Sunset at Castle Combe by Jeroen de Jongh Photography

About "Sunset at Castle Combe"

by Jeroen de Jongh Photography

About the artwork

Castle Combe is a village and civil parish in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wiltshire, England. No new houses have been built in the historic area since about 1600. Castle Combe was named the most beautiful village in England in 1961.

A Roman villa once stood about five miles from the village, indicating Roman occupation of the area. The site has been excavated at least three times, the first by Scrope in 1852 and the most recent in 2010. Some reports refer to the site as the North Wraxall or the Truckle Hill villa. Evidence of a bathhouse and corn drying ovens were found, the latter from the 4th century. The villa itself apparently contained 16 rooms, and there were additional buildings and a cemetery. Not far from the villa, in 1985, Neolithic flint tools and Iron Age brooches were also discovered.

The village takes its name from the 12th-century castle that stood about 500 m to the north. On the site where the castle once stood, only the old earthwork and masonry now stand, estimated to date from the 12th century. The 14th-century market cross, erected when the privilege was granted to hold a weekly market at Castle Combe, stands where the three main streets of the lower village meet.

By the 17th century, John Aubrey declared that a market was held on the site of the old castle. In the late 18th century, the level of the Bybrook River dropped so that it could no longer be used to power mills. During that century, the cloth industry began to leave the area; "industrial prosperity was over and the population was declining." Notable houses include the Dower House, from the late 17th century which is now listed.