After my month of living in between the Apple store and the library, I can finally get to sharing the bits from my romp through the Cotswolds I mentioned a couple weeks ago.
Snuggled in Oxfordshire, about 40 minutes west of Oxford lies the adorable and ancient market town of Bampton. With a population of just under 3,000 it's one of the larger Cotswold villages, but retains the charm. It was mentioned as a town from as early as 1086 in the Domesday Book - which, for the longest time I thought people were saying DOOMSday....as in some book about the apocalypse. Like many Cotswold villages, it experienced a boom of prosperity during the Middle Ages from the woollen industry in addition to textiles and leather. St. Mary's church is the dominating feature of the village and although the present church dates back to the remodeling of 1270, evidence points that a former church existed on the site much before the Norman Conquest.
However, in the past few years it's experienced a boom in tourists rather than market goods thanks to...
Yup - Bampton doubles as the village from Downton Abbey. Even though the series is set in Yorkshire, they do almost all of their filming down south.
Needless to say I had to swing/frolic by Mrs. Crawley's house and say hello (and shed some more tears for Matthew).
Downton Abbey fangirl spots aside, my other favourite bit about this tiny village was the sprinkling of beautiful, colourful flowers the tiny streets and front gardens. I've never been a big gardener aside from a phase I went through when I was younger when my dad built me a little garden as a summer project where I grew dozens of terrifyingly large cucumbers - but all of the beautiful gardens in England have converted me to dreaming of a big leafy garden in my backyard in the future.
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