Stow-on-the-Wold
The highest of the Cotswold wool towns: a broad market square, honey-stone frontages, antiques and ancient inns.
The highest of the Cotswold wool towns: a broad market square, honey-stone frontages, antiques and ancient inns.
Stow sits higher than any of the other Cotswold wool towns, around eight hundred feet up on the exposed top of the wold, which gave rise to the old local rhyme, "Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind blows cold." We always feel that height as we come up the last hill: the air is a touch fresher, the views open out, and then the town gathers itself around one big, generous market square. It is about thirty-five to forty minutes from Well Cottage by car, roughly nineteen miles up through the north Cotswolds, and it makes one of our favourite unhurried mornings out.
Like Moreton and Chipping Campden, Stow grew rich on the medieval wool trade, and you can still read that prosperity in the tall, confident stone buildings around the square. At its centre stands the old market cross, and on the green nearby you will find the town stocks, a reminder of just how long this has been a place where people gathered to trade and to gossip. Today the square and the narrow lanes running off it, the little "tures" that once funnelled sheep to market, are lined with antiques shops, galleries, independent boutiques, delis, pubs and tea rooms. It is a browsing sort of town, and we tend to just wander, coffee in hand, and see what catches the eye.
Stow wears its history lightly but it is everywhere. The town was the site of the Battle of Stow in 1646, the final battle of the first English Civil War, after which defeated Royalist prisoners were held in St Edward's Church. The Porch House, on the square, is widely reputed to be one of the oldest inns in England, the sort of low-beamed, crooked-floored place that makes you duck through doorways. None of this is dressed up for visitors: it is simply the fabric of a working country town that happens to be very old and very handsome.
Just off the square, St Edward's Church hides one of the north Cotswolds' most photographed sights. Its north door is flanked by two great, gnarled yew trees that have grown around the stone frame, and the effect is almost otherworldly, a doorway that looks as though it belongs in a story. Local folklore likes to link it to the Doors of Durin, the entrance to the Mines of Moria, though there is no confirmed connection, so we take that with a smile rather than as fact. Step inside and the church has a longer, harder history too: after the Battle of Stow in 1646 it was pressed into service to hold hundreds of captured Royalist soldiers. We usually pair a look at the door with a wander round the churchyard before heading back to the square.
Twice a year, in spring and again in autumn, the ancient Stow Fair comes to land near the town, a traditional horse fair with deep Romani and Gypsy heritage that dates back centuries. It is a very different Stow on those days, busier and more boisterous, and worth knowing about whether you want to see it or plan around it. For a gentler outing, two of our favourite places sit within a short drive: Sezincote, the extraordinary Mughal-style house and Indian water garden that is said to have inspired Brighton's Royal Pavilion, and Batsford Arboretum, one of the finest private tree collections in the country, spectacular in autumn colour.
The drive from Well Cottage runs north through the Cotswold lanes and takes about thirty-five to forty minutes. Stow sits right in the thick of the prettiest part of the north Cotswolds, so it pairs beautifully with a wider day out. Moreton-in-Marsh and Bourton-on-the-Water are each only about four miles away, as are the pair of villages known as the Slaughters, so it is easy to string two or three together in an afternoon. There is parking on and around the square, though it fills quickly on market and fair days, so we like to arrive in good time and make a proper morning of it. For more ideas nearby, the towns and villages guide maps out the whole area.
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.