Cirencester Walking Tour: A Guide to the Town’s Tall Tales and History

Journey back in time on a walking tour around Cirencester, the Capital of the Cotswolds and once the second largest town in Roman Britain.

Starting in front of the 150-year-old Corn Hall Indoor Market, I’ll show you the town’s main sites, reveal the myths that surround it and share its lesser-known history. You’ll have the opportunity to see the Corinium Museum and its collection of Roman mosaics which were produced by craftsmen in the town, the ‘wool church’ of St John Baptist and the fine honey-coloured stone merchants’ houses. Along the way, you’ll hear how Cirencester became the centre of the Cotswold wool trade, famous throughout medieval Europe for the quality of its wool. I’ll also tell you the origins behind terms like ‘daylight robbery,’ and ‘teetotallers,’ and how a Danish king is rumoured to have used flaming sparrows to capture the town.

On this stroll around town, you can expect to see:

• The magnificent South Porch of St John the Baptist Church, described as the ‘most splendid of all English church porches’
• Anne Boleyn’s silver gilt chalice which is believed to be the last thing she touched before her execution
• Bathurst Estate’s Great Yew Hedge, the tallest in the world
• Cecily Hill, the most exclusive street in Cirencester
• Britain’s longest tree-lined avenue and the vast 14½ thousand-acre Cirencester Park
• Historic Coxwell Street which has hardly changed in the last 300 years
• A 12th-century abbey gatehouse, the only surviving building of the Augustinian Abbey of St Mary
• The remains of Cirencester’s Roman town walls.

By the end of the tour, you’ll have the answers to questions like:

• Why don’t Cotswolds Lions roar?
• Why did King Henry IV give Cirencester money to rebuild the parish church?
• How did Black Jack Street get its name?
• What are the medicinal properties of the yew tree?
• How did a poet design a park?
• Why did the Romans leave Britain?
• What is a ‘mitred abbey’?

This 90-minute guide to Cirencester ends with a stroll beside the lake in the Abbey Gardens Park before returning to the centre of the town. So join me to hear the town’s tall tales and find its historical hotspots!