Kingscote is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Cotswold district Cotswold is a local government district in Gloucestershire, England. It is named after the wider Cotswolds region. Its main town is Cirencester. Other notable towns include Tetbury, Moreton-in-Marsh, Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden. ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of ...

, England, set on the uplands near the south western edge of the

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 Jur ...

hills. It is situated about two miles (3 km) east of Uley, five miles (8 km) east of Dursley and four miles (6 km) west of Tetbury. The landscape is designated an

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of ...

. The hamlet of

Newington Bagpath Newington may refer to several places: Places United Kingdom * Newington, London, a district of central London, England, and part of the London Borough of Southwark * Newington, Swale, Kent * Newington, Folkestone & Hythe, Kent * Newington, Tha ...

lies to the west of the village; the parish lands extend near to the small village of Owlpen.

History

From the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

period in the 12th century until 1956, the manor with about , was the property of the Kingscote family, originally tenants of the

Berkeley family The Berkeley family is an ancient English noble family. It is one of only four families in England that can trace its patrilineal descent back to Anglo-Saxon times (the other three being the Arden family, the Swinton family and the Wentworth f ...

Berkeley Castle Berkeley Castle ( ; historically sometimes spelled as ''Berkley Castle'' or ''Barkley Castle'') is a castle in the town of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. The castle's origins date back to the 11th century, and it has been desi ...

, whose principal residence was

Kingscote Park Kingscote Park may refer to: * Kingscote Park, Blackpool, a park in Blackpool, Lancashire, England *Kingscote Park (Gloucestershire), a house in Kingscote, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England {{Dab ...

. The manor is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

as 'Chingescote'. This, on the site of the old

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals ...

, was demolished in the 1960s. The house today known as

was formerly known as Kingscote Cottage, the dower house where

John Wedgwood (1766–1844) John Wedgwood (baptised 2 April 1766 – 26 January 1844), the eldest son of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, was a partner in the Wedgwood pottery firm 1790–1793 and again 1800–1812. Life Wedgwood was educated at Warrington Academy and the Unive ...

, founder of the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nor ...

, lived in the 1820s. The parish is transected by a

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

and a Roman settlement was excavated centred on a field named The Chessalls. The site covers 30 hectares and was occupied from the late 1st century AD through to its heyday in the 4th century. It may have been a small town or villa estate, with evidence of a series of strip buildings replaced in the 4th century by a house within a walled compound. The house seems to have been of high status, with

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

floors, including a

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

mosaic now displayed in the nearby Corinium Museum,

hypocausts A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...

and wall-plaster paintings. The Rev. Alan Gardner Cornwall was rector of the adjoining

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

of Bagpath with Owlpen from 1827 to 1842. His memoirs were published shortly after his death and are available online in .pdf format. They are a lively account of his early life with the

Clapham Sect The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the established (and dominant) Church of England, which ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, his friendship with the Kingscote family, whose daughter Caroline he married, and of his ministry at a time of social distress following the decline of the local woollen cloth industry in the 1830s.

References

Timby, J R. 'Excavations at Kingscote and Wycomb, Gloucestershire: A Roman Estate Centre and Small Town in the Cotswolds with Notes on Related Settlements.' (''Cotswold Archaeology'', 1998.)

External links

Owlpen archives: Memoir of Parson Cornwall

Heritage Listed Buildings in Kingscote
Villages in Gloucestershire Cotswold District {{Gloucestershire-geo-stub