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Cotswolds Mystery of Barton on the Heath


Cotswolds Mystery from Cotswolds Guided Tours

Cotswolds Guided Tours will take you on a Cotswolds journey through this historic region, sharing with you Cotswolds mysteries of villages, cottages and market towns throughout their 6 hour North Cotswold Tours. We hope to bring the area alive through these blog posts, so share with you the areas secrets & local folklore, that you will not find listed in your normal Cotswolds tour guide books.

Barton on the Heath is a quiet village with a tree-shaded green on which is located a little ‘well house’ the village green is overlooked by Barton House, a handsome 17th Century property. Just beyond the village green you will find a little Norman Church. The lawyer Robert Dover, his wife & son came to live in the village in 1650. Robert Dover was the founder of the ever popular annual event the Cotswolds Olympicks, which takes place at Dover’s Hill on the outskirts of Chipping Campden.

Cotswolds Mystery Tour | Cotswolds Guided Tours

Cotswolds Mystery of Barton on the Heath

This post is regarding a secret cottage located in the small village of Barton on the Heath within the Warwickshire Cotswolds. On your Cotswolds journey you may travel through this quiet village, and as you make your way further along the road to Kitebrook you will encounter a sharp bend, where a weeping ash hangs low over the road. Local legends abound about a highway man who was hanged at this location many years ago. This was quite common

Cotswolds Guided Tours | Secret Cottage | Cotswolds Mystery Tour

throughout rural England, when those arrested for particular crimes would be hung & gibbetted (strung up, often in a chains, once the body had been dipped in tar) as a warning to other locals & travellers that crime would not be tolerated in the region. Often, like those accused of witchcraft, bodies gibbetted would be located on crossroads, so that their eternal souls would not be able to find their way back home. It is said that occasionally the highway man returns, riding his horse passed this point in the road. A little way along from the weeping ash, is a secret cottage, which in turn is said to be haunted, this time by a headless woman who walks around a pond in the garden at night, it is not known if this woman is connected to the phantom highwayman but it seems a foreboding place. Perhaps with this haunted secret cottage & the Cotswold mystery of the highway man it would be best to avoid the area at night!

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