Our earliest monument in the Winchcombe district is the long horned barrow of Belas Knap, built on the heights above Humblebee Wood, some 986 feet above sea level, by the long-headed late Stone Age men. Life was then only possible on an eminence which could be used as a lookout over the trackless swamps in the vale below. It was a period of great importance as the dolichocephalic or long-headed men were evolving the beginnings of village communal life, in which they cultivated the land and used, as domestic animals, the horse, ox, pig, dog, sheep and goat.

The construction of Belas Knap shows design and building of no mean order, for the pancake layering of the thin stone slats is a magnificent example of the art of dry walling, still a peculiar Cotswold craft, while the revetments holding the great thrust of the barrow have remained unmoved during many centuries. The axis lies north and south, which is rare, if not unique, in Cotswold. It is now restored and scheduled an Ancient Monument, secure from further excavations, though it is too late to save its crowning circle of great stones which, old country men tell you, were dragged off by farmers to serve ignobly as stiles and gate posts. These long barrows were not only used as communal burying places and for ritual purposes, but probably served, too, as huge sign posts on the sky line of the hills to direct travellers across the pathless valleys.

Later the round-headed Bronze Age men came to Cotswold, bringing their distinctive beaker pottery with them; two bronze axes and a spear of this period were found on Cleeve Hill and are illustrated in Mrs. Dent’s Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley. Barrows of this age were round and built for single burials, but being less massively constructed than the long barrows, successive centuries of ploughing have much reduced their height and in some cases obliterated them. To the early Iron Age which followed, we attribute the building of the Camps crowning Nottingham Hill, Langley and Cleeve Hill. From Cleeve Hill, “duck motive” pottery was found in 1903 and similar pottery has lately been discovered in the Bredon Hill Camp. Finds of this period in the Winchcombe area include broaches and an enamelled horse trapping.

Radiating out from barrow to barrow and hill-top camp to camp are the trackways, marked by the darker green of the grass, a great stone, or a deeply sunk road crossing the streams in shallow fordable places, usually keeping just under the ridges of the hillsides for protection from the weather or enemies. Such a trackway runs from Belas Knap to the Nutgrove barrow, and others lead to the chalk Wiltshire Downs, the nearest source of the all important flint tools, used not only as arrow heads and axes, but as domestic knives and scrapers.

In Neolithic times, life round Winchcombe was practically a hill top existence when hardy sturdy men and women grew and ground their corn, using primitive implements, and above all, laying the foundations of Cotswold masonry which endure to this day.

The coming of the Romans in AD 43 brought great changes, not least being the use of the potters wheel, which was first introduced in the latter part of the Iron Age. The Romans explored the possibilities of Winchcombe and called it a “fat-valley”. building at least three villas in the neighbourhood of which Spoonley is the largest. It ranks among the most important Roman houses in England; its large granary measures 54x34 feet and is constructed like a church with naves and aisles. This villa was probably built in the 2nd century and continued to the 4th century; it was excavated by Mrs. Dent but has now, unfortunately lapsed into ruin again. Another villa is that of the Wadfields, originally called “Woad-fields” this too, was restored by Mrs Dent, who took the tessellated pavement to Sudeley Castle to preserve it from souvenir hunters. A third villa exists in Stancomb Wood, and there is a rumour that St Paul himself visited the Roman legionaries stationed at Millampost.

The subsequent history of Winchcombe is practically that of it’s magnificent Abbey. After the Dissolution the little town deteriorated, in spite of grants of markets and spasmodic industrial efforts, the population then being little more than half it was in Elizabeth’s reign. The neighbouring estates likewise declined, Langley being a hamlet in the 16th century. Postlip Hall in the 12th century has a sufficient population to warrant its own Chapel services with a Chaplain, and in the 14th century we read of several “new houses” at Corndean. These now cannot be considered other than solitary manors. But with the destruction of the abbeys, country towns were faded with new problems of poverty which the Civil Wars did nothing to alleviate. Various experiments in industry during the 18th century helped Winchcombe somewhat, and the proximity of the fruit growers and the energetic smallholders of Evesham further stimulated the placid life in the place.

Sudeley Castle is intertwined with Winchcombe, and is far more spectacular. This has been vividly described by Mrs Dent with much detail. As its name implies, it is of Saxon origin, South lea, or ley, meaning field. The site being a lovely and coveted one, the Castle was built in Stephen’s reign, and rebuilt lavishly by Ralph de Boteler; “it had the Price of all the Buildings in those days”. Leland further writes: “King Edward bore no good will to Lord of Sudeley, whereupon by complaints he was attacked, and going up to London, he looked from the hill of Sudeley and said ‘Sudeley Castle, thou art the traitor, not I !’ After that he made an honest declaration and sold his Castle of Sudeley to the King.” Which was probably exactly what Edward IV intended.

Henry VIII stayed at Sudeley, liking the hunting and its “salubrious air”. The Landoc says that on “July 17, 1535, Thomas Cromwell went down to Sudeley Castle to prepare for the Royal visit in the progress during July, August and September of that year. Henry with Anne Boleyn was here from Wednesday, 21 July to the Monday following”. While at Sudeley Queen Katherine of Aragon employed her busy needle reconstructing a 14th century cope with its panels of saints and angels into the lovely Altar Cloth used till 1872 on Winchcombe Church Altar. It now hangs in a frame in the North Aisle.

As it contains a reference to her famous needlework , I quote here in full a letter from the Queen to King Henry VIII, written to him after the Battle of Flodden Field, 1513.

“Sir,
My lord Heward (Howard) hath sent me a lre open to your grace wtin oen of myn by the whiche ye shal see at length the grete vicorye that our lord hath sent your subgettes in your absence and for this cause it is noo nede herin to trouble your grace wt long writing but to my thinking this batell hat bee to your grace abd all your reame the grettest honor that coude bee and more than ye shuld wyn al the crown of Fraunce thankend bee god of it and I am suer your grace forgetteth not to doo this which shal be cause to sende you many moo suche grete victoryes as I trust he shal doo my husband for hastynesse wt Rogecrosse I coude not sende your grace the pece of the King Scottes cote which John Glyn now bringeth in this your grace shal see how I can kepe my promys sending you for your baners a kinges cote I thought to sende hymself unto you but our Englissheme (n) hertes wold not suffre it it shuld have been better for hym to have been in peax than to have this rewarde al that god sendeth is for the best my lord of Surrey my Henry wold fayne knowe your pleaur in the buryeng of the King of Scottes body for he hath written to me soo With the next messenger your grace pleasur may bee herin knowen and wt this I make an ende praying god to sende you home shortly for without this noo ioye here can be accomplisshed and for the same I pray and now goo to our lady at Walsyngham that I promised soo long agoo to see at Woborne the xvi day od septembre I sende your grace herin a bille founde in a scottisshemans purse of suche thinges as the Frenshe King sent to the said King of Scottes to make warre against you beseching your to sende Mathewe hider assone this messanger commeth to bringe me tydinges from your grace

yours humble wif and true srunt Katherine.”

Lord Seymour, High Admiral of England, married Henry VIII’s last wife within a few months of the Kings death, and brought her to Sudeley. It could not have been a happy home for Katherine Parr, as Seymour was already casting covetous eyes on the young Princess Elizabeth, then at Sudeley, whence she was presently sent away “for unseemly romping”. His vaulting ambition was leaping at the Crown, and when Katherine died in childbirth, it was gossiped that he had poisoned her to clear his pathway to marriage with Elizabeth. Katherine Parr was a kind step mother and patron of literature; it was during her reign at the Castle that Miles Coverable stayed there and worked at his translation of the bible into English. He preached at her funeral, which was conducted at Sudeley according to the new Reformed rites, the tragic Lady Jane Grey being chief mourner.

Seymour was subsequently beheaded as a traitor, and Sudeley passed into the hands of the Bridges family, later known as Chandos. Queen Elizabeth visited it several times on her Royal Progresses - probably with memories she did not share with her Court. There is a curious legend in Gloucestershire that she died here as a baby and that a village boy, the only available infant of the same age, secretly took her place in order to secure the Protestant succession. The legend was no doubt launched to account for her masculine qualities and the fact that she never married, but it does not explain her peculiarly Tudor traits.

During the Civil Wars Sudeley changed hands and was finally “slighted” by Cromwell, after which its owners, Lord and Lady Chandos, lived at Roel. Evil days followed and during the early part of the 19th century it even fell as low as to become a public ale house - “The Castle Arms”. Mercifully in 1830 it was bought and restored by the Dent family and again resumed its rank as one of the more princely manors in England. Mrs Emma Dent was not only a distinguished writer, and a mine of local history but a great and beautiful lady; she was a sort of guardian angel to the district, keenly interested in its present as well as its past, and to her the Castle owes its wonderful collection of local antiquities.

The desecrated tomb of Katherine Parr was suitably restored in the Chapel, it had been opened several times during the last part of the 18th century by robbers and drunken farmers. In 1817 Mr Edmund Browne and the Rev. John Lates, vicar of Winchcombe, found the leaden coffin of the Queen where it was lying amongst rabbit holes, and had it re-buried in the Chandos vault. It is pleasant to add that the writer was able to complete this good deed by collecting the various “souvenirs” some hair, a tooth, a piece of the cere cloth, etc. remaining from the ghoulish vandals’ haul, to be re-interred in a lead urn in the Chandos vault in Sudeley Church. So may poor Katherine Parr’s bones at last be allowed to rest in peace.

So much for a brief survey of old days in the district. Times altered swiftly with improved transport of the late 19th century and even more speedy 20th century motors. Social life was revolutionised. The roads through Winchcombe had successively served pre-historic man for his hunting and trade trackways and the practical Romans who paved them with good stone. Later the victorious Offa and Kenulf had used these same “streets”, followed in their turn by the throngs of pilgrims and Churchmen worshipping St Kenelm’s sacred relics in the great Abbey. Then came the wool men with their pacing pack ponies, and always soldiers, marching to and from wars for or against Kings, Nobles or the Commonwealth.

In 1810, coaches left London daily for Gloucester and Cheltenham from Angel, St Clement’s, or Golden Cross at Charing Cross. Slower transport was supplied weekly by wagons, or barges sailing up and down the Thames and the new Severn Canal. Then in 1840 the Iron Horse arrived in Cheltenham, and, as Amy Lowell describes it in Hedge Island, in a short moment the coaches with their gallant teams of fast trotting horses and monumental coachmen “vanished in a puff of steam”.

MacAdam’s day had arrived, too, and no longer were country dwellers confined to a small radius linked by bad roads and further impeded by frequent toll gates, which catered more for the slow traffic of asses, mules and oxen than hustling humans, already aspiring to the penny farthing bicycle.

The Winchcombe bus, until it was superseded by 20th century motors, continued to plod up Cleeve Hill, and to sidle down on daily trips to Cheltenham, plastered with white mud in winter and grey dust in summer months. And within living memory, Mr Drury’s coach and four horses from Broadway would come at a spanking pace with much blowing of horns through Winchcombe to Cheltenham. Winchcombe had its own railway on the Great Western Line, completed in 1906, though as far back as 1865 the then Midland Railway had plans to link up Winchcombe with Beckford via Gretton, but this never materialised. The plans of this are in the Church Porch Museum.

The above was taken from “Winchcombe Cavalcade” by Eleanor Adlard