Choose Chipping Norton

Chipping Norton is a bustling Cotswold market town and ‘Gateway to the Cotswolds’; it’s a fantastic place to visit and a market is held there every Wednesday and a Farmers’ Market on the third Saturday of each month. The town has some great shopping and a good choice of places to eat and drink.

There is a town guide and a town trail available to download that take in some of the highlights in and around Chipping Norton, as well as a number of walks into the surrounding countryside.

Within the town itself don’t miss the Grade I listed Church of St Mary the Virgin and the Owen Mumford Gallery within the Theatre Chipping Norton. The gallery, which has free admission, is open on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 11am-3pm. From Wednesday 26 March to Wednesday 16 April, the gallery is showing drawings and sketchings by the theatre’s artist-in-residence, Chris Forthergill.

The Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton

Just 2.5 miles from Chipping Norton lie the mysterious Rollright Stones: a prehistoric standing stone circle. Legend tells us that a king and his army were marching over the Cotswolds when they met a witch, who addressed the king...

"Seven long strides thou shalt take, and If Long Compton thou canst see King of England shalt thou be"

The king strode forward confidently but on his seventh stride the ground rose obscuring his view of the village below. The witch then turned the men to stone, the king overlooking Long Compton, his men standing in a circle nearby, and his five knights whispering treachery a little further off.

Another free attraction not far from Chipping Norton is the Churchill and Sarsden Heritage Centre housed in the remains of the old medieval church and overlooking the site of the ‘lost’ village of Churchill, destroyed by fire in 1684. The centre is open on weekend afternoons (2 - 4.30pm) from 5 April.

All Saints Church, in the ‘modern’ village of Churchill, was built in 1826 and features a tower that is a scaled down version of that on Magdalene College in Oxford and a hammer beam roof copied from Christ Church in Oxford.