by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
In the churchyard are the graves of Nancy, Unity, Diana and Pamela Mitford. With the exception of Pamela, each of them in different ways left their mark on 20th century public life. The Mitford family is a minor aristocratic English family with origins in Redesdale in...
by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
Even now, it is not necessarily clear what purpose these villas served. Essentially, they were the centerpieces of farms, but the term referred not only to the main house but also to barns and the surrounding fields. They originally had, therefore, a functional...
by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
The Abbey Hailes Abbey was a monastery founded by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, in fulfilment of a vow he had made following his saviour from shipwreck, on land given him by his brother, King Henry III. It was given over to the monks of the austere Cistercian order, the...
by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
The twentieth-century writer J. B. Priestley wrote of Cotswold stone that – “the truth is that it has no colour that can be described. Even when the sun is obscured and the light is cold, these walls are still faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the...
by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
If you walk through the churchyard, you come to the ruins of Minster Lovell Hall, beautifully located by the River Windrush. Between the ruins and the river are a couple of ponds, where swans browse among the reeds. On the far side is a group of tall, stately trees,...
by Daniel Knowles | Oct 30, 2023 | Guide to The Cotswolds
Located adjacent to the church, as is the way of these houses, sits Horton Court, built out of stone largely in the 16th century. Not very opulent as such houses go, it has a charmingly domestic aspect, not dissimilar to many others in the Cotswolds, but with one...
