Chipping Campden
An idyllic hamlet of honey coloured Jacobean buildings, Chipping Campden is quite simply the quintessential Cotswold Town.
Chipping Campden has been cleverly kept in a timeless state thanks to the efforts of the Campden Trust, a local preservation society established in 1929 by local architects to ensure 20th Century encroachments don’t harm the aesthetic appeal of the town. Thus power cables and telegraph wires are buried underground or fitted to the backs of houses and restoration work is done in keeping with the setting.
Through the centre of town runs the High Street, lined with pretty buildings of golden Cotswold sandstone dating from the 1600s and earlier timber fronted Tudor buildings. Chipping Campden’s central feature is its covered Market Hall built in 1627 when the town was the hub of the wool trade in the north Cotswolds. The Oldest surviving building in the town, Grevel House, dates back to 1380. Distinguished by double bay windows, this was home to one of the chief wool merchants who established Chipping Campden, William Grevel.
Chipping Campden’s Church of St John, built in the 15th Century is often described as ‘the prettiest church building in the Cotswolds’. Inside there are a number of elaborate tombs to the Cotswold wool merchants who financed the building of the church.
A mile north west of Chipping Campden is Dover’s Hill with splendid views down to the town and out across the Vale of Evesham. On the first Friday after the spring Bank Holiday this is the venue for the ‘Cotswold Olimpick Games’. This event was started in 1612, by local man Robert Dover, whom the hill is named after and includes such eccentric ‘sports’ as shin-kicking contests and ‘Welly Wangling’! It is followed by a torchlit procession into Chipping Campden for the Scuttlebrook Wake Fair an altogether more sensible affair of dancing in the town square.
