Positioned in the Cotswold’s village of Saintsbury, St Nicholas’s Church is both forlorn and deeply loved: loved and cared for by the local community who have been deeply proactive in maintaining a ‘decommissioned’ church in good repair by finding other uses for it rather than allowing it to crumble and decay; forlorn because of its decommissioning into heritage rather than worship. It may also have something to do with visiting in on a bleak, wet day where it was colder inside than out.
The face high above the door may have been a ‘grotesque’ beloved amongst masons, or simply the tradition of reminding those entering a church that there would be consequences for bad behaviour during the service.
Its history is almost geologically layered, from the original Norman door to C18th box pews, the intervening puritan period of white limewashed walls and plain glass windows, the Jacobean carved altar and altar rails. Catholic worship all but erased. The layers of history are best exemplified in the Baptismal font.
The font possesses the early medieval star pattern along with the later dogtooth pattern associated with the mid to late medieval. It also has a pattern of large square roses increasingly common in the Tudor period, which indicates that it was presumably installed at around that time.
Confronted with a bier with its cheerful message we beat a hasty retreat to the Lygon Arms two or three miles down the road in Broadway.
This was a small treat for ourselves, two nights immersed in history and log fires—immersion in the latter metaphoric. The Inn itself was built sometime in the C14th but rebuilt as we see it now in the early C17th.
Records in 1337 referred to it as the White Hart, which makes me wonder. Richard II didn’t adopt the White Hart as his personal emblem until 1383 and ten years later passed a law requiring inns to display a sign—many of which in a show of misplaced loyalty named themselves the White Hart. The 1377 date might be wrong, the innkeeper highly prescient, or perhaps just a lucky coincidence. Either way what became the Lygon Arms retained its association with Monarchy.
Oliver Cromwell stayed there in 1651 before the Battle of Worcester, Charles I rallied his supporters there. King Edward VII visited as did his grandson, the unfortunate Edward VIII. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor have stayed there, and other guests include Prince Philip, Evelyn Waugh and Kylie Minogue. It is unlikely that future historians will record the Keytons stayed there in February 2026.
From the C17th onwards the Lygon Arms was a coaching inn and in the C18th a staging post for mail coaches on a route that connected London to Wales.
Looking out of our bedroom window, my wife remarked, ‘It’s like we're staying in Wolf Hall.’
I nodded. But less dangerous, other than to our bank balance.
In between beer and log fires, we explored Broadway
And I wondered how much these houses cost.
Above all we ate well. I put on a kilogram that the use of the pool, hot tub and sauna failed to reduce. Even a brisk walk through Broadway failed in that respect though it might have been 2kg without it. But who cares when you can sit in front of a fire with a pint of Cotswolds Brewery Shagweaver.
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