The
Showman was King in Stow. The town is an open theatre of great
squares and spaces all meant to fill with sheep, cattle, and
noisy exchanges of cash for pony or horse. The town was created
at the top of a Cotswold hill to hold fairs and markets and
all the drama of barter. Henry I granted a market charter to
the town in 1107 and from that moment Stow was rich and successful.
 The
most splendid of the silvery-grey stone buildings of the town
are inns. They show it was a place to gather and be seen striking
a keen bargain. A place of medieval posers feeling the fleece
or having the wool pulled over their eyes. Stow gently fell
asleep in the 19th century but raised an eye-lid with the coming
of the car and the tourist in search of the Cotswold idyll.
Today
most bargaining concerns the acquisition of an oak coffer,
antique map or impressionist landscape. Stow is now a centre
of excellence in all matters antique, and the setting is perfect
for this purpose. There are a host of alleys and courts packed
with specialist antique shops. It does seem that a dozen roads,
all ancient trade routes, radiate from Stow and in every direction
magnificent views open up from the high town of the Cotswolds.
In fact it is the highest town and very proud of it. Summer
visitors, padding happily around the great square, must wonder
about all this nonsense "Stow-on-the-Wold-where-the-wind-blows-Cold" but,
believe me, in the Winter the rhyme works.
Very
little of the green grass of the squares is trampled into mud
by livestock these days although the horse-fair still brings
medieval confusion for a week each year. One side of the great
square has a market cross and the greener side a stocks to
humiliate the naughty. The Roman military road Greener St (Fosseway)
puts Stow on the map of the Ancient World, but even earlier
traces of a hill-fort push Stow into that time when man carved
giants into hill-sides and collected the sun in stone circles.
In
St. Edward's House, overlooking the cross, you can find a pleasing
but very eccentric homage to classical architecture. It has
grand Corinthian pilasters that rise nervously to a splendid
cornice worthy of Rome. However, the impression is of doll's
house that has been touched by a magic wand and made to grow
big.
In
this very English town you can find France and a thousand books
on all things French. You can find India, Japan and China.
You can find Royalist and Roundhead, and tales of Sir Jacob
Astley kept after the battle of 1646. In Stow you can find
something mystical, something very big called Tesco, and cosy
inns that claim hundreds of years to shepherd and King.
(The
Prince Rudolphus Von Furstenberg, for GlosCounty, 1999) |
