Campden History
CADHAS Research
CADHAS has many volunteers researching their own particular interests in Campden’s history and some of these studies have resulted in CADHAS publications and Exhibitions. We shall be featuring some of these occasional studies on this website, so do visit this page again.
Campden’s history
There is nothing to see of Campden before the time of Domesday Book in 1086. The manor was then held by the Earl of Chester, and had been the property of King Harold before 1066. King Henry II gave Campden a Town Charter in about 1175, permitting a weekly market and annual fairs. It is from that time that the name was changed to Chipping Campden, meaning ‘Market’ Campden.
Wool was the source of the growing mediæval prosperity in the town and the sheep, known as ‘Cotswold Lions,’ with their thick fleeces brought wealth to the merchants of the area. William Grevel, ‘the Flower of all the Merchants of England,’ built a house in the High Street in the fourteenth century. His fine brass and those of other wool merchants may be seen in the Church. The Church of St James, though of earlier foundation (at least early thirteenth century), was substantially rebuilt and improved at the expense of the wool merchants and is now one of the finest of the Cotswold Wool Churches.
In the days of King James I, a rich and well-connected London merchant, Sir Baptist Hicks, bought the manor (about 1608). He became the first Viscount Campden and died in 1629. His monument and those of some others of his family and descendants are in the Gainsborough chapel within the Church. Find out more about Sir Baptist Hicks
It was in 1660 that the event occurred that has been the source of many books and plays – the Campden Wonder. What was the Campden Wonder?
The Cotswold Olympicks – otherwise known as Robert Dover’s Games – are held on Dover’s Hill every year. Originally, it is said, the Games started under the aegis of a local lawyer, Robert Dover, and Endymion Porter of Mickleton who was a friend of, and art-collector for, King James I. In the beginning the sports included shin-kicking and similar country pastimes. The games were closed down in the mid-nineteenth century as being too rowdy – but were restarted in the twentieth century and are now much more decorous. Nevertheless they are still great fun with fireworks and a torchlight procession down from Dover’s Hill to the Square to end the day.
Campden changed somewhat in character in 1902 when C.R.Ashbee brought the Guild of Handicrafts here from London. Ashbee was a follower of William Morris and had started the Guild in the East End of London in 1888. Believing that country living was better for handicrafts, he and 150 people moved to Campden.
The Guild was dissolved in 1910 but many of the descendants of the Guildsmen still live in the Town. The Silk Mill in Sheep Street, where Ashbee set up the Guild on the arrival from London still houses many craftsmen. The Hart’s workshop there still carries on the family silversmithing business started by the Guildsman, George Hart.
See our Links page for the Guild of Handicraft Trust’s website
In 2006, the Exhibition featured ‘Campden in the Civil War’. Click here for the full story
Visit this page again as we add more about the history of Campden