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Northleach has a population of about 2,000 people. It is a small and unspoiled town, with some fine 15th - 18th century houses in the centre of the town, which is a conservation area. The main road through the town is the old A40. The centre of the town was by-passed about 20 years ago, so now it is a quiet place missed by many visitors to the area.
The town has three pubs: The Sherbourne Arms, The Wheatsheaf Inn both of which serve midday and evening meals, and The Red Lion Inn. There is also a Sports and Social Club, a Mechanical Music museum, and a shop selling Dolls Houses, and the famous Church..
The Church of St Peter and St Paul in Northleach is known as The Cathedral of the Cotswolds. The Church dates from the early 12th century. Much of the current Church dates from the 1400s when the town was prospering from the wool trade. The windows are particularly fine
The Abbey of Gloucester owned the land round the town from about 780 AD and they decided to build a town here shaped like a "Y" lying on its side. Eighty burgage plots were laid out and the market place was in the fork of the "Y". The town was built on the north of the River Leach - the name comes from the Saxon word Leece - a stream; and so the town was called Northleach. The burgage plots each had a frontage of two rods and went back for twenty rods ( 11 yards by 110 yards). The long back gardens were to give each family the opportunity to support itself, growing food and keeping animals. There are still 'cow passages' from the front door to the rear of the houses in many of the properties around the market place today. Look for the wider doors, and doorways which look as though they used to be wider. Very often, you will find that, behind the door, lies a passage, or the cow passage has been incorporated into the house. It was usual for one cow passage to serve a number of adjacent houses, so not every house had to have one.
In the church are many memorial brasses commemorating the wool merchants on who’s wealth the town is based, and who paid fr the substantial rebuilding and enlargement of the church in the 1400’s.
There have for many years, been stories that the town has tunnels underneath it, mostly centered around access to the church, and linked with tales of priest holes. It could just be that stone for building was mined by sinking a deep shaft and driving tunnels into the rock. In 1937 the garden of Guggle Cottage in West End gave way revealing a hole almost sixty feet deep. At the bottom was a room with barrel vaulting and tunnels radiating in various directions. There are also reports of tunnels being found, and destroyed when the road foundations were replaced. There is more mystery than fact known about them.
To the west of the town by the traffic lights is the Old Prison, which now houses the Cotswold Collection, a collection of agricultural equipment, which will now be open in the summer months. There is also a cafe, Blades, which is open every day throughout the year.
In the snows of January 2007, the church looked very different!
Other attractions in the town include Keith Harding’s World of Mechanical Music and Fothergill’s Gallery.
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