Whittington

The Church and the Village

Inside the church of St Bartholomew, three medieval figures lie carved full-length in stone: two armoured knights and a woman in a wimple. The knights are of the de Croupes family, Sir Richard, who died in 1278, and his son, another Richard, who died in 1326. Around them are an octagonal font, a Norman arch, a fifteenth-century carving of a horned headdress, and the brass of Richard and Margaret Cotton. The building has a twelfth-century core, a weather-boarded bell turret and a stone-slated roof, and was restored around 1872 by Frederick S. Waller. For a long time the dedication was unsettled: the church was recorded as St Michael's in 1750 and had become St Bartholomew's by the 1920s.

Whittington is a small cluster of stone buildings four miles east of Cheltenham, set just off the north side of the A40. The approach leaves the trunk road quickly, and what remains is the church, the manor and a few lanes.

Beside the church stands Whittington Court, a Grade I manor probably begun by Richard Cotton, who died in 1556, with a sixteenth-century main range and a later east wing. Queen Elizabeth I dined here on 9 September 1592, during a progress through Gloucestershire. Inside are a four-centred-arch chimneypiece from around 1590, a Renaissance fireplace, and an oak staircase fitted with an early dog gate. The collections run to Regency bookcases, fossils, Egyptian objects and books from the Whittington Press, and the owner, Jenny Stringer, shows block-printed textiles and eighteenth-century dresses in her studio.

Whittington Court

The house opens to individual visitors only during short advertised seasons, when the garden, the 1614 tithe barn and the church are all included. The visits are self-guided. Check the dates before you travel.

The real reason to stay is the walking. A roughly eight-mile circuit links Andoversford, Whittington and Dowdeswell, crossing fields to the grassy humps of the medieval village that Whittington used to be, then climbing through woodland onto the lower slopes of Cleeve Hill. It joins the Cotswold Way briefly before dropping to Dowdeswell Reservoir, where there are wildfowl and, in spring, one of the area's larger gatherings of common toads. It is 250 metres of ascent and takes the better part of a morning. A 2019 note reports an obscured waymarker on the route; carry a current map.

Across Fields and Woodland

North of Dowdeswell, Arle Grove is an ancient woodland of yellow archangel, herb-Paris and bluebells, though it is presently closed for storm damage and ash dieback.

There is no pub in Whittington itself. The nearest is the Royal Oak in Andoversford, a country pub off the A40 that has been serving since 1628, with real fires, a large covered terrace and dogs allowed. The menu changes, but has run to crispy Cornish brie with cranberry sauce, pan-fried lamb's liver with smoked bacon and mash, battered fish with peas and tartare sauce, and treacle tart. There are pizzas and vegetarian dishes as well.

Food, Transport and the Old Record

Cheltenham Spa is about five miles away, and the X52 between Cheltenham and Oxford stops at Whittington Turn, a short walk from the Court. It is worth checking the current timetable rather than trusting a printed one. Directions work better by the house name than by the postcode alone.

The record here is old and unusually itemised. Domesday counted eleven households in 1086, six villagers, four smallholders and one rider, with a mill worth ten shillings. The manor was worth three pounds a year, down from five before the Conquest. In 1375 an inquiry was ordered after armed men came to Whittington and drove off three oxen and a cow, valued at four marks, belonging to tenants of John, King of Castile.

Roman Ground and Enduring Landmarks

Beneath the fields around the Court lies a Roman villa, scheduled along with the old village. For mosaics, hypocausts and a bath-house you go on to Chedworth, further into the hills, where the remains are uncovered and a museum sits beside them.

Arthur Mee described the church and the Court together as "the great house and God's house ... a grand old yew tree, and the Moat which protected them both." The yew and the earthworks of the moat still stand beside the church.