Category: Articles

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Wessex Attractions: Bourton-on-the-Water

Bourton-on-the-Water is known as “the Venice of the Cotswolds” due to the five bridges, made from the local Cotswold stone, spanning the River Windrush which flows through the village, most of which is a designated conservation area. It is home to a number of attractions including Birdland (which will get its own article in due course), the Cotswold Motor Museum, and a model village, making it a popular destination for tourists and school trips.

The model village is built from Cotswold stone to a 1/9th scale. It has recently undergone a major refurbishment, as some of the buildings were starting to fall into disrepair. A highlight is the model village within the model village, leading to a potentially infinite regression.

The Cotswold Motor Museum features a large collection of classic cars and motorbikes, each with a display giving lots of information about the vehicle concerned. Star of the show is the title character from the BBC children’s programme Brum.

As a tourism-oriented Cotswold town (is there any other kind?), Bourton contains plenty of artisanal small businesses, including the Cotswold Perfumery and the Hawkstone Brewery. Meanwhile, for those whose tastes veer towards the macabre, the Bloody Bourton walking tour offers a look at the more gruesome episodes in the village’s history.

Last but not least, the River Windrush itself is an unsung attraction. Rising near Winchcombe, it flows for 40 miles (65 km) before reaching the Thames at Newbridge in Oxfordshire. Bourton has plenty of benches and picnic tables where visitors can sit and enjoy the river.

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The Character of Wessex: Yeovil Scarplands

Sandwiched in between the Mendip hills, and the heaths and vales of Dorset commonly known as “Hardy country”, the Yeovil Scarplands are characterised by steep limestone and sandstone ridges separating a series of clay vales, with the rivers Yeo, Brue and Parrett draining into the Somerset Levels. It is most notable for producing Ham Hill stone, which is used to construct a number of buildings and other structure in the region, including the Hamdon Hill war memorial illustrated above (photo: Jim Champion).

Less than 5% of this National Character Area (NCA) is settled, though Yeovil itself is a fast-growing urban centre, which threatens the character of the surrounding countryside, particularly on the east side of the town. Smaller towns and villages are often connected by sunken lanes known as holloways.

The area is a cider-producing region with many orchards, though their traditional character is somewhat threatened by the introduction of newer varieties of apple tree.

The area also contains East Coker, memorialised by TS Eliot, who is buried there. The East Coker Society is active in preserving the village’s heritage, in a way that should be an inspiration to other Wessex communities.

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Wessex on Screen: Shadowlands

Shadowlands is a 1985 BBC TV movie written by William Nicholson that was later adapted as a 1989 stage play, and then a 1993 cinema film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. The stage play debuted at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, before transferring to the West End and Broadway.

All three versions tell the story of Oxford don CS Lewis, and his surprising relationship with American divorcee Joy Gresham after a lifetime of bachelorhood. It was based largely on Lewis’s book A Grief Observed, which details his reaction to Gresham’s subsequent death from cancer, and his struggle to reconcile his Christian faith with her suffering.

The stage version remains a perennial favourite of amateur dramatic groups to this day, perhaps due to the universality of its theme of bereavement. The film version has a 97% rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.

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The Character of Wessex: The Thames Valley

The Thames Valley National Character Area (NCA), should not be confused with the birthplace of Wessex, centred on Dorchester-on-Thames. That falls within the Oxford & Upper Thames NCA, subject of a future post. Rather, it begins on the outskirts of London and extends into Wessex as far as Reading.

Geologically, the area is defined by heavy London clay, sometimes overlaid with sand or gravel. The whole area was once heavily forested, but most of its primeval woodland has now been sacrificed to development. Traces of it survive in the Windsor Great Forest, home to Herne the Hunter in Wessex folklore, a personification of the ancient wild. Even green belt land is more likely to be used for golf courses and pony clubs than nature reserves. Based on CPRE data, less than 1% of the area’s land is considered undisturbed, and none of it can be classed as tranquil.

Water is a slightly different matter. As its name suggests, the River Thames dominates the NCA, and provides major opportunities for tranquility and recreation. The motto of the area might be “With the wind in your face, there’s no finer place than messing about on the river. Because the land sucks.”

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Esential Wessex: Æthelred Unræd

Æthelred Unræd (966-1016) was a king of all the English, descended from the royal house of Wessex. He ascended to the throne as a boy, when his older brother, Edward the Martyr, was murdered at Corfe Castle. As he was so young, he relied on his counsellors, particularly Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, after whom the famous benedictional which provides the finest example of the Winchester school of manuscript illumination is named.

Since the facts of Æthelred’s life are so well-documented elsewhere, this article will concentrate on his Wessex connections. In particular, one of his most notorious acts was the genocide of the Danish population of Oxford on St Brice’s Day (13 November) 1002. An excavation at St John’s College in 2008 identified the remains of over three dozen people, mostly young men.

More positively, a law code promulgated at Wantage in 997, which formed a body of twelve thegns charged with upholding the law, has been portrayed as the origin of the grand jury. Historians have been challenging this view since the 19th century, however. In 1872, Heinrich Brunner argued that the jury system was Frankish in origin, and only appeared in England during the reign of Henry II.