I knew I had entered the Twilight Zone when I saw a shop in the
main street of Broadway advertising itself as a "Cashmere
Specialist". It is that kind of place. In Broadway you can
buy antiques that only the Getty Museum can afford. It resembles
Burford on the other side of the Cotswolds
in the quality of goods on sale, the weight of traffic rumbling
through the village, the number of tourists, and the beauty of
the buildings.
The village was not always like this. It began as a possession of the Benedictine Abbey of Pershore, and a royal charter from King Edgar dated 972 AD still exists and describes the boundaries of Broadway. It remained a possession of the Abbey until the reformation in 1539, when it was sold by the Crown and passed into private hands.
Until the time of the railways the village was an important coaching stop on the main London-Worcester route, where teams of horses were changed for the steep climb up Fish Hill onto the Cotswold escarpment. The railways killed that, and the village became, not to put it too subtly, "dead as a doornail". Not a lot happened. Not a lot changed.
Things did change when William Morris stayed with a couple of Oxford tutors, one of whom, Carmel Price, had rented Broadway Tower, a folly with superb views over the Severn valley. Morris had a wide circle of artistic friends, and it did not take long for the sleepy rural perfection of Broadway to become known in that circle. Two American artists, E.A. Abbey and Frank Millet leased Farnham House on Broadway Green, and from then on the village was so crowded with famous artists that you had to rent space on the Green for your easel, and a camel train arrived from Gloucester daily laden with linseed oil, canvas, turpentine, pig's bristles, Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Umber, Rose Madder, and nubile young ladies. Broadway became the most famous, undiscovered village in England.
The main part of Broadway village is set about a broad village green, and that is where most of the tourists stay, but it is easy to miss the beautiful cottages and houses in the Upper High Street where the Stow road climbs up Fish Hill - the Shakespeare Cottages (once called Flea Bank!), Orchard House and Court House among others.
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Tudor House, 1660, is a superb example of a five story 17th. C
house, but it is not from the Tudor period. It has been an inn,
a school and a private house in its time, and is now the home
of H.W. Keil, a world-class antiques business.
The Lygon Arms has the reputation of being the most famous inn
in England. It was built around 1550 and the ornate doorway was
added in 1620, the year the Mayflower sailed with the Pilgrim
Fathers.
The Broadway Hotel dates from around 1575 and was once the village
bakehouse.
A jumble of buildings in the High Street.
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Copyright Digital Brilliance 1995