Lower Slaughter

Lower Slaughter is justly one of the most celebrated villages in the Cotswolds — a place that seems almost too composed to be accidental. The River Eye runs through the heart of the village in a clear, shallow stream, spanned by a series of small stone bridges and flanked by rows of honey-coloured Cotswold stone cottages. At the eastern end, a Victorian corn mill with its working wheel completes a scene that appears on more calendars than perhaps any other Cotswold location.

Despite its fame and the visitor numbers that come with it, Lower Slaughter is genuinely lovely rather than merely quaint. The architecture is remarkably consistent throughout, almost all in the local limestone style, and the setting along the Eye valley is entirely pastoral. Early mornings and evenings, when the day-trippers have departed, the village reverts to its proper unhurried character — the river running over the gravel, the ducks, the distant sound of jackdaws.

The Old Mill at the eastern end of the village operates as a museum and is one of the most photographed buildings in the Cotswolds. Lower Slaughter Manor, now a hotel, occupies a fine seventeenth-century house close to the church. Footpaths connect easily to Upper Slaughter to the north-west and to Bourton-on-the-Water along the valley, making the whole area ideal walking country.