Northleach

Northleach is the wool town the coaches forget, which is much of its charm. It stands where the Fosse Way crosses the old Gloucester road, laid out by Gloucester Abbey around a market square that has kept its medieval shape, and for two centuries from about 1340 it grew rich on the backs of the Cotswold sheep.

The proof is the church. St Peter and St Paul is one of the great wool churches, so fine that it is sometimes called the cathedral of the Cotswolds, and it was paid for by the merchants whose memorial brasses still lie in the floor, their feet resting on woolpacks and sheep, their personal wool marks beside them. On the road through the town stands the old house of correction, a model prison built in 1791 on the reforming principles of the day.

The town itself is small and largely unbothered, a square, some good stone, a pub or two, and not a great deal laid on for visitors.

That suits the place, and it suits the sort of people who have always preferred the Cotswolds with the volume down. The money here was never loud. It still isn't.