Arlington Row, in the beautiful village of Bibury in the Cotswolds, is an extremely popular place to visit. The cottages in the row were originally built in 1380 as a monastic wool store but were converted in the seventeenth-century into weavers’ cottages.
Both Henry Ford, who tried to buy the entire row of cottages to ship them back to his history theme park in Michigan and William Morris, who described Bibury as “the most beautiful village in England”, were much taken with Arlington Row. The rich and famous are not the only people to be impressed, however, as the row of cottages is now one of the most photographed and visited tourist-spots in the Cotswolds.
The village is extremely aesthetic and appealing. The visitor to Bibury and in particular to Arlington Row may feel as if they have entered a scene from a past time. The row of cottages wends its way up a gentle hill with a rushing stream at the bottom and the atmosphere is very peaceful (despite the large number of visitors at certain times of year!) The houses are built with grey stone that is mellowing with age and moss and lichen can be seen growing on the haphazardly-tiled roofs. The houses themselves seem completely unchanged from the 1600’s and there is a real sense of history here.
The weavers for whom the cottages were built, supplied cloth to nearby Arlington Mill. The mill is situated in the Rack Isle area of the village, so-called because the mill-workers used to hang out the cloth on racks to dry outside, once it had been degreased. The degreasing process was called “fulling” and involved the cloth being cleaned and thickened.
The mill still contains some machinery and now has an interesting folk museum. The mill-stream flows past Arlington Row and out into the River Coln.