Читать книгу The Cotswold Way. NATIONAL TRAIL Two-way trail guide - Chipping Campden to Bath онлайн

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By the Middle Ages the wolds were almost entirely given over to grazing these sheep, and the wool masters used their great wealth to build some of the grand houses and elegant churches (complete with lavish stained glass and intricate carvings) that now form such a feature of the Cotswold Way. Chipping Campden owes both its charm and its architectural splendour to the wool masters; its church is a monument built on the proceeds of wool sales, as are those at Wotton-under-Edge and several other places along the route.

The decline in the export of raw wool began in the early 15th century with crippling taxes. (Revenue from wool at one time accounted for more than half of England’s fortune.) But this decline was partly addressed by the home manufacture of cloth, when the new masters of the Cotswolds were mill owners and middlemen who built fine houses for themselves in Painswick and the Stroud Valley, taking over from the sheep owners as financiers of a fresh spate of church building, creating a new middle class in the process.