Absolute Touring

Market Hall built in 1627 – its arches look out on a little-changed scene

• Chipping was an old English word for market / selling place (see also Chipping Norton)
• In the 14th and 15th centuries Chipping Campden was a wool town – merchants bought fleeces at the Woolstaplers Hall
• The finest example of what a prosperous wool town might have looked like in the Middle Ages: houses have undulating weather-beaten roofs and many retain their original mullioned windows (mullions are the vertical ‘dividers’)
• The mainly 15th-century church of St James is one of the finest ‘wool’ churches in the Cotswolds
• There are at least seven sun-dials on buildings in the High Street – why was such a small place so fixated with telling the time?!
• A small garden commemorates Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson, who was born here in 1876 and who introduced plants to Britain from China such as Clematis Montana, and the paper bark maple Acer Griseum. Sixty species and varieties of Chinese plants now bear his name.
• In 1902 CR Ashbee and some 100 followers of the Guild of Handicraft settled here. The Guild came to have a worldwide influence as profound as that of the William Morris company, providing a model of communal living, profit sharing and joyous labour.

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Around an hour to the north-west of Oxford