Cotswold Discovery
We meet on the third Monday of the month to explore places of interest in the Cotswolds and to dicover their history.
Visit to Stow-on-The-Wold, Monday 20 November 2023
On a dry, bright but chilly Monday morning, 10 of us met and gathered outside St Edwards Hall in the Market Square, and loosely followed a 1 kilometre trail around the town. We started at St Edwards Church, with its beautiful door, flanked by yew trees, then slowly meandered around the town centre. Here we saw the wooden stocks – or what’s left of them – and the lop-sidey window frame above Huffkins, plus a number of other repurposed medieval buildings.
We finished our walk at the Porch House on Digbeth Street, alleged to be the site of the oldest pub in England. I know what you’re thinking – doesn’t every town in Oxfordshire claim to have the oldest pub in the land? All I know is that the timbers and beams of the Porch House have been carbon dated back to the 10th century, and Aethelmar – a Cornish Saxon duke – commissioned its building as a hospice for travelling pilgrims. We finished the day with lunch back at Huffkins (well, some of the group finished with shopping at Scotts of Stow, but that wasn’t on the itinerary!). In December we visited Bourton on the Water.