Archive | April, 2009

THE WEAVERS’ COTTAGES OF ARLINGTON ROW

By on April 24, 2009 in arlington row, bibury, Cirencester, cotswolds, weaver, william morris, wool

This video gives you a quick peep at an architectural piece de resistance, the brain-meltingly picturesque Arlington Row, in Bibury, not far from the handsome town of Cirencester. The Cotswold stone cottages once housed weavers who supplied cloth for ‘fulling’ – cleaning wool to remove oil and dirt – at Arlington Mill, also in Bibury. [...]

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WAS WILLIAM MORRIS RIGHT TO CALL BIBURY THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGE IN ENGLAND?

By on April 23, 2009 in bibury, bibury court hotel, bibury trout farm, Cheltenham, river coln, river thames, Swan Hotel Bibury, the swan hotel, Tudor, william morris

Well, according to the craftsman-artist William Morris (above) it is – or was, when he was around in the last half of the 19th century. At that time, of course, the village of Bibury was deep in rural England, and the road through it would have been just a muddy trail. Today, Bibury is best [...]

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POOHSTICKS: A GAME BORN AT THE HOUSE OF POOH CORNER

By on April 2, 2009 in AA Milne, Christopher Robin, dorchester, EH Shepard, Pooh Bear, Pooh Sticks, Poohsticks, river thames, Winnie the Pooh

I wondered where Poohsticks came from, so I tracked down a copy of The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, and there on page 91 we find Pooh inventing the game, by accidentally dropping a fir cone off a bridge. The story develops when Pooh, Rabbit, Roo and Piglet are throwing sticks (easier to [...]

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