Giffords Circus Cirencester Review: Is Waterfield Worth It?

There are some things in the Cotswolds that you feel as though you really ought to revisit more often.

Giffords Circus is one of them.

We had been before, but not for years, so on Thursday evening, with Giffords newly arrived at Stratton Meadows on the outskirts of Cirencester for its 2026 run, we went back to see what had changed and whether it still deserved the reputation it has built over more than 25 years.

The first surprise came before we had even reached the tent.

Arriving at Stratton Meadows

We arrived at around 6.45pm for the 7.30pm performance.

Given that the entrance sits directly on a junction off Ermin Street, I had expected getting into the site to be considerably more awkward than it was.

It wasn't.

There was plenty of parking, getting into the field was easy and, despite a surprising number of people already being there, everything felt remarkably relaxed.

Families had deckchairs out beside their cars. Some were eating sandwiches, others had brought slices of pizza and Tupperware boxes, and one group appeared to be having a full picnic from the boot.

There is something rather nice about that.

You are not arriving at an arena, being funnelled through barriers and immediately encouraged towards the nearest overpriced hot dog.

It feels much more like somebody has temporarily dropped a circus into a field.

Parking is included with your ticket and we were probably only 30 seconds to a minute from the Big Top.

Giffords had also laid temporary hardcore style roadways across parts of the field, which meant vehicles were not simply being driven through wet grass.

The actual pedestrian entrance was a little muddy and, after serious rain, I can imagine things getting considerably messier. Given the thought that had already gone into the temporary roadways, though, I suspect they would adapt things if necessary.

There is one other thing worth mentioning.

This is very much an animal field.

There was plenty of evidence of its usual occupants underfoot.

Flip flops, sliders and your favourite open shoes would therefore probably not be my first choice.

Especially after rain.

Before the show

The area around the Big Top is surprisingly compact.

There are the distinctive burgundy circus wagons, food stands, a bar, sweets, merchandise and the tent itself, with people milling around between everything.

It doesn't feel particularly polished or corporate.

That is meant as a compliment.

We bought a portion of chips for £4, which was a decent size, and a pint of lager was £5.50.

For an event, neither struck me as unreasonable.

The bar appeared to have the longest queue of anything we saw, although even that moved reasonably well.

Food orders were particularly well organised.

You ordered, received a number and waited for it to be called. Milk, utensils and sauces were kept on a separate stand so people collecting food were not blocking the counter.

There was red sauce and what looked like mustard.

No brown sauce.

I checked.

Priorities.

The sweets tent looked particularly dangerous.

Not dangerous in the circus sense.

Dangerous in the sense that I knew perfectly well I wasn't capable of walking inside, looking around and leaving without buying anything.

So I kept my distance.

There was also a merchandise stall, although that appeared to be one of the quieter parts of the site.

I had pre ordered a programme when booking our tickets for £5 and it was handed to me as we went into the tent.

The toilets consisted of a toilet trailer alongside additional portable loos.

They were clean when we used them, although the trailer had one slightly strange quirk once darkness fell.

With the lights on inside and curtain style doors, there was rather more visibility from outside than I suspect anyone using the urinals particularly wanted.

A circus with its roots firmly in the Cotswolds

Giffords may travel across southern England, but this is very much a circus with its roots in the Cotswolds.

Nell and Toti Gifford founded it in 2000 around an idea for a small village green circus.

They bought a second hand round white tent, built a maroon and gold showman's wagon and began creating something deliberately intimate.

More than 25 years later, that basic idea is still recognisable.

Giffords creates a completely new production each year, with costumes, scenery, live music, circus acts and theatre all brought together rather than simply presenting one unrelated act after another.

Nell died in 2019, but the circus has continued very much in the spirit she helped establish.

Its Gloucestershire connections remain strong too.

Giffords is based at Fennells Farm near Stroud, performs regularly on Minchinhampton Common and also visits locations including Cirencester and other parts of the Cotswolds during its touring season.

Stratton Meadows itself has become part of the Giffords story.

In 2018, Nell Gifford and landowner Sarah Holland planted an oak tree there to mark 250 years of modern circus in Britain.

We didn't manage to find it.

There is always next time.

Getting into the Big Top

People started forming a queue from around 7pm.

Seating is unreserved, so there is an obvious incentive to arrive reasonably early, although based on our visit I wouldn't panic.

We were allowed into the Big Top at exactly 7.30pm and people were still arriving behind us.

We ended up right at the back on the top row.

Normally that sounds like a fairly dreadful outcome.

Here, it wasn't.

The Big Top looks surprisingly small from outside and you don't really appreciate how many people it holds until everyone is inside.

Even from the very back we felt incredibly close to the ring.

We had also accidentally landed a particularly good position directly behind the stairs, which meant there was nobody seated immediately in front of us.

The only downside was a railing behind the bench, which meant I couldn't lean back properly and spent most of the evening sitting rather straighter than usual.

The benches themselves have cushions and were more comfortable than I expected.

I often end up with a numb backside after a couple of hours sitting in theatre seats.

That didn't happen here.

Possibly because the cushions were good.

Possibly because the railing had forced me into better posture than I have managed voluntarily for years.

Waterfield

The 2026 production is called Waterfield and takes its inspiration from the English countryside.

Ratty and Mole want to make their home in the valley and the story follows them as they encounter the various creatures already living there.

That gives Giffords a framework around which to build the circus acts.

There are jugglers, aerial performers, acrobats, knife throwing, horses, ponies, live music and increasingly improbable woodland creatures.

The first character entered the ring at around 7.40pm.

Almost immediately you could feel the excitement around the tent.

There were lots of families in the audience, but what struck me throughout the evening was just how broad the age range actually was.

In the queue ahead of us was a family group stretching from teenagers and people in their early twenties through parents to a grandfather.

At the front of the tent was an older lady who spent much of the evening clapping along and smiling as though she was having the time of her life.

It was genuinely lovely to watch.

And it became one of my biggest takeaways from the whole evening.

Circus, but not quite as you expect it

I've seen circus shows with motorcycles flying around high above the audience.

This isn't really that sort of circus.

Giffords is softer.

More theatrical.

More elegant.

There are still the familiar ingredients.

Juggling.

Knife throwing.

Aerial performers.

Acrobatics.

The sort of things you would expect when somebody announces that a circus has arrived.

But they are wrapped inside a theatrical production rather than simply presented one after another.

Ratty and Mole provide much of the comedy and link the different parts of the show together.

For me personally, some of those sections were a little bit blah.

The children around us strongly disagreed.

The slapstick worked particularly well with them and Ratty and Mole also serve an important purpose while the ring is being reset between acts.

There is a live band throughout, accompanied by a singer who also helps narrate the show.

She was very good and the live music adds enormously to the atmosphere.

The sound wasn't perfect from where we were sitting, though.

Spoken sections through the microphone could sometimes be very loud without necessarily being particularly clear.

At one point the members of the band were being introduced and I didn't manage to catch a single name.

The acts

If you have seen a lot of high end circus before, there probably isn't an individual discipline here that will be completely new to you.

That isn't a criticism of the performers.

They are extremely talented.

But having seen the likes of Cirque du Soleil and other large circus productions over the years, I wasn't sitting there wondering whether humanity had somehow invented an entirely new way of defying gravity.

What makes Giffords different is the intimacy of it.

You can see faces.

You can hear feet hitting the ring.

You feel close to everything.

My favourite act of the evening was The Cienna Sisters, appearing in Waterfield as the Mantis Sisters.

Their aerial performance was probably the best example of what I liked about the production generally.

It wasn't about making as much noise as possible or constantly trying to shock the audience.

It was controlled, elegant and beautifully performed.

My partner's favourite was considerably less serene.

The Valencia Flyers appear in Waterfield as The Hamsters and perform on two enormous rotating wheels high above the ring.

It produced probably the biggest audience reaction of the night.

Understandably.

Watching people run around the outside of huge rotating wheels several metres above the ground remains considerably more enjoyable when you are sitting safely on a cushioned bench.

A gentler use of animals

Animals have always been part of Giffords and there are horses and ponies in Waterfield.

I was interested to see how this would feel in 2026.

The answer, on this visit at least, was much gentler than I might have expected.

The animals weren't being made to perform elaborate tricks or endlessly parade around the ring.

They felt more like a charming interlude.

One particularly lovely moment involved a huge horse alongside a tiny pony small enough that it could almost walk underneath it.

They looked calm and relaxed and their appearances were relatively brief.

And then there was Brian.

Brian is a goose.

Brian needs very little explanation.

He is a gem.

A circus that seems to understand its audience

There were a couple of small things throughout the evening that suggested Giffords understands that not everyone experiences a busy, noisy show in the same way.

Ear defenders were readily available for anyone who found the volume uncomfortable.

We saw younger children using them as well as visitors with additional needs.

It is a simple thing, but a thoughtful one.

There were also visitors with access requirements being allowed into the tent ahead of the main queue.

Again, it wasn't turned into a big production.

It simply seemed to be part of how the evening worked.

When you are trying to create something for such a broad audience, those small things matter.

The interval

There is a roughly 25 minute interval.

That sounds quite long on paper, but it works.

There is enough time to use the toilets, get food or another drink and make your way back to your seat without feeling rushed.

And if people are slightly late returning, the show doesn't suddenly restart without them.

Ratty and Mole return to the ring and spend a little time messing around, getting everyone seated again and rebuilding the energy before things properly continue.

It's clever.

The best bit wasn't an act

The most dramatic individual moment of Waterfield was probably the Valencia Flyers.

But strangely, that wasn't my favourite part of the evening.

That came at the end.

The distinction between performers and audience starts to disappear.

People are standing, clapping, dancing and bopping along.

The ring suddenly feels less like somewhere you have been watching other people perform and more like somewhere everyone is involved.

It didn't feel forced.

There wasn't that horrible moment where you're avoiding eye contact because somebody with a microphone is clearly searching for their next victim.

People simply joined in.

Children, parents, grandparents.

The older lady we'd noticed earlier was still having an absolutely wonderful time.

And I think that moment explained Giffords better than anything else we'd seen.

Is Giffords Circus just for children?

No.

But I also wouldn't necessarily describe it as a couples night out.

That distinction matters.

There are adults here without very young children and plenty for adults to appreciate.

The skill level is high, the live music is excellent and some of the acts are genuinely impressive.

But where I think Giffords really succeeds is as something an entire family can do together.

There aren't many evenings where you can realistically take small children, teenagers, parents and grandparents and expect all of them to find something to enjoy.

Giffords can do that.

That may explain why some families return year after year.

What did it cost?

We paid £23 per adult ticket for our performance.

Our programme was £5.

Chips were £4.

A pint of lager was £5.50.

Parking was included.

For two of us, I thought that represented pretty good value.

Once you start buying tickets for parents, children, cousins and grandparents, though, the total could obviously become quite substantial.

Which brings me to perhaps my best money saving tip.

Bring food.

Nobody appeared remotely bothered by this and plenty of people were doing exactly that.

Sandwiches, wrapped slices of pizza, sweets, drinks, proper picnics.

You could comfortably arrive an hour early, get the deckchairs out beside the car and eat before walking over to the tent.

Getting out

The show finished at around 9.40pm.

Getting back to the car was easy and we were out of the field without any significant queueing.

The site essentially operates one way in and one way out.

One useful thing to know if you are heading back towards Cheltenham is that the exit is left turn only towards Cirencester.

You will therefore need to continue in that direction and turn around before heading back the other way.

The exit is more or less opposite the Texaco garage, which makes it a useful landmark.

Would we go again?

Yes.

But there is a qualification.

I probably wouldn't book again next year as a couple.

Give it a few years, put on a completely different production and I would happily return.

If my children were younger, though, or we were planning something with the whole family, I could absolutely see Giffords becoming an annual outing.

That is its real strength.

It isn't that you will necessarily see something you have never witnessed at a circus before.

It is the setting, the closeness of the performers, the live music, the humour and the way all of those things come together inside a relatively small tent in a field outside Cirencester.

Most of all, it is seeing a child laughing at Ratty and Mole while somebody's grandfather watches an aerialist above them and an elderly woman in the front row claps along to the music.

There simply aren't that many things you can take all of those people to together.

Giffords is one of them.

And having not been for years, it was easy to understand why people keep coming back.

Giffords Circus at Stratton Meadows

Where: Stratton Meadows, Cirencester
Show: Waterfield
2026 Cirencester dates: 27 August to 7 September
Parking: Included on site
Seating: Unreserved tiered bench seating with cushions
Food and drink: Available on site, or bring your own
Accessibility: Accessible arrangements are available and ear defenders were available during our visit
Our ticket price: £23 per adult
Our verdict: Particularly good for families spanning several generations

After Cirencester, Giffords returns to Fennells Farm near Stroud from 10 to 27 September.

We paid for our own tickets and everything purchased during this visit. This review was not sponsored or arranged by Giffords Circus.