Bibury 

• Bibury is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on both banks of the River Coln which rises in the same (Cotswold) District and which is a Thames tributary. The village is centred 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Cirencester. Arlington Row here is a nationally notable architectural conservatior area depicted on the inside cover of all United Kingdom passports. It is a main tourist destination for tourist visiting the traditional rural villages, teahouses and many ornate protected buildings of the Cotswold District, accordingly it is one of six places in the country featured in Mini-Europe, Brussels.

History

• in the Domesday Book (1086), a record of survey done under William the Conqueror, the place is named Becheberie, and it is recorded that the lands and church in Bibury were held by St. Mary's Priory at Worcester, from whom it passed in 1130 to the Abbey of Osney, near Oxford: the Abbey continued to hold it until its dissolution in 1540.

• The Church of England parish church of St Mary is very late Saxon with later additions and listed in the top of the three heritage/architecture categories, Grade I. Its main material is random (cobblestone) and coursed rubble limestone with a slate roof. It is formed of a nave with north and south aisles, south porch, north west tower and chancel, tower, arched doorways. There is an early canonical sundial on the south wall. From AD 1130 until the English Reformation during the sixteenth century, it was a peculier of Osney Abbey in Oxford

Visitor attractions

• The nineteenth-century artist and craftsman William Morris called Bibury "the most beautiful village in England" when he visited it.

• The village is known for its honey-coloured seventeenth century stone cottages with steeply pitched roofs, which once housed weavers who supplied cloth for fulling at nearby Arlington Mill. Until the 1980s, that building also housed the museum of Arlington Mill with a collection of period clothing, before it was shifted to Barnsley House.The Mill is now a private residence.

Geography

• The Coln, a tributary of Thames, flows in a very steep valley in Thames Basin terms south-eastwards. It flows alongside the midsection of Bibury (with Arlington)'s main street which doglegs to achieve this. Each side has a similar concentration and scale of development; each bank's development falls mainly in the Bibury conservation area which has an insightful district surveyor's statement for building owners and visitors.

Projet realised

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