To the Manor Born
22.11.2024 3 °C
This is Charingworth Manor on the outskirts of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds…
We’ve written so much about England in past blogs that we decided to take a break this year. Then we came to the Cotswolds to stay in a country mansion that was built before 1316 AD and decided that we couldn’t keep it to ourselves. Charingworth Manor was built on land given to Randolf de Todeni by William the Conqueror following the Norman invasion of 1066. How do we know this? It’s all written down in the Domesday Book – the great 1086 chronicle of all lands and possessions ordered by King William so that no one could avoid paying him tax. The tax in 1086 was six English pounds, which won’t even get you a pot of tea or a swim in the Manor’s heated pool today…
Charingworth Manor has only been a luxury boutique hotel since 1987 but, in nearby Stow-on-the-Wold, the Porch House Hotel has been an Inn since 947 AD when it was built by the Knights Templar to house pilgrims…
Centuries meld into millennia in this part of the world and old is simply a relative term. For example: the Market Hall in Chipping Campden could almost be described as a recent addition having been erected just four hundred years ago in 1627…
Many of the houses and shops in Chipping Campden and nearby towns are more than five hundred years old. Harper’s Cottage in Stow was built in 1394…
This is a truly ancient land where every Medieval high street is lined with edifices of honey-coloured Cotswold stone buildings and ancient scenes greet us at every turn. This is the riverside at Bourton-on-the-Water…
But stone constructions were the norm here thousands of years ago…
This is the five-thousand-year-old stone circle known as the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton. While its original purpose has been long forgotten, it is surrounded by a wealth of myths and supernatural folklore involving witches, fairies, invading Danes, and the famous prophetess Mother Shipton. Whatever the Rollright Stones’ original purpose, it is claimed that the nearby group of giant stones known as ‘The Whispering Knights’ was a burial chamber built five-thousand-eight-hundred-years ago as a tomb for three knights who were accused of treachery…
We may never know the truth, but in researching this blog we came across a snippet of interesting, (albeit frightening), history. In 1124 King Henry I summoned all 150 of the kingdom’s official moneymakers to account for the fact that some were making and distributing substandard coins. Ninety-four were convicted and were each punished by having their right arm and one testicle amputated. Apparently, the quality of coins dramatically improved thereafter.
On a more cheerful note: while visiting the Cotswolds we just had to drop in on the farm shop made famous in the Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm. Here we are at Diddly Squat Farm…
And if you haven’t watched the series, maybe you should. We found it most enlightening, (and very funny).
Posted by Hawkson 17:10 Archived in England Comments (5)