Snowshill
Snowshill is one of the most perfectly preserved villages in the Cotswolds, a small settlement of honey-coloured limestone buildings on the western escarpment above Broadway whose combination of the village green, the cluster of fifteenth and sixteenth-century cottages and the extraordinary contents of Snowshill Manor creates one of the most rewarding and most distinctive destinations in the Cotswolds. The National Trust manages Snowshill Manor and its unusual contents, and the village itself provides one of the finest examples of organic Cotswold village development without commercial intrusion. Snowshill Manor is famous for the collection assembled by its eccentric owner Charles Paget Wade between 1919 and 1956, a vast and extraordinary accumulation of objects from across the world and across time that fills every room and corridor of the manor house and overflows into the outbuildings. Wade collected with no dominant theme beyond the aesthetic pleasure of unusual or finely crafted objects, and the resulting collection includes Japanese samurai armour, Flemish weaving tools, children's toys, clocks, musical instruments, bicycles, farm tools, spinning wheels and thousands of other objects whose accumulation in this particular Cotswold manor house is one of the most surprising and most memorable house contents in Britain. Wade himself slept not in the manor but in a small cottage in the garden, preferring to keep the house as an undisturbed museum of his collection, and his relationship with his objects was intimate and intensely personal. The garden he created at Snowshill, with its terraced compartments and strong geometry, provides an excellent formal setting for the eccentric contents of the house. The village of Snowshill is also close to the Cotswold Lavender farm that provides spectacular summer flowering on the hillside above.