Upper Slaughter

Upper Slaughter is the elder and quieter of the two Slaughters, a mile up the River Eye from its neighbour and far less visited. There are no shops. There is a ford where the lane crosses the stream, a green, the church of St Peter on its rise, and a scatter of stone cottages, some of them remodelled in 1906 by the architect Edwin Lutyens. The Lords of the Manor, a country-house hotel, sits at the edge of it in its own grounds.

The village holds a rare distinction. It is one of the small number of doubly thankful villages in England, places that lost no one in either world war. Every man who went from here came home, twice over. A plaque in the village records it, quietly, the way the place records everything.

Walkers pass through on the Warden's Way between the two Slaughters and on toward Bourton. Most visitors to the valley never come this far up.

That is the whole appeal of it. Upper Slaughter does not perform. It is simply lived in, well and privately, and it would rather you walked on through.