Woodchester: Introduction and Tour

The history of Selsley and Woodchester is a heady mix of the everyday interwoven with legend and fantasy. It's long history encompasses much of the history of England, starting with the earliest neolithic settlers, through ancient and mythical figures such Arthur and St Paul, the invasion of the Romans to the development of the woollen and cloth industry that generated great wealth but also led to strife and unrest when the industry declined.
(Two large-size photographs of North Woodchester can be seen here).
Here in Woodchester, the Romans built one of their grandest villas in northern Europe.

Here too can be found an architectural miracle -Woodchester Mansion- and a cottage that was once a castle.
One of England's earliest records of a priest was of Wulfhun, the priest in Woodchester, and in the 19th Century the village became a key centre in the revival of Catholicism.
Every momentous historic event touched the area in one way or another. There is a sense that here is the heart of much that has defined the English and our history.

Today, the Cotswolds' tourist industry is still very much focussed on the northern hills above Cheltenham. The southern Cotswolds are often viewed as the poor cousins and less frequently visited. A little too industrial perhaps. Not quite so picture-book twee.
But this is part of England has attracted visitors for centuries, many of whom have been moved to record their enchantment of what they found: the mystery of the ancient beech woods; the dark hidden valleys; the barren, wind swept hill tops, and the crystal clear water of the springs.
There is a forgotten legacy of appreciation.

Woodchester lies on the west side of the Nailsworth Valley, the land rising steeply to Selsley Common and the village of Selsley which wraps itself around the scarp face overlooking both the Severn valley and the Frome valley.

The valleys plunge steeply, cut by glaciers and streams, and ancient woodlands with names like Dark and Dingle Wood cling to the thin limestone. Yet on the top of Selsley Common there is a breathtaking panorama of the sky, a vast arena of tumbling cloud.
In the depths of the valley can be seen the remains of the woollen industry, the mills now converted to other commercial uses or, more recently, to housing. It is difficult to imagine that this area in the Middle Ages, was at the forefront of the development of the English woollen industry and by the eighteenth century was the most important textile manufacturing centre in the country.
Woodchester is easy to find. You leave Stroud along the A46 (a road opened in 1782) heading south towards Bath, past rather plain red bricked Victorian and Edwardian ribbon development, modern warehousing and the ugly intrusion of the superstore.
None of this is pretty.
Nonetheless if you look up from the road you'll see two brooding and massive plateau that sandwich the route. Cloaked by dense woodland, it starts to become clear why A.E.Housman, who was a frequent visitor to Woodchester, found this landscape to be an inspirational source for his early poetry.
Before reaching the turning which leads to Woodchester village, you will pass through Rooksmore which has some fine remnants of the woollen industry including the clothiers houses of Rooksmore House, The Knapp and The Gables. All three date from the 16th century. There is also the abtly named Old Fleece Inn, an 18th century house but which only became an inn in 1870, and also the sluice gates and mill race of a mill.
North Woodchester is a right turn off the A46. On the corner is Woodchester Mill. The earliest deed relating to the mill was signed in 1608, and by the middle of the 18th Century it was part of one of Gloucestershire's biggest mill complexes. Samuel Paul, who was described as the greatest clothier in the County, leased the mill in 1744. In 1788 George III came here but he would probably not recognize much today not least because the mill suffered two fires this last century and has been massively rebuilt. This is a pity as Woodchester Mill, with its bell cupola, was accepted as one of the best examples of industrial architecture of the late seventeen hundreds.
Until recently the mill was the home of Bently Pianos, which took over the site in 1911; a firm that then metamorphosed into the Woodchester Piano Company before going into liquidation in 2003.
Leaving the mill, the narrow road rises steeply into the village proper, first past modern but not too intrusive housing and then17th century cottages and some fine but small Georgian family homes.
Follow the footpath across the field, marked as The Site of the Roman Villa. Underneath the field are the remains of the Roman Villa but more of that later. You come to the village's original Church and Manor House. The latter is now called The Priory and dates from the 16th Century.

Its name is of recent origin. Originally it was simply called The Manor; then in the 18th century it was known as The Farms. Laid-out in the form of an 'H', the south front has two gabled wings. Inside there is still much 16th century panelling in-situ.
Next to the Priory are the remains of the Church of St Mary, a church that dates from the Norman period but was probably Saxon in origin. The church was demolished in the 19th Century and a new church built a mile away in the middle of the village. Little of the original remains - although the church yard retains a particular serenity with its avenue of well tended yews and scattered tabletop tombs. At the time of the Civil War, the priest was violently arrested by Parliamentarians and dragged away naked, riding - facing backwards - on a donkey. But the most astounding part of the churchyard cannot be seen at all for, several feet underground, lies the remains of what is possibly the largest and grandest Roman villa not just in England but in northern Europe.
The only sign is a bowling green sized depression in the grass that indicates the site of the Orpheus Pavement- an exquisite mosaic of the most breathtaking design.
You are standing at a site encompassing over two thousand years of history: underneath your feet lies the remains of a villa that was built in the 2nd Century AD but which was almost certainly built on an earlier site - most likely a significant farm and estate - pre-dating the birth of Christ.
When the Romans left, the site continued to be inhabited and became the centre of the manor and parish. Nothing of the original manor houses is still visible - only the remains of the Norman church.
Retracing our steps back to the village we turn right to continue to ascend Selsley Road, passing Court Cottages, a clutch of well-restored cottages on the left hand side. In the 1960s these became national media celebrities when a group of people stopped the local council demolishing them.
The top of Selsley Road can be particularly pretty in summer as the road is canopied by the overhanging trees of Dark and Rabbit Warren Wood. It isn't unusual to see deer dash across the road from one wood to the next or, at night, catch the glint of a fox's eye as it stands on the stone walling. Another glint might be that of a Saxon warrior as it is said that many bodies were buried in both woods following a battle that took place here. Certainly both possess an unearthly dankness.

In contrast, Selsley Common is a vast open expanse packed full of the rare and beautiful. A silent wind rushes over the grass. The call of a bird can be caught on this wind and carried for miles. From the road you cannot see the view to come; the Common still rises in front of you and you have to march across the turf, over a thick carpet of grass and herb. During the summer you may have to avoid wandering cattle as Commoners can, and still do, exercise grazing rights that have been theirs for a thousand years. Despite rash attempts to enclose this land, it has been vigorously defended over the years. Indeed the first recorded dispute was in the Saxon period, and the threat to enclose the Common in the 19th Century met with vocal public outrage.
Dotted over the Common are the long abandoned remains of old quarries once used to supply stone for building and walling. A quick grub will easily throw up fossils to take home. Lesser hollows are the remains of a medieval soldier's camp.
You reach the scarp face quite suddenly. The grass tumbles hundreds of feet to the flat Severn Valley. It is a splendid view, one of the best in the country - yes country not county. The Severn could be a shimmering ribbon laid in front of the Forest of Dean, waiting to wrap it like a parcel. Beyond the Forest lie the Black Mountains and beyond these the Brecon Beacons. To the north-west the mass of Elgar's Malvern Hills heaves over the land. It is so easy to hear his music and that of Vaughan Williams, Holst and Parry, all of whom have deep connections with the County.
This is a view to linger over, breath the sweet air and absorb the contrasting beauty of valley, vale and hill.
Before moving off the Common, take a short walk to the Bronze Age barrow. Imagine a funeral rite taking place here with the wind howling. Further on, what was once thought to be an iron Age feature - a small dyke - is now thought to be part of a Bronze Age burial complex.

Then walk down to Selsley Church, commissioned by the Marling family and modelled by Bodley in the French gothic style. This is no ordinary shurch for inside are its famed stain-glass, a commission undertaken by William Morris(Views of All Saints, Selsley).
Selsley itself is a small picturesque village but one that is scattered over the side of the hill and hence lacks a focus. Stanley Park is the old Manor House dating from the time of Elizabeth I but most of the building is 19th Century. Walk through through the village and up the hill to Water Lane.
Water Lane is a prehistoric track that winds it way back to North Woodchester and then through to South Woodchester. In parts its banks tower ten feet overhead, cloaked by hawthorn, blackthorn, ash and beech. Spring water rushes along the two sides of the lane. As you stroll, listen for the clatter of hooves and the chatter of voices left from the millenia of traffic that has used this road.
Once back in the village, you can continue to follow Water Lane. The Royal Oak is a typical 17th Century rubble Cotswold house, and inside has immense charm and head-bashing beams. The road then skirts round the Victorian parish church. Walking towards South Woodchester. you'll pass Southfields, a clothier's hous originally dating from the late 16th Century and once belonging to the Paul family. In 1750 Onesiphorous Paul was knighted in the house by Frederick, Prince of Wales. The Oak Room in the house was built to receive the royal guests.
There is a short incline in to South Woodchester past the excellent Ram Inn and into the High Street. Here the small cottages are quite beautiful. Atcombe Terrace is a typical row of 18th century weavers cottages.

Finally at the edge of South Woodchester stands Frogmarch Mill recorded as a fulling mill and dye house in the 17th century. Opposite is the unique 16th Century Teasel Tower so called because it stored the teasels used to raise the nap on cloth.
A little further on we begin to see the influence of William Leigh, a wealthy merchant who moved to the area in 1845. He was a zealous catholic convert and in the course of his time at Woodchester he built a mansion, the Priory Church and the monastery, which became the centre of the Dominican Order in England for well over a hundred years.
Unfortunately we can no longer see anything of the Glass Works built by Huguenot refugees.
So our short ramble through the history of the area is at an end. Go back to The Ram and enjoy a glass of Old Spot brewed at the nearby Uley Brewery or The Royal Oak for a very good meal.
(Views of the Woodchester countryside can be found here. Best downloaded with a fast/ISDN line.)

This description is taken from 'Historical Monuments and Genealogical Collections relative the to County of Gloucester' authored by Ralph Bigland and then extended by his son and a number of others. This description for Woodchester was written in the middle of the nineteenth century.

"The name of the place recalls its pristine condition of forest in the time of the Britons and early races, and the encampments therein of their invaders the Romans whose dwelling here is further evidenced by the remains of a villa discovered under the surface of the old churchyard nearly two centuries ago., mentioned in Cambden's Brittaniae 1692 and King's Monumenta Antiqua, and illustrated by the sumptuous works of Mr S. Lysons and in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society.
In Saxon times (710-743) a grant of the land of three cassata in the woodland country was made by Ethelbald, King of the Mercians, to St Peters, Worcester, confirming the gift of Bishop Wurfath in this and other places adjacent:- Bisley, Rodborough, Avening, Nailsworth, Theescombe.
The Saxons and the Danes left vestiges of their occupation in the wanton destruction of the works of Roman civilisation as far as fire could destroy them.
The woods still remain, and their memorial yet survives in Forest Green, the name of a hamlet here in a clearance of wood; and the trees grew and covered up the moisture which supplied the brooks in the valleys and combs with water. When the manufacture of woollen cloth was introduced in to England from Flanders in the time of Edward III this neighbourhood was resorted to for water and perhaps for water power; and its rural condition was changed. Woods and brooks and running waters gave way to mill ponds and beech plantations, less pleasing but more profitable.
The stream running through Nympsfield Park, was let down step by step through a chain of ponds to supply the small water cloth mills in Woodchester and Inchbrook.
The Subsidy Roll for for Woodchester at the time of Edward III does not contain any local clothiers names but that of Elizabeth mentions Atwood, Clutterbuck and Chapman.
The monumental inscriptions to the members of successive clothier families through two or three centuries in the course of which the trade flourished and to a considerable extent had decayed, will show how the the trade grew by degrees from small water mills to steam power establishments. Some of the cloth making trade still exists but many of the mills have been put to other uses.
The earliest trade buildings may have been half-timbered structures; but of those now standing the oldest are stone built with residences attached or near thereto. The yarn was spun in the cottages about the village. Bristol was a great out port of the west of England trade. It was approached by land from Nympsfield, by the Gloucester and Bristol Road and by water through the Severn.
In Taylor's Map of the County 1777, about ten mills are marked in the limits of Woodchester, chiefly on the Brook from Spring in Nympsfield Park.
In 1788, July 20, King George III in the course of his stay at Cheltenham, visited Woodchester, where Obadian Paul exhibited the processes of the manufacturer of woollen cloth to the Royal party.

Introduction and Description