Chedworth Foundations

Courtesy of the Ukes uv Azzard, I have a new walk book. A few months ago they sang and played their ukuleles at Taurus Crafts in Lydney and were rewarded with a couple of shopping vouchers. How do you divide two vouchers between a dozen-or-so members?  Names in the hat, of course, and draw a couple. I won one of them.

NB. I write 'they sang and played' as I couldn't make it to the Taurus gig, but was still very happy to win the voucher!

With my new-found wealth I bought this book – 40 town and country walks in the Cotswolds. Last week I used it for the first time, chosing an 11km walk entitled Chedworth Foundations. 11km? My brain still works in Imperial for distances, so how does it go?... Ah yes, multiply by 6 and divide by 10, so about 6½ miles.  That would do fine.

We parked our car in front of Chedworth Church (sadly locked) and made our way down to the strung-out village of Chedworth.

This is the picturesque Seven Tuns pub, which has achieved great reviews in The Good Pub Guide, on TripAdvisor and from the Campaign for Real Ale.  It would have been lovely to have lunch there, but my weight's been rising lately and S- decreed Ryvita, cottage cheese and an apple for lunch. Sigh...

Dominic North, the author of the walk book, has a poetic streak, describing this stretch of the path as arcing gracefully around a bend of the valley. Later we find ourselves swinging right at a field to reach the roaring A429.  Ah, so much nicer than the bland directions in so many books.  Thank you, Dominic; I'm even moved to forgive your use of those kilo-thingies.

After the roaring A429 it was time to eat my fugal lunch. I'm not at all sure, though, whether I should thank S-- for this unflattering shot. I was still bemoaning the lack of a pub lunch and feeling a bit sleepy after a steep climb through a field near Fossebridge.

At the top of the hill stands Camp Wood.  How old the name is, I know not, but there was a sort-of camp here at the end of World War Two. The evidence was easy to see. This had once been the site of an American Forces hospital, but after hostilities ceased it was turned into a boarding school for Polish refugees.

At last we came to the place that gave this walk its title – Chedworth Roman Villa. According to Dominic North, a local gamekeeper stumbled upon fragments of paving in 1864, and thus the magnificent long-forgotten villa was discovered. One of my books –The Midland & South Western Junction Railway (more of that later)  – says it was discovered by rabbits who brought bits of tessellated pavement to the surface. I conclude that the gamekeeper must have been trying to shoot rabbits.

Many years ago I was privileged to visit the Roman fortress of Masada, on the shore of the Dead Sea. So much of its architecture was the same as here at Chedworth – the hypocaust under-floor heating; the luxurious baths with their caldarium (hot), tepidarium (cooler) and frigidarium (brrr!). Well, if you've got a design that works (and slaves to run it), why change?

The Romans had a taste for Helix Pomatia – snails to you and me. Our native snails weren't good enough for their refined palates, so they imported their own.  Amazingly, their descendants are still there.  I tried l'escargot once.  Once was enough.

I last visited Chedworth Villa in 2013, when this team of archaeologists were busy uncovering more Roman remains. Today, you'd never know that they'd been there and sadly I could find no record of what they unearthed.

I do know, though, that their 'star find' of the dig was this fragment of coloured glass, now proudly displayed in the villa's museum. Painstaking research has revealed it to be part of a fish-shaped bottle, originating from the Crimea and possibly used to hold perfume. Nothing like it has ever been discovered in Britain before. 

From the Roman villa our footpath passed beneath this old railway bridge. By now we were almost back to our starting point but I couldn't pass the chance to climb up onto the track bed, which now forms part of a nature reserve.

The history of the railway here has long fascinated me and I wrote a blog post about part of it back in 2015 – A Day in Cirencester. This was once the grandly named Midland and South Western Junction Railway, whose bright red trains plied between Cheltenham and Southampton Docks and were a constant drain upon the resources of its hapless investors. 

In 1923 the MSWJR was swept into the hands of its fierce rival, the mighty Great Western and in 1961 the Beeching Axe all but obliterated it. A couple of miles of preserved line survive near Swindon, but I can guarantee that you won't see an engine or coaches like these.  They puffed their way into history a long, long time ago.