Adventures in Bibury

The morning after the big wedding has John and I heading back down to Cripps Barn to pick up the remaining flowers, the wedding presents, some personal decorations, guestbooks, etc. for Mark and Jess. This was pretty easy and we pack John’s SUV to the ceiling!

Since we were SO very close, I had asked John to swing by the popular Cotswold village of Bibury for what I had expected to only be a few minutes of quick photos.

Bibury is on pretty much every list of “most beautiful” or “most photographed” villages in the Cotswolds, and since I’d never been – it was definitely one of my top requests this trip.  As a matter of fact, all of the things I ended up doing during this visit were “new to me”!

Fortunately for both of us, we got there early enough to beat most of the tourists, the weather was PERFECT, and John had done a little bit of “pre-game” searching to add another stop for us!

Bibury is home to an absolutely stunning church that I honestly had overlooked in my pre-trip research (shame on me!).  St. Mary’s is an 11th-12th century Anglo-Saxon church built on the site of the original church from approximately A.D. 900!

Given both the location on the River Coln and the confluence of various travel routes, this ended up being a significant part of a fairly major and wealthy monastery (located in nearby Oxford).  Fortunately, it escaped a lot of the permanent damage that others suffered in Henry VIII’s dissolution of of the Catholic church infrastructure during the English Reformation.

A number of the monastic homes were returned to the village and turned into commercial buildings for the profitable wool trade (see Arlington Row below!).

St. Mary’s, now an Anglican denomination church, remains in all of her glory – and we were THRILLED to get a chance to see it.  The exterior of the church is as impressive a building as you’ll see in a small Cotswolds village, including some well-worn gargoyles lining the roof.

The cemetery surrounding the church included some impressive “tomb covers” that looked similar (but more well-preserved) to what I mentioned back at St. Eadburgha’s in Ebrington.

There are the ever-present limestone slabs – some ancient and leaning, with the inscriptions and dates too worn to make out. 

As I’ve seen in so many other church cemeteries in England, these leaning and weathered tombstones are left to the elements – sometimes with their dates and inscriptions lost to posterity, but they are left alone.  It does make the experience feel like these stones have been here for centuries and not like they were just cleaned last weekend.  So, I can definitely see the rationale and appreciate leaving them in their natural state.

The experience inside St. Mary’s was even more impressive than I expected.  Between the stained glass at each end of the main building, the intricate wooden ceilings, the tombs embedded in the floor, and the well-worn pews – St. Mary’s must have many centuries of stories to tell.

One of my favorite surprises, obviously from the 20th Century, was the WWI memorial inside the church.  While it seems that every English village has a WWI memorial to honor the sacrifices of the lads who gave their all during “The Great War”, this one is striking with the black iron outline of the British soldier offset from the white plaster wall with the ever-present wreath of strikingly-red poppies.

“In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow…”

Also – because of the age and origins of this ancient church site, a cast of an Anglo-Saxon gravestone (circa A.D. 1000!!!) is prominently displayed.  The original stone (and some other artifacts from this area) are in the British Museum for all to see.

The stained glass above the altar is from the 13th Century and is in amazing and so-very-colorful condition.  The other end of the sanctuary has an even more impressive stained glass window. 

Another amazing stained glass, from the English artist Karl Parsons, is so striking (and famous) that it has a very detailed display that describes the intricacies of the window itself!

As is usual for almost all of my Cotswold church visits, I could’ve stayed here for hours – but this brief visit will have to do, because one of the most famous and charming sights in all of England awaits me.

Arlington Row

The row of cottages set alongside the River Coln were originally built in 1380 as a monastic wool store that provided some of the immense wealth of the original monastery (of which St. Mary’s was a focal point).  This store was converted into a row of cottages for weavers in the late 17th century, with some late 17th- or early 18th-century additions.

Arlington Row (now operated by the UK National Trust) is depicted on the inside cover of all UK passports and may very well be one of the most photographed Cotswold scenes.  Well then … who am I to not throw my hat into that particular ring, too?  

Taken in from just across the River Coln, these houses rise along a small street towards a slight hill – all-in-all, it’s every bit the photo opportunity I was hoping for.

A local swan decides to do me the honor of floating downstream and requesting his own photo shoot before I cross the small footbridge and wander through these little cottages.  

It’s really a pleasant moment as we’ve arrived there really before the daily onslaught of tour busses and crowds that have been noted as sometimes tainting the experience.  I was, literally, by myself and got to enjoy the quiet and charm of this popular little stretch that I’ve only seen before on a small screen.  

Joining John back on the other side of the River Coln, we make our way back towards the Bibury Trout Farm.  We’re both a little peckish, so we enjoy a coffee and a bacon sandwich!  On the way back to the car, we spot an “escapee” from the Trout Farm just lounging in the crystal clear waters.  What a great day to be alive!  🙂

The old stone footbridge over the Coln leads right to the Swan Hotel – again, one of the most photographed spots in the Cotswolds.  The traffic and tourist population has started to increase, so I’m not able to get many (if any) photos without people and moving vehicles … but I give it my (pardon the pun) “best shot”. 

It’s time for us to head back to Oakleigh House, though.  We’re meeting the newlyweds for dinner in Broadway before they head out on their honeymoon tomorrow morning!  I’ve been to Broadway many times before, but there’s always something new to see here – and I get a LOT of my gift-shopping done in a fast pass up/down High Street.  A great meal at The Swan (one of my favorite pubs in Broadway this time, not the hotel in Bibury!), a quick video chat with Kathy (!!), and a group selfie completes the day.