#castle combe

No new house has been built in this English village since the 1600s.

The ones you are looking at are, more or less, the same ones that stood here four hundred years ago.

This place is called Castle Combe, and it lies on the southern edge of the Cotswolds.

It grew rich during the Middle Ages through the wool trade.

The fast water of the By Brook, which carved the narrow valley in which the village sits, powered the mills that cleaned and thickened the cloth, while the weavers lived in the beautiful stone cottages that still line the streets.

It produced a distinctive red and white cloth known simply as Castlecombe, which was sold in Bristol, London and many other places.

When the wool trade faded, so did the money. The village more or less stood still, and what was already there remained.