The Windrush, the five bridges and the village in miniature

The 'Venice of the Cotswolds' is a tourist's phrase, but it does point at the right thing. What makes Bourton different from the other honey-stone villages around it is the River Windrush running down the middle, beside the High Street, with grass on both banks and stone bridges low enough to sit on.

A river moved to drive the mills

The village visitor site's history says the Windrush once flowed to the south of the village, across the meadows and along what is now Letch Lane, and that by the early sixteenth century it had been channelled through the centre to power three mills. It rises about ten miles away near Taddington, and through Bourton it averages only about ten inches deep; the visitor site adds that it kept flowing even in the drought of 1976. That shallowness is why children can paddle in it in summer and why, once a year, Bourton Rovers can play football in it.

The five bridges

Walking downstream from the top of the village, the visitor site gives the bridges in this order. Mill Bridge, also called Broad Bridge or Big Bridge, was built in 1654 where a ford crossed, beside the mill that is now the Motoring Museum. High Bridge, the footbridge in the middle of the green, dates from 1756. New Bridge, also called Moore Bridge, is the road bridge, built in 1911 by George Frederick Moore, a local benefactor who also built the Victoria Hall and the old cottage hospital on Moore Road. Paynes Bridge, a footbridge, stands beside it; the visitor site's pages disagree on its date, giving both 1756 and 1776. Last comes the Coronation footbridge opposite the Old New Inn, built in 1953 to replace a wooden bridge that, the visitor site says, collapsed under a day visitor. The ford beside it is still in use. Out on the Fosse Way, west of the centre, Bourton Bridge carries the Roman road over the river, with an inscription naming the crossing 'Buruhford of Salmonsbury'.

The village in miniature

Behind the Old New Inn on Rissington Road is the Model Village, and it is better than it sounds. The inn's own history says its landlord, C. A. Morris, had the idea in 1935 of building a precise model of the village in the pub's back garden, in the same local stone as the real buildings. Work started in 1936 and it opened in 1937, in time for the coronation of George VI. It is at one-ninth scale and shows the village as it was in the 1930s, down to the river, the war memorial and a choir singing in each of the churches. Inside it is a model of the Model Village, and inside that another. In 2013 it was listed Grade II, and the inn says it is the only model village in the UK with that protection.

The trick is to walk round it first and then go and find the full-size buildings. The paths are narrow, so pushchairs, walking frames and wheelchairs cannot go in; disabled visitors are let in free through a side gate to see the village from the front. It costs £4.95 for an adult, card only, with no booking.

Older than the bridges

St Lawrence's Church on the High Street is a patchwork. The visitor site says a Saxon church stood here in the early eighth century; the chancel was built in 1328 by Walter de Burhton, the heavy tower with its clock and bells in 1784, and the nave in the 1870s. The Baptists were here early too, and in the 1740s they built a manse for their minister, Benjamin Beddome, who served them for 55 years and wrote hymns. It is now the Old Manse Hotel, by the river on Victoria Street.

Older than all of it is Salmonsbury Camp on the eastern edge of the village, a Neolithic and Iron Age site that is now part of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's Greystones Farm and a Scheduled Monument. Iron Age currency bars from about 300 BC found there are in the British Museum, according to the visitor site, which also derives the name Bourton from the Saxon words for a fort or camp and a settlement. Greystones has a replica Iron Age roundhouse and a Time-Travel Trail, is free to walk round, and is five minutes from the green.

A village that does not close

The visitor site makes a point worth repeating: Bourton is not a theme park, it does not open and close, and there is no entry fee. The river and the bridges are there at 7am and at 9pm, and that is when the stone looks its best.