About The Small Town Of Chipping Campden
There is a small town nestled in the sunlit stretched out hills Cotswold hills in Gloucestershire County that has been deemed with the name of Chipping Campden. One of the towns most marked landmarks are the unusually attractive and elegant terraced, honey mustard colored, high street buildings that have a sort of classic grace about them. They are broad and long and surrounded on both sides by an almost unbroken terrace of many different styles.
The buildings on the high street are referred to as being a light honey mustard color; this is due to the type of limestone the buildings are built from. The oolitic limestone; as it is called is quarried locally and therefore named Cotswold stone.
The name Campden is thought to be a Saxon name meaning valley with the fields. There is written reference that states before the Norman Conquest the manor of Campden had been owned by King Harold; later the building would be set aflame by the royalist troops to prevent it from being captured by the parliament at the end of the civil war. As the Early thirteenth century was in progress the small market area in the Cotswolds was being called Cepyne Caumpedene or market Campden.
This market area in the Cotswolds was beginning to merit itself a name in the early thirteenth century; it was earning the name Cepyne Caumpedene which translates to market campden. Chipping is a word that comes from the old English word ceping which means a market or a market place. The name picked up in popularity and the town continued to grow into its new title. People began raising sheep all around the cotswolds and then in Chipping campden the wool was sheered and sent to London, soon chipping campden was a town full of wealthy wool merchants in the middle ages.
There was a large migration of craftsmen in the early twentieth century, who decided to bring their crafts to the town. They were led by a man named C R Ashbee. The craftsmen moved into an old dilapidated silk mill and soon began the guild of Handicrafts.
Another thing taking place in the beginning of the twentieth century was the dream of a man named Lawrence Johnston. He moved into the Hidcote Manor and began creating a garden that people would adore for years to come. The self taught gardener began creating his garden in 1907 and spent forty years finishing it. It is now considered one of the great gardens of England.
Chipping campden is still a quaint market town that many people visit not only for the gardens or the shops but for the enduring feeling of walking in history as though they have gone back in time to visit the historical market town of Chipping campden.
