Gloucestershire Tourist Guide - Articles

Visit Cirencester which is a market town in the south of the county, 93 miles west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in Cotswold District. It is home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world founded in 1840. The town's Corinium Museum is well-known for its extensive Roman collection. The Roman name for this place was Corinium.

Cirencester lies on the lower dip-slopes of the Cotswold Hills, an outcrop of oolitic limestone. Natural drainage is into the River Churn which flows roughly north to south through the eastern side of the town and joins the Thames near Cricklade a little to the south. The Thames itself rises just a few miles west of Cirencester.

The larger area in the vicinity of Cirencester was known to be an important early Roman area where the Romans built a fort where the Fosse Way crossed the Churn. Even in Roman times, there was a thriving wool trade and industry, which contributed to the growth of Corinium. A large forum and basilica was built over the site of the fort, and archeological evidence shows signs of further civic growth. When a wall was erected around the Roman city in the late second century, it enclosed 240 acres, making Corinium, in area, the second-largest city in Britain.

There are also many Roman remains in the surrounding area, including several Roman villas near the villages of Chedworth and Withington. The Roman amphitheatre still exists in an area known as the Querns to the south west of the city, but has only been partially excavated.

The minster church of Cirencester, founded in the 9th or 10th Century, was probably a royal foundation. It was destroyed by Augustinian monks in the 12th century, and replaced by the great abbey church.

As part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, Henry VIII ordered the total demolition of the Abbey buildings. Today only the Norman Arch and parts of the precinct wall remain above ground, forming the perimeter of a public park in the middle of town. Despite this, the freedom of a borough continued to elude the townspeople, and they only saw the old lord of the manor replaced by a new lord of the manor as the King acquired the abbey's title.

Sheep rearing, wool sales, weaving and cloth-making were the main strengths of England's trade in the Middle Ages, and not only the abbey but many of Cirencester's merchants and clothiers gained wealth and prosperity from the national and international trade. The tombs of these merchants can be seen in the parish church, while their fine houses of Cotswold stone still stand in and around Coxwell Street and Dollar Street. Their wealth funded the rebuilding of the nave of the parish church in 1515-30, to create the large parish church, often referred to as the "Cathedral of the Cotswolds". Other wool churches can be seen in neighbouring Northleach and Chipping Campden.

At the end of the 18th Century Cirencester was a thriving market town, at the centre of a network of turnpike roads with easy access to markets for its produce of grain and wool. In 1789 the opening of a branch of the Thames and Severn Canal provided access to markets further afield, by way of a link through the River Thames. In 1841 a branch railway line was opened to Kemble to provide a link to the Great Western Railway at Swindon.

The loss of canal and the direct rail link encouraged dependency on road transport. An inner ring road system was completed in 1975 in an attempt to reduce congestion in the town centre, which has since been augmented by an outer bypass with the expansion of the A417. Coaches depart from London Road for Victoria in central London and Heathrow Airport, taking advantage of the M4 Motorway. Kemble Station to the west of the town, distinguished by a sheltered garden, is served by fast trains from Paddington via Swindon.

Visit Cirencester as it has an important tourist trade as well as providing shopping, entertainment, and sports facilities for the inhabitants of the town and the surrounding area. Cirencester boasts a number of popular pubs.

To the west of the town is Cirencester House, the seat of Earl Bathurst. The first Earl Bathurst (1684 – 1775) devoted himself to beautifying the fine demesne of Oakley Park, which he planted and adorned with remarkable artificial ruins. On Cotswold Avenue is the site of a Roman amphitheatre which, while buried, retains its shape in the earthen topography of the small park setting.