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Bibury is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on the River Coln, a Thames tributary that rises in the same (
Cotswold The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Juras ...
) District. The village centre is northeast of Cirencester.
Arlington Row Arlington Row at Arlington in the parish of Bibury, Gloucestershire, England was built in the late 14th century as a wool store and converted into weavers houses in the late 17th century. It is a Grade I listed building, owned by the National ...
is a nationally notable
architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings o ...
conservation area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...
depicted on the inside cover of all
British passport A British passport is a travel document issued by the United Kingdom or other British dependencies and territories to individuals holding any form of British nationality. It grants the bearer international passage in accordance with visa requ ...
s. It is a major destination for tourists visiting the traditional rural villages,
tea houses A teahouse (mainly Asia) or tearoom (also tea room) is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments. A tea room may be a room set aside in a hotel especially for serving afternoon tea, or may be an establishment whi ...
and many
historic buildings This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...
of the Cotswold District; it is one of six places in the country featured in
Mini-Europe Mini-Europe is a miniature park located in ''Bruparck'', at the foot of the Atomium, in Brussels, Belgium. Mini-Europe has reproductions of monuments in the European Union and other countries within the continent of Europe on display, at a scale o ...
, Brussels.


History

In the '' Domesday Book'' (1086), a record of survey done under William the Conqueror, the place is named ''Becheberie'', and it is recorded that the lands and church in Bibury were held by St. Mary's Priory at Worcester, from whom it passed in 1130 to the Abbey of Osney, near Oxford: the Abbey continued to hold it until its dissolution in 1540. The Church of England Church of St Mary is very late
Saxon The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
with later additions and listed in the top of the three heritage/architecture categories, Grade I. Its main material is random (
cobblestone Cobblestone is a natural building material based on cobble-sized stones, and is used for pavement roads, streets, and buildings. Setts, also called Belgian blocks, are often casually referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct fro ...
) and coursed rubble limestone with a slate roof. It is formed of a nave with north and south aisles, south porch, north west tower and chancel, tower, arched doorways. 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 is an early canonical sundial on the south wall. From AD 1130 until the
English Reformation The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and poli ...
during the 16th century, the church was a peculier of Osney Abbey in Oxford. Adjacent to the church is the village primary school that was built in the 1850s. In 2015 the school had 43 pupils on its roll in two classes. On the Arlington (west) side of the village is Arlington Baptist Church, where a congregation has been meeting since the 1740s. Late in the 19th century George Witts recounted the discovery of the Bibury Roman villa: "In the year 1880 a Roman villa was accidentally discovered in the parish of Bibury, about northeast of Cirencester. Some Roman pottery, coins, remnants of tesselated pavements, &c., were found, but as no examination has yet taken place, no description of the building can be given."—George Witts, 1883. The site fills a small low meander downstream of the bridge on the Arlington, Bibury side. Bibury village proper, on the east bank, consists of approximately 40 homes and businesses, of which two are prominent hotels.


Visitor attractions

The 19th-century artist and craftsman William Morris called Bibury "the most beautiful village in England" when he visited it. The village is known for its honey-coloured 17th-century stone cottages with steeply pitched roofs, which once housed weavers who supplied cloth for fulling at nearby Arlington Mill. Until the 1980s, that building also housed the museum of Arlington Mill with a collection of period clothing, before it was shifted to Barnsley House. The Mill is now a private residence. The place where the wool was hung to dry after being washed in Arlington Row, was known as "Rack Isle". Today, this water meadow and marshy area, which is seasonally flooded and surrounded by water from three sides, is an important habitat for water-loving plants and birds including
mallard The mallard () or wild duck (''Anas platyrhynchos'') is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Arge ...
s, coots, and moorhens; it is also a National Trust Wildfowl Reserve. Bibury is particularly frequented by Japanese tourists. This is largely attributed to Emperor Hirohito having stayed in the village on his European tour. The largest building in Bibury is Bibury Court, built in 1633 in the Jacobean style. It is a Grade I listed building, and was recently a hotel. The hotel has now closed permanently with its future unknown. Previously it was inhabited by Lord Sherborne when in 2008 it was bought by John Lister, of Shipton Mill organic flour. The village has a tennis court downstream of where the main road turns away to the north-west, close to the church and Bibury Court. Ablington Manor, on Potlicker's Lane, was built in 1590, and is also a Grade I listed building.


Arlington Row

The picturesque
Arlington Row Arlington Row at Arlington in the parish of Bibury, Gloucestershire, England was built in the late 14th century as a wool store and converted into weavers houses in the late 17th century. It is a Grade I listed building, owned by the National ...
cottages were built in 1380 as a monastic wool store. This was converted into a row of cottages for weavers in the 17th century. The cloth produced there was sent to Arlington Mill. Arlington Row is a popular visitor attraction, probably one of the most photographed Cotswold scenes, and was preserved by the
Royal College of Arts The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It off ...
. It has been used as a film and television location, most notably for the film ''
Stardust Stardust may refer to: * A type of cosmic dust, composed of particles in space Entertainment Songs * “Stardust” (1927 song), by Hoagy Carmichael * “Stardust” (David Essex song), 1974 * “Stardust” (Lena Meyer-Landrut song), 2012 * ...
'' - claims that ''
Bridget Jones's Diary ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies (writer), Andrew Davies, and Helen Fielding. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States and France, it is ...
'' was also filmed at Arlington Row seem incorrect. In 2017 the BBC reported that an "ugly" car parked by an elderly motorist had been vandalised, possibly by visitors who had repeatedly complained that it spoilt photographs.


Geography

The Coln, a tributary of the Thames, flows in a very steep valley (in
Thames Basin The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
terms) southeastwards. It flows alongside the midsection of Bibury with Arlington's main street which
dogleg Dogleg or dog-leg may refer to: * Dogleg (band), an American indie rock band *Dog-leg (stairs), a configuration of stairs which includes a half-landing before turning and continuing upwards *Dog-leg gearbox, an unusual manual transmission layout ...
s to achieve this. Each side has a similar concentration and scale of development; each bank's development falls mainly in the Bibury
conservation area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...
which has an insightful district surveyor's statement for building owners and visitors. The parish is approximately rectangular and stretches far to the rolling, elevated, north. It includes on outlying settlement, Ablington, in the upper valley. Bibury Farm is from the village, above
Ordnance Datum In the British Isles, an ordnance datum or OD is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as AOD for "above ordnance datum". Usually mean sea level (MSL) is used fo ...
(AOD), which is a similar elevation to much of the north. The south rises to a maximum of on its periphery along Akeman Street, a Roman road, before ascending further in other more distant lands. The valley floor within the Bibury boundary, northwest and southeast, ranges from AOD. The Coln, along with the Bibury Spring, supplies Bibury Trout farm, founded in 1902 by the naturalist Arthur Severn, to stock the local rivers and streams with the native
brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morph ...
. The hatchery spawns up to six million trout ova every year. Three medieval clusters are all interspersed by substantial grass, making for a dense developed area compared to suburbs but not in terms of roads; a footbridge connects both sides (Arlington and Bibury) as well as various footpaths in all directions. Elevations vary widely even throughout the village parts, with the gentlest slope in the eastern escarpment of the
Cotswold Hills The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...
for or more in each direction taken by the main village road.


Culture

The world's first
horse racing Horse racing is an equestrian performance sport, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its basic p ...
club, The Bibury Club, was formed in 1681 and held race meetings on Macaroni Downs above the village until the early 20th century.


Notable inhabitants

In 2000, Daniel Brennan KCSG, QC, barrister and judge, was made
Lord Brennan Daniel Joseph Brennan, Baron Brennan, (born 19 March 1942) is a British life peer and barrister. Early life and background Brennan was educated at St. Bede's Grammar School, Bradford, and graduated with a Bachelor of Law degree from Ma ...
and Bibury is his territorial designation as his home village.


See also

*
Grade I listed buildings in Gloucestershire The county of Gloucestershire is divided into seven districts. The districts of Gloucestershire are Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Cheltenham, Cotswold, Stroud, Forest of Dean, South Gloucestershire. As there are 308 Grade I listed buildings in the c ...
* List of Roman villas in Gloucestershire


References


Bibliography

*


External links


Bibury website
*
www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Bibury and surrounding area
{{authority control Cotswold District Villages in Gloucestershire Tourist attractions in Gloucestershire