When we moved to Oxford 6 years ago, I was so excited that we would be only an hour from London. I envisioned weekly trips to the city to enjoy all the London has to offer. Once here, I discovered that Oxford sits on the edge of the Cotswolds, an area of extraordinary natural beauty and stunning villages built from honey-colored stones that look frozen in time - like they have been completely bypassed by the twenty first century. While I love spending time in London and Oxford, it's the Cotswolds and the English countryside that truly entice me and just make my heart sing.
Charming and quaint villages are one of the hallmarks of the Cotswolds. While each village has its own flavor, most of them share a common aesthetic thanks to the gorgeous Cotswold stone they are built from. It is this same stone that makes Oxford so lovely.
Once voted the "Most Beautiful Village in the Cotswolds” Lower Slaughter is a perfect example of a Cotswold town. The history of this and most Cotswold villages is evident in striking wool churches and manor houses built by wealthy textile merchants. And the textile wealth was built, in large part, on the slave trade as ships sailed from English ports to Africa, then to the Americas and back to England, filled with cotton to be turned into textiles in the mills throughout England.
From Wikipedia: "During the Middle Ages, thanks to the breed of sheep known as the Cotswold Lion, the Cotswolds became prosperous from the wool trade with the continent, with much of the money made from wool directed towards the building of churches. The area still preserves numerous large, handsome Cotswold Stone "wool churches". This is St Mary's Church in Lower Slaughter, a13th century Anglican parish church located on the edge of the village. The present church of St Mary's was rebuilt in 1867 when the earlier church fell into dis-repair.
The earliest record of the village's Old Mill is found in the Doomsday Book of 1086. In the 14th Century it had begun to be known as Slaughter Mill and by the 18th Century had become independent of the manorial estate. By the way, the name Slaughter has nothing to do with livestock or butchery - the name stems from the Old English name for a wet land 'slough' or 'slothre', what we would call mud.
We came to Lower Slaughter on the last Bank Holiday (3-day weekend) Monday in August. The village was all dressed up for it's village fair or fete, as they say here. I love English village fairs and this one was just perfect. My favorite part was the local dog show. Each dog was a winner. While only one dog won a ribbon for "best in show", all of them got a bone. Lots of happy dogs - that's my kind of dog show.
This was one of the games at the fair. You pick a boat and let is sail down the little Eye stream that runs through the town. These are the straggler boats at the end of the competition.
The starting line for the boat race.
There are countless wonderful hiking trails throughout the Cotswolds and one of my favorites is the gentle, mile-long stroll between the twin villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter. It's a perfect combination of Cotswold villages, rolling hills, lovely county manor houses and cottages, farms and countryside, and, of course, sheep.
The name Cotswold is popularly attributed the meaning "sheep enclosure in rolling hillsides", incorporating the term wold which means hills. I know it to mean one of my favorite places in England. I'll never grow tired of Cotswold wandering. I hope to wander back to the Slaughters again soon and I especially hope to come to the Fete again next summer. While I saw the dog show this year, I missed the first part, the puppy show. I have to come back for that.
Let me know if you have a favorite Cotswold village or walk. I'd love to know about it.
