Winchcombe

High Street

St Peter's Church

Gargoyle's

Sudeley Castle

Nearby Walks

Stanway House, near Winchcombe, is a Jacobean manor house, built in soft yellow stone leading up to triangular roofs and quaint chimneys. The majority of the furniture is original; it hasn't been outside the house's walls since the day it was made. Stanway's outbuildings are just as pretty as the manor. The gatehouse impresses with its symmetrical windows, and the unusual curves of its gables. Even the barn is spectacular, with its 14th century timber roof.

Stanway Watermill has also been recently restored to working condition. Just like always, it uses a waterwheel to power a pair of grinding stones. The public are free to watch the process - and buy the resulting product. Stanway's Water Garden is arguably England's finest. The fountain certainly is; it shoots water up 91 metres, using only the power of gravity. This makes it the tallest gravity fountain in the world.

Sudeley Castle is the property of Lord and Lady Ashcombe. The family still live there, but guided tours of their private apartments are conducted on certain days during the summer. Its most famous resident was Katherine Parr, a former queen and the sixth wife of Henry VIII. St. Mary's Chapel, on the castle grounds, contains her marble tomb. A dedicated exhibition displays books she wrote, love letters and a full-length portrait. There are other exhibitions in the former kitchen, stables and banqueting hall.

The gardens are maintained to an exceptionally high standard. They look much as they did in the past, when they had to be good enough for royalty to spend time in. Four queens - Katherine Parr, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth I - visited the centrepiece rose garden, which is why it's now known as the Queen's Garden. It has 70 varieties of old-fashioned rose, and in June it's nothing less than spectacular.