The lowdown of what Gloucestershire has given Britain, including literature, festivals, food ‘n’ drink, famous historical figures …and a Michael Jackson song.
My home county is supposably an innocuous corner of the land. A Liverpudlian housemate testily put it once: ‘Gloucestershire is known for NOTHING’. But is Gloucestershire – Glos for short – known for nothing… or at least some things?
A survey of a Facebook group came up with associations such as ‘Double Gloucester Cheese’, ‘the source of the River Thames’, ‘Severn Bridge’, ‘Dr Foster went to Gloucester’ and ‘the roads that pass through it to get somewhere else’. Was my Scouse chum too far off the mark?
Gloucestershire has actually contributed a good deal to British culture. Read on for a lowdown.
County Profile
First off, an outline of this ceremonial county: Gloucestershire (pronounced: ‘GLOSTER – SHIR in the local accent) is situated in South West England, aka the ‘West Country’.
It is generally a rural county and its three main regions are the Forest of Dean – west of the River Severn; the Severn vale; and the Cotswold hills to the east.
Its main settlements are: Gloucester – its County Town (pop 2011: 136,000); Cheltenham (116,000); Filton, on Bristol’s northern outskirts (59,000); Yate (30,000); Cinderford, in the Forest of Dean (11,000); and Cirencester, in the Cotswolds (16,000)
Glos originates from the 10th Century Anglo Saxon era and was enlarged to its current borders in the 11th Century. It is the 30th largest county in England.
Music
You may be astounded to find out Michael Jackson did a song: Days in Gloucestershire, in which he sings about his ‘lost youth’, a ‘summer’s day in Gloucestershire’ and ‘seeing them laughing in their gardens’ with a dodgy pronunciation of the county name typical of non-Brits. In The Ballad of Mary Foster by platinum-selling folk-rock artist Al Stewart, Al sings of ‘David Foster living in Gloucester with his family’ and the drudgery of a ‘life that drifts slowly by in the provinces’. Going much further back, the Gloucestershire Wassail was a popular Christmas carol from at least the 18th Century and was published in the The Oxford Book of Carols in 1928.
Tahliah Debrett Barnett, stage name: FKA Twigs, is the county’s best selling music artist.
Art
Sir William Rothenstein, a noted war artist and Principle at the Royal College of Art, painted the Barn at Cherington, Gloucestershire in 1935; a property he bought that overlooked the Golden Valley. James Archer’s Scottish Pre-Raphaelitist masterpiece, Summertime, Gloucestershire, painted in 1860 depicts a nostalgic rural summer scene, below.
James Ward an outstanding animal artist of his day painted Gloucestershire Old Spot circa 1803. Turner-winning artist Damien Hirst, meanwhile, has his art factory in Stroud where the car park has millions of pounds worth of his artwork on display.
Literature
Glos has a rich seam of literary heritage. Cider for Rosie is a multimillion-copy bestseller, written by Laurie Lee and first published in 1959. It tells the tale of Lee’s childhood in the village of Slad soon after the First World War, chronicling his experiences of childhood seen from many years later as the traditional village life disappeared with the advent of new developments. Both TV and theatre adaptations of the novel were well received.
Beatrix Potter, world famous for her children’s books that have sold over 250 million copies, wrote The Tailor of Gloucester, published in 1903 and marvellously received with its illustrations for which Potter is renowned. The tale, of a poor tailor assisted by mice to finish a waistcoat, was actually inspired by a true story of a tailor of the city who had been commissioned to make a suit for the Mayor.
JK Rowling, author of the spectacularly successful Harry Potter books, is Glos born and bred and references to the county are numerous. Harry’s ancestors were revealed by Rowling to have lived in Glos, the dastardly adoptive family, the ‘Dursleys’ are named after Dursley market town in just the valley over from my own home-town. And references to the ‘12th Century wizard Linfred of Stinchcombe’ and the ‘Tutshill Tornedoes’ are all county town names. Much of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is set in the Forest of Dean in which Hermione pays tribute to the forest’s beauty, mentioning its famous trees and rivers, and even suggesting to Harry that they remain hidden there to grow old in peace.
Less classical literature to emerge from the county include Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy, a 2000 children’s novel that was adapted into an award-winning play. Carolyn Slaughter’s 1976 novel, The Story of the Weasel, is set in Cirencester and was commended for its “sensitive treatment of fraternal incest in Victorian England and its subtle poetic prose” Candace Camp’s Winterset and US author John Dickson Carr’s The Eight of Swords are also stories set in Glos.
Doctor Foster Went to Gloucester is a classic 19th Century nursery rhyme that was inspired either by King Edward falling off his horse into one of the city’s puddles or perhaps other historical characters getting their feet wet in the swollen Severn.
Food & Drink
The first food which comes to mind when one thinks of Gloucestershire is Double Gloucester Cheese. This is a traditional, semi-hard cheese, originating from the 16th Century and made from the milk of Gloucestershire Cattle. It is popular and sold worldwide. Double Gloucester is, naturally, used in Cooper Hill’s world-famous cheese rolling race (below).
Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs, with their white coats of hair, black spots, and big, floppy ears, are prized for their meat’s fatty, sweet buttery flavour.
As for drinks, Woodchester Valley Vineyard was the toast of the wine world after its 2021 vintage was judged one of the best Sauvignon Blancs in the world!
Meanwhile, Gloucester Brewery, nestled along the city’s historic harbour front has been awarded numerous national CAMRA awards for their beers in recent years.
Crafts
The valleys of the western Cotswold escarpment were thriving cloth manufacturers in times gone by and the area produced the famed ‘Stroud Broadcloth’, described by southunionmills.com as:
“A classic trade item of the fur trade, heavily traded in the eastern and western fur trade. 18th and 19th century trade ledgers describe resist-dyed bound woolens, usually made in Gloucestershire, England, famously, though borderline anachronistically known as ‘Stroud Cloth.’” It is still much prized for its quality and sold around the world.
Films
Hot Fuzz is a 2007 British action comedy in which an elite Metropolitan copper, Sergeant Angel, is exiled from London because he is making the other police officers look mediocre. They send him to Sandford, Gloucestershire, a fictitious village in country-bumkin-land where he’ll remain out of the way. But Angel, played by Glos native Simon Pegg, soon realises the town is not so mundane. He must solve a murder mystery amongst a village of idiots. The film was actually shot in Somerset, however.
The 2019 drama film Official Secrets starring Keira Knightly is set in Cheltenham’s top-secret surveillance centre called GCHQ.
Some scenes of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone were filmed in Gloucester Cathedral and, as mentioned (above) The Forest of Dean is the setting for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movies.
Even in the fantastical Star Wars universe, the Glos landscape finds a place. In Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean is the key location for Rey to encounter enemy Kylo Ren in a lightsaber battle deep in the forest of the planet Takodana. The film’s location manager described it as “like nowhere else, it’s an otherworldly space”.
Festivals
Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is truly world famous as the first of its kind where contestants chase a wheel of cheese down a dangerously steep hill. Although there are other cheese rolling events globally, Gloucestershire’s event is the original, estimated to go back 600 years.
The county also hosts not one but two of the world’s premier equestrian events. The Cheltenham Festival is a four-day race meeting, regarded as 2nd only to the Grand National. The Badminton Horse Trials is one of only seven annual Five Star events as classified by the FEI. It lasts five days in the Cotswold Hills and attracts 200,000 people.
Historical Events and Famous Natives
The most important battle of the War of the Roses, the Battle of Tewkesbury, was fought one mile south of the town in 1471. There, the House of York completely defeated those of the rival House of Lancaster to restore political stability to the kingdom until the passing of King Edward IV 12 years later. Just the year prior England’s last ever private battle occured: the Battle of Nibley Green. The last battle of the English Civil war was also fought in Glos, the Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold in 1646 in which the remnants of the Royalists army was defeated. More recently Concord made its last ever flight and landed at Filton Airfield (right over my head, as it happened) in November, 2003.
This venerable county has given Britain and the world people such as William Tyndale, (pictured) translator of the Latin-language bible and leading figure of the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th Century; Scientist Edward Jenner who pioneered the Vaccination in the late 18th Century; 18th Century cleric George Whitefield was a founder of Methodism and the evangelical movement in the 1700s. John Mcafee founded the McAfee Corp in 1987 and grew up in Cinderford. English actor, comedian and screenwriter Simon Pegg is also a native of Glos. And Michael ‘Wurzel‘ Burston was born in Cheltenham and served in the Gloucestershire Regiment before becoming a guitarist for Motorhead. On the other hand, serial-killers Fred and Rose West lived in Gloucester in the late 20th Century too.
History and Things 
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