The first mention of Wotten-under-Edge came in 940AD was in the Anglo-Saxon royal charter of King Edmund I, when four hides (archaic Saxon measurement of land, one hide being enough to support a household) in Wudetun were leased toa chap called Eadric. The town sits on the southern fringes of the Cotswolds, in the shadow of the escarpment, the ‘edge’ in the town’s name.

Like a lot of Gloucestershire’s towns prosperity really arrived in the 17th and 18th century with the wool trade. The Cotswold lion, the local breed of sheep, and the rolling green hills of the region produced exceptionally fine cloth that was in high demand in the rest of the country as well as the continent. The cloth of the English redcoats came from the country.

The Industrial Revolution largely skipped the town as the Victorians favoured other towns with better transportation like Stroud and Dursley which gives Wotton a rich legacy of largely untouched architecture from the late Medieval, Jacobean and Regency eras.

When I visited the sky was overcast, and the picturesque town had a vaguely eerie feel to it, a perfect setting for a spooky film if anyoneis listening. It also has a lot of unused doors.