1800 when he was just five months old. The estate was in debt and was let out until Fox Talbot moved in with his mother and stepmother in 1827. A pioneering scientist and keen mathematician, Fox Talbot is one of Lacock's most famous residents. He lived in the abbey until his death in 1877 and is buried in the village churchyard.

For us today it seems normal to take photos of the world around us. We use a camera or phone daily, snapping pictures of friends and family, beautiful landscapes, even the food we eat. Who would guess that all this started here at Lacock Abbey in 1835!

Frustrated by his inability to paint and draw, he wanted to find a way to 'fix images'.

After some experiments Talbot took an image of a window at his home Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire in 1835. This image, not much bigger than a stamp, is now celebrated as the world’s earliest surviving photographic negative.

As a result of its past incarnations as a nunnery and private home, Lacock Abbey is a fascinating mishmash of architectural styles.

Today it is a Grade I-listed building and belongs to the National Trust, after being gifted to the charity by the Talbot family in 1944. It's well worth a visit, as is the village, which is also mainly National Trust.

The cauldron in the Warming Room. One of the many rooms in the old abbey part to be used in Harry Potter films. 

The calefactory (also warming house) was an important room or building in a medieval monastery in Western Europe. It was here that a communal fire was kept so that the monks could warm themselves after long hours of study in the (unheated) cloister or other work. 

 The cloisters

Books were very precious, and people of religious orders were virtually the only people who could read and write, so keeping books safe in a locked place made sense.

Two of the many old doors you can find around Lacock Abbey.

You can see by this image how the house it was to become was built over the existing cloisters.

Having left the Abbey, we made our way to the village itself where you are greeted by a typical Cotswold village, with houses such as below.

Some of the beautiful old houses include the stall outside this house with its honesty box selling `Harry Potter Wands` I didn't buy one!

From the architecture it is thought that the Angel Inn was built in the late 15th century, as an inn. This was a time when the wool trade was flourishing, and the property is believed to have been converted into a wool merchant's house in the 16th and 17th centuries

Prior to the advent of mechanized spits, the process of roasting meat was a laborious process. To be evenly cooked, meat had to be regularly rotated on a metal spit, a process which required hours of constant attention. Originally, low-ranking kitchen servants manually turned such spits. Eventually, however, they were powered by a breed of short-legged dogs known as turnspits. The turnspit was bred specifically to run inside wheels which were mounted on a wall near an open range, like the example at the George Inn in Lacock, which I believe is the only example in the country to still be in place, although there are some in museums. We had lunch at the George Inn, so we had a good look at it, but my photo was rubbish!

Note: These two images above are not mine 

The wheel was attached to a chain, which ran down to the spit. As the dog ran, the spit turned, cooking the meat evenly. Wheels like this became indispensable items of kitchen machinery, not only in household's wealthy enough to have the means to roast a large joint of meat on a regular basis, but also in inns and taverns. But by the middle of the 19th century, with the introduction of inexpensive spit-turning machines called clock jacks, these wheels became redundant. So too did the turnspit dog; the breed is now extinct.

At the eastern end of this Lacock street, stands the medieval parish church of Lacock, dedicated to St Cyriac. It is possible that a late Saxon church stood on this spot, but the present building is largely a product of the 15th century, with some earlier stonework.

The dedication of Lacock's church is unusual in England. Cyriac was supposedly a three-year-old child executed by the Roman Governor of Cilicia in 313 AD for refusing to recant his Christian beliefs. 

Churches dedicated to Cyriac are common in Normandy, emphasizing Lacock's strong links to the region in the aftermath of the Norman invasion.

The sheep gate at the church so that the sheep cannot get into the churchyard, but people can.

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Stow on the Wold - our holiday destination

Having decided to explore some of the beautiful Cotswold area, we initially found some difficulty in booking a cottage for the week, possible since people countrywide had started to spread their wings after the Covid pandemic. However, we eventually found a property in Stow on the Wold which seemed a good place to use as a base. It also appeared central to many of the places we wanted to see.

The cottage on the right is ours - St Anthony`s Cottage

The cottages opposite 

Our lounge/ diner - yes, small! but well equipped and cosy.

The view up the street which is deserted due to it being our Queen`s funeral. Other days it was like a racetrack all day!

Stow-on-the-Wold is the highest of the Cotswold towns standing exposed on eight hundred feet high Stow Hill at a junction of five major roads, including the Roman Fosse Way. Hence the traffic. But of course, its position was the reason for its success as it gathered trade from all directions as travelers passed along these roads.

The vast Market Square testifies to the town's former importance. At the height of the Cotswold wool industry the town was famous for its huge annual fairs where as many as 20,000 sheep were sold at one time.

At one end of the Square stands the ancient cross. The Market Cross was erected as a symbolic reminder to the traders of medieval times to deal honestly and fairly. The shaft, base and steps are medieval, but the gabled headstone is an addition restored by public subscription in 1995. The side panels depict the Crucifixion, Edward the Confessor, the Civil War, and the Wool Trade. 
The Civil War side panel is a reminder that this is the area where the last Battle of the Civil War was fought.



King Charles I stayed in the King’s Arms (above) in May 1645, but the town is best known as being the final location of the last battle of the first Civil War. Sir Jacob Astley, leading a Royalist force to relieve Charles I’s garrison at Oxford, was intercepted near Stow and driven into the Square, where many were killed or imprisoned. Sir Jacob was forced to sit on a drum near the cross and surrender to the Parliamentarians.

At the other end of the Square, the town stocks, shaded beneath an old elm tree.

Around the square the visitor is faced with an elegant array of Cotswold town houses and shops.

The narrow alleyways called 'tures' leading from the Square to the perimeter of the town were constructed for the better control of animals. There are several around the Market Square.

St. Edward’s Hall stands in the Square and was built in 1878 from unclaimed money placed in the Town Savings Bank and numerous generous gifts to provide the town with a meeting place. A figure of St. Edward stands in a niche over the main entrance. The Belfry Spire was added in 1894 to house the fire bell, as the Rector of that time would not allow the church bell to be used as such. It originally housed a museum of flints, fossils, and Roman coins found locally, the library of the local Book Society with a reading room, and recreation rooms with billiards and ping-pong tables. The Main Hall upstairs was used for special occasions like the Hunt Ball.

Today the downstairs is occupied by the public library, a visitor information center, and a collection of artefacts and militaria related to the Civil War. The Hall is managed by a Trustee Committee for the maintenance and further improvement of the building and facilities.

A couple of images of what is claimed as the oldest pub in England. Due to so much traffic, I was unable to get a reasonable front image but did get the above ones!

Like the surrounding area, the parish church of St Edward is of medieval origins and there is evidence to suggest that there has been a holy temple on this site since 708 AD, this is due to the monks of Evesham who used to own the land at that time. However, a church has been historically recorded here since around 986 AD, the chapel being built from the riches of Stow’s prosperous wool trade.

There have been quite a few debates as to which Edward the church was built for. Some say it was a local hermit of Stow hill called Edward whilst others say it was the Saxon King Edward, son of Alfred the Great. However, most have settled on it being built in honour of Edward the Confessor.

Although not much remains of the original Norman building, the stone church dates to the 13th century with the tower being built in the 14th. Finally, it was restored in the Gothic Revival style by JL Pearson in 1847 who also designed Truro Cathedral.

The Rood beam was erected in memory of those who laid down their lives in the great War 1914 - 1918.

The great West window 

Externally, the most striking aspect of St Edward's is the pair of ancient yew trees flanking the 17th or 18th Century North Porch. It is for most people their initial visiting point, including ours!

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