For a time Tetbury was a place where you might meet the Princess of Wales, Princess Diana, buying sweets for William and Henry in a sweet shop. Tetbury had the reputation of being the place where the Prince and Princess of Wales lived, at Highgrove House a mile or so outside the town. Sadly, you won't be seeing Di there any more, but Prince Charles still spends time at Highgrove, and some shops in Tetbury carry the traditional three-feathered crest of the Prince of Wales.
The aura of class and money which hangs around Tetbury is not a recent thing - this is hunting country, home to the Beaufort Hunt. One can watch a few chukkas of polo at nearby Westonbirt, almost next door to Highgrove. A few miles to the south is the vast country estate of Badminton, home to the Duke of Beaufort and venue for the world-famous Badminton Horse Trials each April or May. Princess Anne's country home is about three miles to the north at Gatcombe Park. Even in the last century Tetbury was home to the hunting set, and large balls were held in the Snooty Fox Hotel in the centre of the town.
Tetbury is an architectural gem, designated an outstanding conservation area
in 1971. The central part of the town is largely unchanged since the 16th. and 17th.
centuries, and parts have clear links to medieval times. The rambling street plan adds
interest, as does the steep drop down to the bottom of the Chipping Steps, so that the
town seems larger and more intricate than it is.
The oldest part of the town is close to the site of an Iron Age settlement a small distance to the south of St. Mary's church. To the east of the Church is the Green, a tiny triangle of grass at the edge of a steep hill dropping away from the town towards Malmesbury. This little piece of grass is the probable site of an original Anglo-Saxon settlement first recorded in 681 as Tette's minster. Tette was probably the sister of King Ine of Wessex and went on to become abbess of a famous double monastery for monks and nuns at Wimbourne.
St. Mary's left me with mixed feelings, although many people positively love it. From the outside it looks like a splendid example of the Cotswold Perpendicular style in the spirit of Northleach and Chipping Campden, its tall walls pierced with tall windows and topped with crenellations and small spires. The main octagonal spire is enormous, visible for miles around, and similar to that in Painswick.
The inside of the church is light and airy, hugely spacious, but the decor is somewhat unusual and betrays its later origin. There are acres of cream coloured emulsion paint. The walls and roof are uniformly cream. The suspiciously slender columns turn out to be wooden ticky-tacky covered in ... cream emulsion paint. Only the Lord knows what is holding the roof up - some of the columns are warped well out of true, so we can only hope that the interiors of these columns are wrought rather than cast iron.
The church was actually designed and built in the late 18th. century by Francis Hiorn of Worcester (some say Warwick) on the site of the medieval church, and there was some further renovation at the turn of this century, so it is much later than the wool churches at Chipping Campden and Northleach. Remains from this earlier church can be found in a pair of unusual passageways which run between the outside wall and the wall of the nave.
The centre of Tetbury is the Market Hall (above), an island in a sea of vehicle traffic. Four busy roads meet at the Hall, giving the centre a feeling of business out of proportion to its size. The Hall was built in 1655 and enlarged in 1740 to accommodate the town fire engine and lockup. Apparently there is a very large chamber underneath the Hall which was a cistern for a communal water pump installed by Vicar Wight in 1749 at his own expense. The cupola on the roof of the Hall has a weathervane in the form of a pair of dolphins, for no reason anyone can remember.
Close to the Hall is the Chipping, a name common throughout the Cotswolds
and based on the Anglo-Saxon word for a market. Like most market squares, the Chipping is
now a car park, and it is surrounded by splendid houses which were meant to have a better
view than rows of cars. Leading away from the car park down a very steep hill is a
medieval street, the Chipping Steps (right), flanked by medieval stone cottages. At the
bottom of the steps is Horsepool Bottom where there was once a large pool where scolds and
fraudulent traders were ducked on a gumstool or ducking school. The pool has gone, and
there is now an untidy piece of land which has holding pens for the cattle market.
The finest street in Tetbury is Long Street. The buildings become progressively more grand, and the bottom half of Long Street consists almost entirely of high-quality antique shops. It is easy to be distracted by Long Street and miss seeing the rest of Tetbury - I have, and did.
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St. Mary's church, Tetbury.
The Market Hall. See also above.
Long Street, Tetbury.
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In most cases further information can be found under Things to See.
Tetbury is close to Cirencester, Dursley, Malmesbury, Stroud and Wotton Under Edge, which should also be referred to.
Tetbury Tourist
Information Centre,
33 Church Street, Tetbury Glos. GL8 8JG Tel. 01666 503552
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Copyright Digital Brilliance 1995