Stroud

Stroud district sits where the southern Cotswold Hills give way to the Severn Vale. The landscape is a patchwork of steep valleys carved by the River Frome, limestone commons such as Minchinhampton and Rodborough where cattle still graze, and bands of former mill towns. The Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty covers large parts of the northern district, and the valleys contain stone-built mills and narrow channels that record the area’s 18th- and 19th-century cloth industry.

Towns include Stroud itself, Nailsworth, Dursley, Stonehouse and Berkeley, the last of which has a medieval castle within the district. Local food and craft remain important: Stroud’s regular farmers’ market, set up in the late 1990s, helped launch the modern farmers’ market movement in the UK and still gathers producers from the surrounding hills. There are walking routes across commons and along valley paths, and small industrial heritage sites and museums that interpret the district’s weaving and milling past.