A small stream crosses the green at Broadwell and the road simply runs through it, fording the water rather than bridging it. The stream is a tributary of the Evenlode, the green is wide and open, and Cotswold-stone cottages stand around all four sides of it. The land rises behind the village towards Stow-on-the-Wold, about a mile and a half to the south over the hill. You could sit on one of the public seats on the green.
The Fox Inn sits on the green. It is run by Peter Creed and Tom Noest, who describe the cooking as simple British pub food and put offal and game on the menu when the season allows. Named dishes include steak frites, a whole roast chicken to share with triple-cooked chips, Conygree Farm salad and aioli, and a fondue for two. One diner singled out the cheese soufflé, the Sunday roasts and the sticky toffee pudding, and called the setting lovely. There is a large beer garden. The pub is owned by nearby Donnington Brewery and pours the brewery's traditional English ales, which you can follow to their source: at Donnington the River Dikler still turns a large waterwheel, and the warden walk from Stow passes it on the way through.
That walk, the Cotswold Voluntary Wardens' circuit from Stow, threads through Maugersbury, Lower and Upper Swell, Donnington and Broadwell along the Macmillan Way, taking in the River Dikler, St Paul's churchyard, the Fox and the green. It runs to roughly four hours. A longer option, the 6.8-mile Broadwell–Oddingtons–Broadwell circuit credited to Ron and Jenny Glynn, links the village with Lower and Upper Oddington across fields, trees and streams; it involves some road walking, including narrow lanes where cars move quickly, so keep dogs on the lead near the road. For shops and services, Stow is the nearest market town, reachable on foot over the hill or by the A429, the old Fosse Way, which runs just to the west. Daylesford Organic at Kingham, with its farmshop, café, bakery and creamery, is the place the Fox points guests towards. The nearest railway station is at Moreton-in-Marsh, which has parking, taxis and step-free access to both platforms.
The Church of St Paul is Grade II* listed. The nave and chancel keep 12th-century fabric, the south aisle and its four-bay arcade are 13th century, the three-stage tower is 15th, and the whole was restored in the 1860s. Set into the walls is a reused 12th-century tympanum carved with rosettes, interlocking semicircles and a chequerboard pattern, and the porch holds a possibly Saxo-Norman fragment among pieces of medieval grave-slab. Inside there is a 14th-century piscina, an early-15th-century quatrefoil font, and alabaster figures of Herbert Weston, who died in 1635, kneeling with his wife and child. In the churchyard stands a group of 17th-century bale tombs, one carved with four kneeling mourners on each of its sides.
Broadwell belonged to Evesham Abbey for more than eight hundred years, starting with a gift from Cenred of Mercia in 708. A 13th-century manor rent was set at 900 eggs, twelve cooking pots and threepence. In the Domesday Book the place appears as Bradewelle, held by the abbey in Salmonsbury hundred, with 53 recorded households and a value of £12, up from £8 twenty years earlier. The Grade II* Manor House keeps a 17th-century wing but was rebuilt after a fire in 1757 by Mary Chamberlayne and her husband, Dr Thomas Chamberlayne, and a Roman villa site, a scheduled monument, lies 275 metres north-west of the church.
It was given to the village by Lord Ashton in the late 20th century. On a fine afternoon it is somewhere to spread a picnic, with the ford at one edge.
