Chipping Campden

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Map sources for Chipping Campden at grid reference SP1539

Chipping Campden is a Cotswold town in Gloucestershire, England, famous for its beautiful terraced High Street, dating from the 14th – 17th centuries.

A rich wool trading centre in the Middle Ages, Chipping Campden enjoyed the patronage of wealthy wool merchants (see also wool church). Today it is a popular Cotswold tourist destination with old inns, hotels, shops and restaurants. The High Street is lined with honey-coloured limestone buildings, built from the mellow locally quarried Cotswold stone, and boasts a wealth of fine vernacular architecture. At its centre stands the Market Hall with its splendid arches, built in 1627.

Other attractions include the grand early perpendicular wool church of St James – with its medieval altar frontals (c.1500), cope (c.1400) and vast and extravagant 17th century monuments to Sir Baptist Hicks and family – the Almshouses and Woolstaplers Museum.

Since 1610 the town has been home to a championship of rural games, which later turned into Robert Dover's Cotswold Olympick Games. The 'Olympicks' are held every summer on Dover's Hill, near Chipping Campden. Peculiar to the games is the sport of shin-kicking (hay stuffed down the trousers can ease one's brave passage to later rounds). To mark the end of the games, there is a huge bonfire and firework display. This is followed by a torch-lit procession back into the town and Morris dancing in the square. The Scuttlebrook Wake takes place the following day. The locals don fancy dress costumes and follow the Scuttlebrook May Queen, with her four attendants and page boy, in a procession to the centre of town.

The Cotswold Way runs for 100 miles from Chipping Campden to Bath. The Heart of England Way also links to the Cotswold Way at Campden.

Places to visit locally include: Kiftsgate Court and Hidcote Manor Garden (owned by the National Trust), near Mickleton (3 miles); Blockley; Broadway; Stow-on-the-Wold; Winchcombe; and, further afield, Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick Castle.