Bibury is a large rural parish 10.5 km. north-east of Cirencester. It includes the hamlets of Arlington and Ablington and the chapelry and village of Winson, which became a separate parish from the later 19th century.
It’s not hard to account for the parish’s popularity. It’s most famous for its charming honey-stoned cottages in Arlington Row, while an ivy-covered inn stands watch over a slow-moving peaceful River Coln, the village is also popular for its Trout Farm, a beautiful meadow, an Old Mill and a medieval church as well.
In 1726 Alexander Pope wrote of ‘the pleasing prospect of Bibury’ and William Morris in the late 19th century considered Bibury ‘surely the most beautiful village in England’, but Bibury achieved widespread fame after the publication in 1898 of A Cotswold Village by Joseph Arthur Gibbs of Ablington Manor.
The tourist trade grew and by 1939 there were two tea rooms and a boarding-house in Bibury and a guest-house in Arlington. Rack Isle, the meadow between the Coln and the leat of Arlington mill, became a wildfowl preserve c. 1956 and it was owned with Arlington Row, by the National Trust in 1975.
It has been a favoured destination for the Japanese ever since Emperor Hirohito visited in the 1920s and declared it a ‘sacred place’, but Chinese tourists now outnumber the Japanese, and the village can have up to 10,000 visitors per day.
This early map of Bibury is reproduced courtesy of https://www.archiuk.com/
St Mary’s Church
The interior of St Mary’s is full of interest. Pevsner takes several pages to describe, and account for, its various features.
The charming, and unusual, font dates from the early 13th Century. The hanging is one of two needlework pictures from the 17th century. This one depicts St Theresa.
The church of St Mary is very late Saxon in period, with later additions.
The churchyard has been described as being “of special interest because of the remarkable survival of so many excellently carved table tombs with bale tops, and headstones with cherubs and symbolic figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”.
There are several sundials on the south wall.
The Almshouse
Hugh Westwood (d. 1559) left the rents from his lands to provide weekly payments and wood and coal for four poor men of Bibury who were to live in an almshouse, for the building of which he gave £40 charged on Arlingham manor. The endowments, however, were appropriated by Robert Westwood (d. 1600) against whom the trustees took legal action. In 1603 a Chancery decree ordered the purchase of a site for the alms-house, to be called Jesus Almshouse, to house four elderly bachelors who were each eventually to receive a coat, 18s. 6d. for firewood a year, and a weekly payment of 1s. 4d. (or 1s. 6d. for the alms-man chosen as master). They were to attend church three times a week. The alms-house had been built by 1607 on land belonging to the parish in the northern angle of the village street and the road to the square. It needed repairs in 1829.
It is now a private house.
There has been a mill on the site where the present-day Arlington Mill now stands since 1086, and today’s mill is believed to date back to the 17th Century. The cloth produced at the weavers cottages in Arlington Row was sent to Arlington Mill for fulling (degreasing). Later, it became a corn and wool mill until, in the mid 19th century, it only processed corn. In 1859 a steam engine was installed and the building strengthened by the distinctive external butresses. Milling stopped around 1913.
The mill later housed the museum, with a collection of period clothing, documents and working machinery illustrating milling & the Victorian way of life.
This is only one of several mills that were in the parish.
Arlington Row, a long east-west range of uncertain date, but probably late-14th-century, almost spans the valley floor and was originally of one storey and had an open roof. The building, which was well placed to use the abundant water-supply of the leat of Arlington mill, was converted in the 17th century or early 18th into seven small cottages, each of which had an attic. Then or later cottages were added to both ends of the range. The row was bought by the Royal Society of Arts in 1928 and conveyed to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Trust which repaired it the following year. It was acquired by the National Trust in 1949 and was restored in the early 1970s, some of the cottages being amalgamated. West of the row are some 17th-century cottages. At the top of the hill a 17th-century farm-house was converted after 1839 as cottages and a barn among its outbuildings was converted as a house after the Second World War.
The photographs, two of which are 20 years old, show an uncharacteristically unpeopled view.
Arlington Baptist Chapel
Away from the crowds, Arlington Baptist chapel is an oasis of peace. Not only was it open, but it has a sofa, so one can sit and enjoy the atmosphere of what is obviously a much-loved place of worship. There is also information on the history of Bibury and the chapel.
The chapel, standing north-west of the Green, was rebuilt in 1839 when the meeting’s connexion with Fairford was severed. When the Religious Census was taken, on 30th March 1850, 219 people attended the morning, and 222 the afternoon service. In comparison, St Mary’s church had congregations of 151 and 215 on the same day.
The 1884 Primitive Methodist magazine contains a note of the opening of a new Primitive Methodist chapel in Winson with quite a story behind it. For the previous 40 years, the society had met in a cottage and had been unable to secure a plot to build on. When they finally acquired a small plot, the squire refused to sell them the stone needed to build a chapel – so they put up an iron one.
The chapel cost £170 of which they had raised £85 “a capital sum for six or eight poor farm labourers”. “It is time our village populations were delivered form the oppression of parson ad squire. … Farm labourers need the franchise”
The 1902 and 1921 Ordnance Survey maps show a Primitive Methodist chapel on the road going north out of the village towards Winson Mill Farm. The current Ordnance survey shows no building on the site but the dame field boundary.
My thanks to the My Primitive Methodists for this information
The burial ground behind the chapel. What is unusual here is the clarity of many of the tombstones, with much larger script than is common.
These tombstones are in memory of the Gardiner family.
On the left are recorded the children of William and Anne Gardiner –
Henry (1835-1843), Tobiah (1843-1846), Willie (1851-1853), Annie Kezia (1856-1858) and Alice (1838-1838).
Adjacent is the tombstone of their daughter Mary Taylor (nee Gardiner) (1836-1860) and her daughter Josephine, who died in infancy). Both of them died in Yorkshire.
At the bottom of the stones, almost as an afterthought, are recorded William and Anne.
They had four more sons, who survived to maturity, the most prosperous being Stephen, who owned a jewellers shop in Reading.
The question is, why and by whom, were the memorials erected? William and Anne had moved away to Rodborough by the time of the 1871 Census, was this a poignant recording of the six children they left behind here?
The records of the chapel are held at Gloucestershire Archives, and make for interesting reading. Bearing in mind that working men would not receive the vote until the 1860s, it is remarkable to read how these same men (and women) ran their chapel.
In order to join, one had to provide a testimony. I assumed many would have been verbal, but the Archives have a bundle of these. William Gardiner, whose tombstone I covered last time wrote
‘My dear Christian friends, having expressed a wish to you to know what I have experienced, and what has led me to wish to be united with you. It was towards the close of the year 1847 that my teacher Miss Martin talked very seriously to me on the subject of Religion….I began to see the awfulness of sin and of the state of my own heart, and I was in deep distress on account of my sins…’
Later in the records appears ‘On the Lords Day June 16th 1847 Mr Gardiner, having been well reported of by the visitors came before the church and has been accepted.
His wife joined soon afterwards.
On 6th June 1869, Mrs and Mrs Gardiner were dismissed to Stroud, which meant that they were transferred to the Baptist chapel there.
If members fell away from the accepted standard of behaviour, they would be suspended from taking Communion. These lapses could be drinking, gambling, unruly behaviour, or even, in some chapels, associating with non-Baptists.
After a period, they would be questioned by two visitors, and either accepted back into the chapel, or expelled.
Bibury Court is now a private house, having been a hotel for some years. It dates from Tudor times, but the main portion was built by Sir Thomas Sackville in 1633. The site was originally occupied by a Benedictine Abbey.
There are two pubs in the parish. The Catherine Wheel (originally the Wheel) is in Arlington.
In 2002 the pub became very famous.. in Japan! A Japanese artist visited the pub to enjoy the speciality dish of fresh trout (Bibury Trout farm is just down the road). He was so impressed that he painted a picture of the Catherine Wheel, which became a highly regarded piece of artwork in Japan. As a result of the painting up to 200 Japanese tourists a week came to sample the trout dinners served at the pub. The Catherine Wheel was even featured on TV in Japan.
The location of the Swan Hotel is idyllic, by the old stone bridge over the River Coln. In autumn the foliage clinging to the walls of the Swan turns into brilliant shade of red. The 17th century Swan Hotel overlooks Bibury Trout Farm and the fish swim in abundance in the River Coln. The hotel has been enlarged over the years.
There is a local folk tale which tells of the antics of a mischievous student from Oxford College who persuaded a gullible landlord at the Swan that he could draw both strong and mild ale from the same cask. He drilled a hole at one end of the cask then asked the landlord to stop it with his left hand. He then drilled another hole at the other end of the cask which the landlord stopped with his right hand. Then he told the landlord to hold on while he fetched the pegs, and the student walked out of the inn and was never seen again. The story soon spread around the neighbourhood much to the delight of the landlord, for although it made him look a fool it attracted a great many customers to the Swan and greatly increased his profits.
Thanks to https://www.gloucestershirepubs.co.uk/…/catherine…/ for the older images and the information.
Bibury National school, established in 1845 was supported by subscriptions and school pence in 1852 when it had an average attendance of 70. The building was enlarged in 1872 to include an infants’ department and by 1885 the average attendance was 112.
In 1845 Arlington British school was opened in a new schoolroom adjoining the Baptist chapel. The school, supported by school pence and voluntary contributions in 1870, was later closed.
Before the establishment of a state-run education system, the National and British schools were initiatives aimed at educating those who could not afford private education. National schools were run by the Anglican Church, and British by the Non-Conformists.