Bibury, the Coln Valley, Heythrop and Southrop
William Morris called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and the quiet Coln Valley villages around it are just as rewarding.
Bibury is the best known name in this part of the Cotswolds, but it is really the gateway to a wider cluster of villages worth exploring together. Along the River Coln and in the quiet countryside around it sit Coln St Aldwyns, a genuine estate village largely untouched by tourism; Southrop, home to one of the Cotswolds’ most talked-about destination hotels; and Heythrop, a small Oxfordshire village with a grand baroque house of its own. This guide covers all four, from Bibury’s famous row of cottages to the villages and houses around it.
Bibury and the Coln Valley at a Glance
| Location | The Coln Valley, Gloucestershire, between Cirencester and Burford |
| Known as | Home to Arlington Row, called by William Morris “the most beautiful village in England” |
| Distance from Cirencester | Around 7 miles; about 15 minutes by car |
| Distance from Burford | Around 10 miles; about 20 minutes by car |
| Distance from London | Around 90 miles; roughly 2 hours by car |
| Best known for | Arlington Row, Bibury Trout Farm, Coln St Aldwyns’ estate village, Heythrop House and Southrop’s Thyme estate |
Exploring Bibury and Arlington Row
Bibury’s fame rests on Arlington Row, a line of steeply gabled stone cottages on the far bank of the River Coln from the main village, built as a monastic wool store in the fourteenth century before being converted into weavers’ cottages in the seventeenth, at a time when the Cotswolds was among the wealthiest cloth-producing regions in Europe. In the 1880s, the designer William Morris — founder of the Arts and Crafts movement — called Bibury “the most beautiful village in England,” a line that has shaped the village’s reputation ever since; in September 2025, Forbes went further still, naming it the most beautiful village in the world. Arlington Row is famous enough to have appeared on the inside cover of British passports.
Alongside the river, Bibury Trout Farm, founded in 1902 by the naturalist Arthur Severn to restock local rivers with native brown trout, is England’s oldest working trout farm, its fifteen acres in the Coln Valley still spawning up to six million trout ova a year — a genuinely good stop for families, with a farm shop and the chance to feed the fish.
Where to Eat and Drink in the Coln Valley
Dining in this cluster of villages ranges from an unpretentious village pub to one of the Cotswolds’ most talked-about destination hotels.
- The Swan, Southrop’s village pub, has served food and drink since at least 1606, when it operated as a bakehouse for local farm workers; today, under the Thyme estate, it pairs roaring fires and higgledy-piggledy furniture with hearty, produce-led cooking.
- Thyme, the wider Southrop estate run by Caryn Hibbert since 2002, grows or farms nearly everything served across its restaurant and bar from its own two-acre kitchen garden and rare-breed sheep, alongside a spa, cookery school and cottages.
For a wider view of dining across the region, the best restaurants in the Cotswolds and the best country pubs in the Cotswolds set the area’s options in context.