Sapperton is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Cotswold District Cotswold is a local government district in Gloucestershire, England. It is named after the wider Cotswolds region. Its main town is Cirencester. Other notable towns include Tetbury, Moreton-in-Marsh, Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden. ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, about west of

Cirencester Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...

. It is most famous for Sapperton canal tunnel and its connection with the

Cotswold The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

Arts and Crafts Movement in the early 20th century. It had a population of 424, which had reduced to 412 at the 2011 census. The parish includes the villages of Sapperton and Frampton Mansell. The outlying hamlet of Daneway lies in the parish of Bisley, but is nearer to the village of Sapperton and often considered a part of it.

History and architecture

The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 lists the village as ''Sapleton''. There are many interesting buildings in Sapperton associated with the leading designers of the Arts and Crafts movement in the area, as well as the church, primary school, and a pub. Sir Robert Atkyns, the county historian and author of ''The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire'' (1712), lived in the

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals ...

of the village, now demolished, in the early 18th century. The manor was later acquired by the Bathurst family, who still own most of the village and land. Most of the buildings in the eastern part of the village were built (or rebuilt) under the patronage of the Bathurst family in the Cotswold Arts and Crafts style. Upper Dorvel House and Beechanger, designed and built by the brothers Ernest (died 1925) and Sidney Barnsley (died 1926), and the Leasowes, built by their colleague

Ernest Gimson Ernest William Gimson (; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 1919) was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputati ...

(d. 1919) are to the north-east of the Church. Norman Jewson (1884-1975), friend and associate of Gimson, and son-in-law to Ernest Barnsley, lived at Bachelors' Court. His memoir, ''By Chance I did Rove'' (1952; twice reprinted) of village life and his association with the Gimson circle at the turn of the twentieth century is recognised as a minor classic of Cotswold literature. St Kenelm is the parish church. It was last rebuilt during Queen Anne's reign. It contains a

monument A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...

to Sir Robert Atkyns and another to Sir Henry and Lady Anne Poole.

Population

* 1086 - 39 tenants (parish) * 1801 - 351 * 1901 - 422 * 1961 - 377

Famous people

Charles I Charles I may refer to: Kings and emperors * Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings * Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily * Charles I of ...

stayed at Sapperton House on 13 July 1644. *

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...

came here to view the making of the Sapperton Tunnel in 1788. * Sir Richard

Stafford Cripps Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat. A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of La ...

is buried here. * The Sappington family name is said to originate from here.

In film

The village was used for filming most of the outdoor scenes in ''

Cider with Rosie ''Cider with Rosie'' is a 1959 book by Laurie Lee (published in the US as ''Edge of Day: Boyhood in the West of England'', 1960). It is the first book of a trilogy that continues with ''As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning'' (1969) and '' A ...

'' (1998), set in the 1920s and 1930s, with the main street gravelled to overcome the modern road surface.Barbara Hooper, ''Cider with Laurie: Laurie Lee Remembered'' (1999, p. 181

References

External links