Cotswolds
The Cotswolds is a region of South West, South Central England and West Midlands. Along a range of wolds or rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper River Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jurassic limestone that creates a type of grassland habitat that is quarried for the golden-coloured Cotswold stone. It lies across the boundaries of several English counties: mainly Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, and parts of Wiltshire, Somerset, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire. The highest point is Cleeve Hill at, just east of Cheltenham. The predominantly rural landscape contains stone-built villages, towns, stately homes and gardens featuring the local stone.
A large area within the Cotswolds has been designated as a National Landscape since 1966. The designation covers, with boundaries roughly across and long, stretching south-west from just south of Stratford-upon-Avon to just south of Bath, making it the largest National Landscape area and England's third-largest protected landscape.
The Cotswold local government district is within Gloucestershire. Its main town is Cirencester. In 2021, the population of the district was 91,000. The much larger area referred to as the Cotswolds encompasses nearly. The population of the National Landscape area was 139,000 in 2016.
History
The largest excavation of Jurassic period echinoderm fossils, including of rare and previously unknown species, occurred at a quarry in the Cotswolds in 2021. There is evidence of Neolithic settlement from burial chambers on Cotswold Edge, and there are remains of Bronze and Iron Age forts. Later the Romans built villas, such as at Chedworth, and settlements such as Gloucester, and paved the Celtic path later known as Fosse Way.During the Middle Ages, thanks to the breed of sheep known as the Cotswold Lion, the Cotswolds became prosperous from the wool trade with the continent, with much of the money made from wool directed towards the building of churches. The most successful era for the wool trade was 1250–1350; much of the wool at that time was sold to Italian merchants. The area still preserves numerous large, handsome Cotswold Stone "wool churches". The affluent area in the 21st century has attracted wealthy Londoners and others who own second homes there or have chosen to retire to the Cotswolds.
Etymology
The name Cotswold is popularly believed to mean the "sheep enclosure in rolling hillsides", incorporating the term wold, meaning "forested hills", from the Anglian dialect term of Old English — cognate with the Weald, "forest", from the West Saxon dialect term of Old English. But for many years the English Place-Name Society has accepted that the term Cotswold is derived from Codesuualt of the 12th century or other variations on this form, the etymology of which is "Cod's-wold", meaning "Cod's high open land". Cod was interpreted as an Old English personal name, which may be recognised in further names: Cutsdean, Codeswellan, and Codesbyrig, some of which date to the 8th century. It has subsequently been noticed that Cod could derive philologically from a Brittonic female cognate Cuda, a hypothetical mother goddess in Celtic mythology postulated to have been worshipped in the Cotswold region.Geography
The Cotswolds' spine runs southwest to northeast through six counties, particularly Gloucestershire, west Oxfordshire, and southwestern Warwickshire. The Cotswolds' northern and western edges are marked by steep escarpments down to the Severn valley and the Warwickshire Avon. This feature, known as the Cotswold escarpment or the Cotswold Edge, is a result of the uplifting of the limestone layer, exposing its broken edge. This is a cuesta, in geological terms. The dip slope is to the southeast.On the eastern boundary lies the city of Oxford and on the west is Stroud. To the southeast, the upper reaches of the Thames Valley and towns such as Lechlade, Tetbury, and Fairford are often considered to mark the limit of the region. To the south the Cotswolds, with the characteristic uplift of the Cotswold Edge, reach beyond Bath, and towns such as Chipping Sodbury and Marshfield share elements of Cotswold character.
The area is characterised by attractive small towns and villages built of the underlying Cotswold stone. This limestone is rich in fossils, particularly of fossilised sea urchins. Cotswold towns include Bourton-on-the-Water, Charlbury, Chipping Campden, Chipping Norton, Cricklade, Dursley, Malmesbury, Minchinhampton, Moreton-in-Marsh, Nailsworth, Northleach, Painswick, Stow-on-the-Wold, Stroud, Tetbury, Witney, Winchcombe and Wotton-under-Edge. Popular villages include Broadway, and Chalford. In addition, much of Box lies in the Cotswolds. Bath, Cheltenham, Cirencester, Gloucester, Stroud, and Swindon are larger urban centres that border on, or are virtually surrounded by, the Cotswold AONB.
Chipping Campden is notable as the home of the Arts and Crafts movement, founded by William Morris at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Morris lived occasionally in Broadway Tower, a folly, now part of a country park. Chipping Campden is also known for the annual Cotswold Olimpick Games, a celebration of sports and games dating to the early 17th century. Of the Cotswolds' nearly, roughly 80 per cent is farmland. There are over of footpaths and bridleways, and of historic stone walls.
The Cotswolds limestones form part of a range of sedimentary rocks deposited in the Middle Jurassic period, the Great Oolite Group and the Inferior Oolite Group. They run between Dorset on the English Channel coast and Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast of the North Sea. Although more famous for their limestone lithologies, they also contain sandstones and mudstones. Within the Cotswolds area, the Great Oolite Group contains limestones formations such as: Cornbrash, White Limestone and Athelstan Oolite. In this area, the Inferior Oolite Group contains limestones such as Birdlip Limestone, Aston Limestone and Salperton Limestone formations. In the East Midlands, the Inferior Oolite Group contains Lincolnshire Limestone. In the southwest of England, the Ham Hill Limestone Member of the Bridport Sand Formation is a honey-coloured limestone reminiscent of the northern Cotswolds limestones. Such areas are sometimes referred to as the Notswolds due to their similarity with the Cotswolds.
Economy
A 2017 report on employment within the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty stated that the main sources of income were real estate, renting and business activities, manufacturing, and wholesale & retail trade repairs. Some 44% of residents were employed in these sectors. Agriculture is also important; 86% of the land in the AONB is used for this purpose. The primary crops include barley, beans, rapeseed and wheat, while the raising of sheep is also important; cows and pigs are also reared. The livestock sector has been declining since 2002.According to 2011 census data for the Cotswolds, the wholesale and retail trade was the largest employer, followed by education and health and social work. The report also indicates that a relatively higher proportion of residents worked in agriculture, forestry and fishing, accommodation and food services, as well as in professional, scientific, and technical activities. Unemployment in the Cotswold District was among the lowest in the country. An August 2017 report showed only 315 unemployed persons, a decrease of five from a year earlier.
Tourism
Tourism is a significant part of the economy. The Cotswold District area gained over £373 million from visitor spending on accommodation, £157 million on local attractions and entertainments, and about £100m on travel in 2016. In the larger Cotswolds Tourism area, including Stroud, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, tourism generated about £1 billion in 2016, providing 200,000 jobs. Some 38 million day visits were made to the Cotswold Tourism area that year.Many travel guides direct tourists to Chipping Campden, Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water, Broadway, Bibury, and Stanton. Some of these locations can be very crowded at times. Roughly 300,000 people visit Bourton per year, for example, with about half staying for a day or less. The area also has numerous public walking trails and footpaths that attract visitors, including the Cotswold Way from Bath to Chipping Campden.
Housing development
In August 2018, the final decision was made for a Local Plan that would lead to the building of nearly 7,000 additional homes by 2031, in addition to over 3,000 already built. Areas for development include Cirencester, Bourton-on-the-Water, Down Ampney, Fairford, Kemble, Lechlade, Northleach, South Cerney, Stow-on-the-Wold, Tetbury and Moreton-in-Marsh. Some of the money received from developers will be earmarked for new infrastructure to support the increasing population.Cotswold stone
Cotswold stone is a yellow oolitic Jurassic limestone. This limestone is rich in fossils, particularly of fossilised sea urchins. When weathered, the colour of buildings made or faced with this stone is often described as honey or golden. The stone varies in colour from north to south, being honey-coloured in the north and northeast, as in villages such as Stanton and Broadway; golden-coloured in the central and southern areas, as in Dursley and Cirencester; and pearly white in Bath.The rock outcrops at places on the Cotswold Edge; small quarries are common. The exposures are rarely sufficiently compact to be good for rock-climbing, but an exception is Castle Rock, on Cleeve Hill, near Cheltenham. In his 1934 book English Journey, J. B. Priestley wrote of Cotswold buildings made of the local stone. He said: "The truth is that it has no colour that can be described. Even when the sun is obscured and the light is cold, these walls are still faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the trick of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering about them."