This two-night, three-day Study Trip is led by Dr Amy Lim, curator of the Faringdon collection at Buscot Park and Brompton Square and co-chair of the FHS Events Committee.

Staying in Cirencester, our visits will include Cirencester Park, the home of Earl Bathurst, a Georgian mansion with Regency furniture and historic portraits in an important landscape park; Berkeley Castle, a twelfth century castle, still lived in by the original family, with medieval interiors, Tudor furniture and tapestries; Chavenage, an old stone house dating for the most part from 1576 and retaining much of its Elizabethan and Jacobean character, now used as a location for many TV and film productions. Sudeley Castle has been in and out of royal ownership throughout much of its existence. We will focus on the eclectic collection of art, furniture and textiles – from Tudor treasures from Strawberry Hill to a complete William Morris bedroom - introduced by the Dent family, who carried out extensive restoration in the nineteenth century, and whose descendants still live there.

We will explore the leading role of the Cotswolds in the Arts & Crafts movement, with a visit Rodmarton Manor, one of the most complete examples of an English Arts & Crafts house, with interiors by Ernest Barnsley (a follower of William Morris) and local craftsmen. Rodmarton demonstrates a whole belief system put into practice and is still presented as it was completed, by the Biddulph family who commissioned it. The Gordon Russell Design Museum showcases the firm’s pioneering ethos in twentieth-century furniture design and craft, followed by the Court Barn Museum, which tells the story of C.R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft in Chipping Campden. There will also be an opportunity to visit two of the most renowned of the Cotswold ‘wool’ churches.

For further details and an application form, contact events@furniturehistorysociety.org.

Rodmarton Manor.  Photo: Robert Powell via Wikimedia Commons CC3.0