The Cotswolds A Cultural History [Paperback]

With its gentle hills and timeless villages, the Cotswold countryside is a vision of natural beauty and rural calm, but it is also a region rich in history. In this new addition to the Landscapes of the Imagination series, Jane Bingham offers an intriguing portrait of the Cotswolds over the centuries, ranging from ancient stone circles and ruined Roman villas
to the Cotswolds today, a picturesque destination spot popular with country-weekenders, tourists, and celebrities. Readers will visit fine churches and manor houses that have survived from the Middle Ages, and tour a landscape still bearing the scars of the Civil War. The home of kings and nobles since Saxon times, the region is famous for its elegant estates, such as Blenheim Palace--England's grandest stately home--while signs of the early industrial age can be seen in its mills and factories. Artists, musicians, and writers were also drawn to this rural paradise, from William Shakespeare and William Morris to T.S. Eliot and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Bingham captures it all in her charming portrait of this glorious spot in the heart of southern England.

Introduction
A Country Made of Men's Visions
Looking at the Land (); The History of the Cotswolds (); Changing Views: Commentators on the Cotswolds (); Living Landscape or Heritage Park? (); Recent Views: Behind the Pretty Pictures (); The Insiders' View (); Imagination and Images (); Responses to the Landscape ()

Chapter One
Ancient Echoes: From Prehistory to the Coming of the Anglo-Saxons
Exploring Belas Knap (); Tombs from the Stone Age (); At the Rollright Stones (); Bronze-Age Survivals (); Clues from the Celts (); Remembering the Romans (); Tracing the Ancient Ways (); After the Romans (); Anglo-Saxon Echoes ()

Chapter Two
Finding God in Gloucestershire: Saints, Churches and Clerics
Early Abbeys and the Boy Saint of Winchcombe (); Sacred Sites and Saxon Sculptures (); Norman Churches and Carvings (); Stories on Walll³=