Friday, 19 January 2024 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Great Britain / Großbritannien Category/Kategorie: GeneralReading Time: 4minutes
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) District. The village centre is 6.5 miles (10.5 kilometres) northeast of Cirencester. Arlington Row is a nationally notable architecturalconservation area depicted on the inside cover of some British passports. It is a major destination for tourists visiting the traditional rural villages, tea houses and many historic buildings of the Cotswold District; it is one of six places in the country featured in Mini-Europe, Brussels. The world’s first horse racing club, The Bibury Club, was formed in 1681 and held race meetings on Macaroni Downs above the village until the early 20th century.
The 19th-century artist and craftsmanWilliam 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 mallards, 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.
The picturesque Arlington Row 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. It has been used as a film and television location, most notably for the film Stardust – claims that Bridget Jones’s Diary 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.
