More Tales from along the Towpath

'Spring was in the air' along the towpath - 'pussy willows' were laden with pollen and nectar 

Of the 150 mills that once crowded these valleys only two are still working woollen mills. Many are now utilised as business premises, places where artisan craftspeople work, specialised shops, and art galleries. In this valley some of the foremost sculptors of our time have their work caste in bronze within one of the mills.

  A mill race runs beneath this building where originally a large water wheel would have turned

Five of these little round houses were built along the edge of the Severn/Thames Canal following its completion in 1789. They housed what were known as Lengthsmen who were responsible for maintaining the towpaths, managing the water levels and controlling the weirs. They also kept the banks in order on their 'lengths', cut back the reeds and vegetation, and if there were lock gates on their 'length' it was their duty to keep them in good order.

Life along the waterways was not the

idyllic place of leisure and recreation that we know and enjoy today. 

For the canal watermen and their large families living was tough and physically demanding - a life lived in a cramped, confined area, often coated in black dust from their cargo of coal. They led itinerant lives crisscrossing the country along the waterways with no fixed abode. Their children, born as they travelled, were expected to help on the boat and were unable to attend school. Such a tough life resulted in the whole family having an extremely low life expectancy.

In stark comparison, life for the successful Clothiers was good - they built themselves fine houses on the upper slopes of the valley 

whilst down in the valley bottom 

dwelt rows of modest cottages to house the 'weavers' and their families 

However, as mentioned in the previous post, many of the Mill Owners were extremely benevolent to the area, building fine schools, and churches, and families tended to remain totally loyal to the mill where they worked for their entire working lives. Today one of those locally endowed schools is nationally recognised as being a top state school which achieves a very high level of successful entrants to Oxbridge every year.
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Walking through history

 One of the things I love about this corner of the Cotswolds are the many and varied walks that we continue to discover even though we have lived here for over 20 years.  Walks across hilltops with far reaching views, along deep verdant valley bottoms, down networks of quiet hidden narrow country lanes, through pretty stone villages, or as in this case wandering along a towpath running beside a canal.

We know and have walked many different stretches of this canal as it journeys from the River Severn to the River Thames, but we have never discovered this particular part of the towpath previously even though it is no more than a couple of miles from our home high in the hills.

What is now a quiet and peaceful sanctuary - a haven for wetland birds, would have been a hive of industrial activity during the 18th and 19th centuries.

This elegant original brick arched bridge was built in 1778 to carry a road over the canal to the woollen mills.

Today it is hard to imagine what a busy thoroughfare this would have been with boats and people plying up and down the water all day long mainly carrying coal

The ancient church of St Cyr's had already stood here for more than 650 years before the canal was even given consideration during the early part of the c18th.

The whole area with its hills and valleys grew very rich off the backs of sheep for centuries - known as Cotswold 'Lions' and introduced here by the Romans. Medieval weavers in c12th Flanders would sing "the best wool in Europe is English, and the best wool in England is Cotswold"

The prosperous local mill owners built themselves grand mansions, wonderful churches which are still known as 'wool churches', and endowed many fine schools in the area

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During the c18th these valleys were particularly famed for their scarlet red wool cloth dyed with cochineal which was used to make soldiers uniforms, but also loved by Cherokee Indians who traded furs for it. In the painting above it is just possible to make out the red wool cloth hanging over tenderhooks to dry on the hillsides

St Cyrs churchyard features several traditional style Cotswold table top tombs

500 years before the wool mills were even built, wool was one of the countries most important commodities. It paid for the great abbeys and monastic buildings and it is acknowledged that wool was responsible for half the wealth in England - wool exports paid for Richard the Lionheart's enormous ransom to the Saracens. The Lord Chancellor still sits to this day on a sack stuffed with wool in The House of Lords showing the pre-eminent position that the wool industry has played in this country's affairs.