This month we will take a tour of English Villages and Towns.
There are literally thousands all over the UK and I’ve picked just 4 for this month. Aside from this week, the ones we will explore are not the high profile towns you might visit in tour packages. As you know I try to bring you information on the not so famous as well as the famous places we have visited.
Instead they are each famous in their own right but are also terrific examples of what it’s like to live somewhere that is famous for something, but still retain its village or small town charm.
This week we are celebrating Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th) and that is our supplementary feature in this issue.
If you are looking for a gift for Christmas that is a bit different this year, take a look at an offer I’ve included at the end of this week’s issue.
As always, I hope you enjoy Traveling Through History with me,
Michelle
Savvy Travel Historian
The village of Castle Combe, with just under 350 residents, has been voted England’s prettiest village on a number of occasions.
It is ‘chocolate box’ pretty, with buildings made from Cotswald stone and no new development since the 1600s.
Located 30 minutes north-east of Bath and 15 minutes north of Chippenham, Castle Combe is in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in Wiltshire.
Described as ‘quintessentially English’, Castle Combes' history dates back to pre Roman times.
Around three miles from the village, a Roman villa once stood but in 1985 during excavations near this site, Neolithic flint tools and Iron Age brooches were also found, indicating a much longer history of settlement in the area. The village lies close to Fosse Way, an important road used by the Romans linking Exeter in the south-west with Lincoln in the northeast.
Fragments of a bath house and corn drying ovens were also found, the latter dating from the 4thC.
The Domesday book of 1086 lists 33 households here, with the local Lord being Humphrey de I’lise.
A 12thC castle was built 500m to the north and it is from this that the village takes its name. Constructed during the reign of Henry I, little remains today, other than the mound on which it once stood. The remaining tower ruin was dismantled in the 1950s.
In the 14thC the village was granted a charter to hold a weekly market and a ‘Market Cross’ was erected at the intersection of where the 3 village streets meet.
Also shown in the image above, are stone steps that were used by people to mount and dismount their horses. In addition to grazing sheep and growing grain, Castle Combe had a thriving wool cloth industry by 1340 and a fulling mill operated until the 17thC. Woollen cloth from the mill was used to supply local troops and those of King Henry V’s during the war with France.
A manor house was added in the 14thC and the Scrope family lived there from the reign of Richard II and for almost 500 years (they sold it in 1866). With extensions over time, the Manor House is now a hotel and golf club, set within 365 acres of garden.
A row of old weavers’ cottages are located by the bridge and Bybrook River and is perhaps the most recognisably photographed site at the foot of the village.
The facades of the main village roads have been maintained and nothing new added since the 16thC. This adds to the village charm and feel.
Riverside House is a two story Elizabethan/Jacobean style dwelling that has an original dovecote in the yard. A dovecote was where pigeons and doves were kept by wealthy families and was a status symbol to have had one. The outbuilding in the photo below (on the left) was Riversides Cottages’ dovecote.
The upper section of the village is where the visitor car park is located. Local authorities encourage people to park up there, then walk down to the village.
April Cottage is a Grade II listed building with a thatched roof and is dated early 18thC.
Also located in the upper section of the village is ‘School Lane’ which includes row cottages made of rubble stone and constructed around the 18thC.
Castle Combe has been featured in many films and tv series. Doctor Dolittle and Stardust were filmed there as well as Steven Spielberg’s ‘War Horse’.
RAF Castle Combe was built to the east of the village, on land owned by the estate, in May 1941 during WWII. It was used for landing practice for a nearby airbase and was sold in 1948 and turned into a racing track from July 1950. It is one of the earliest in the UK along with Silverstone.
The site on which St Andrew’s, Castle Combe stands, shows evidence of an early celtic tribe’s pagan temple, long before the arrival of the Romans in Britain in 43 AD.
Part of the current church dates back to the 13thC, with the nave added in the 14thC and the tower being completed in the 16thC.
The Church Tower was started in 1434 and has many typical features of a late medieval church with pinnacles, diagonal buttresses and battlements.
The Tower has a beautiful vaulted ceiling with a 4 panel stained glass window. The vaulting is similar to that in Bath Abbey.
Three notable inclusions inside the church are worth seeing.
Restoration work in the Knight’s chapel has enabled the placing of a medieval rood screen which has been restored and returned to its original location. Rood screens were removed from all churches in England during the Reformation by order of King Henry VIII. The thought behind this was to ‘open’ up the church to the people, rather than having the priest behind the screen, ‘hiding’ the word of God and the sacraments from the congregation.
The same area also contains a magnificent stone carved monument of a Norman Knight, Sir Walter de Dunstanville (d. 1270), that shows the effigy cross legged, which at the time indicated he served in the Crusades.
St Andrew’s houses one of the few remaining faceless clocks in the country. While there is no written evidence to date it, three others which are similar, all date from the late 15thC.
It has no face to show the actual time, because villagers and farmers had no need to know the exact time, but just needed to know when the hour strikes.
The clock strikes the tower bell on the hour to tell the ‘time’.
St Andrew’s can be accessed via the lane leading from the Market Place in the center of the village.
Castle Combe is just over two and a half hours west of London but if you are wanting to experience a traditional, picturesque English cotswolds village, there are few better than this. You can visit everyday during daylight hours.
On the 5th of November 1605, Guy Fawkes and his band of men were discovered ready to ignite 36 barrels of gunpowder in order to blow up the House of Lords in the Houses of Parliament in London and kill King James I.
Guy Fawkes, Robert Catsby, Thomas Percy and 10 other men, all staunch Catholics, were unhappy with King James when he said in a speech to Parliament in 1604, that he ‘detested’ Catholics and ordered that all Catholic and Jesuit priests leave England.
This angered many Catholics who had hoped that because the Queen (James’ wife, Anne of Denmark) had turned to Catholicism, that he would be more sympathetic to the religion.
The plot was uncovered when an anonymous letter was sent to Baron Monteagle and he passed it on to the authorities.
Interestingly, as early as October 26th, the King’s First Minister Robert Ceil was told of the plot, but allowed it to continue to see what would happen.
On Nov 4th, the cellars under Parliament were searched and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a large pile of firewood but claimed they belonged to his master Thomas Percy.
King James ordered another search in the early hours of Nov 5 and that was when Guy and the others were discovered. Fawkes was wearing a cloak and hat, boots and spurs and was carrying fuses and matches. This is now the traditional ‘garb’ that recreation plotters wear.
The Government ensured that the plot would be immortalised in English history by passing an Act a few months later to mark the day as a date of thanksgiving for the safety of the King.
Only repealed in 1859, for two centuries after the Thanksgiving Act was passed (image above), church services were held to commemorate Guy Fawkes’ failure and the life of the King and clearly enunciated in the Book of Common Prayer (below).
Despite this repeal, villages and towns all over the country continue to commemorate the day with fireworks, bonfires and people dressed as Guy Fawkes and his men. Giant effigies of Guy Fawkes are created and burnt to mark the occasion.
Our village, Wallingford, has a huge 5th of Nov celebration, which attracts over 5,000 visitors on the Saturday night, closest to Nov 5.
Masked men in cloaks carrying lanterns, parade through the town, then into the Kinecroft (large greasy park), for the festivities. ‘Guy Fawkes’ leads them (see earlier photo).
A huge bonfire followed by a fireworks display concludes the night.
I can remember as a child having ‘cracker night’ in South Australia in the late 70s but never knew anything about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.
Historical records show at least one parade and burning of a Guy Fawkes effigy in Sydney in 1805 but by the early 1980’s all states except the ACT had banned firecrackers for safety reasons.
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Michelle is a speaker, author, content marketer, historian and mother of 3 boys.
After 25 years in business and as the ‘Content Marketing Queen’ for the past 12 years, she has helped countless small businesses understand and develop their content strategies and focus on a customer first approach.
Savvy Travel Historian is her passion project, and her weekly newsletter is available on Substack, Paragraph and Mirror. The latter two allows you to collect each Issue as an NFT.
Michelle is co-host of the Business on the Bloc podcast, a weekly show which talks about the digital media revolution and how it applies to B2B marketing, sales and operations. The show is recorded live every Wednesday at 4pm EST/ 9pm UTC on LinkedIn, YouTube & Bolt+.
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