No going back
THE perfect Jacobean banqueting houses of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, are one of the gems of the English landscape. Glorious ornamented stone pavilions rise from a level terrace of swaying grass and grazing sheep in the Cotswold countryside. They are as elegant and uplifting a sight as you could hope to see. Coachloads of tourists peer over the precinct wall for a glimpse of their loveliness. Yet, these solitary stone sentinels are, like the landscape itself, not unchanged survivors, but orphans of the most eventful 15 years in English history.
In the space between them stands a tiny scorched remnant of what once was: the Jacobean pile
