No going back

By the time the monarchy was restored in 1660, the ravages of the Civil War had wrought so much damage on our mighty oaks and imposing castles that the landscape had changed forever, says Anna Keay

- Anna Keay

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 of Campden House. On a Saturday evening in May 1645, in the midst of the Civil War, Charles I rode over Broadway Hill and the night sky was lit up by the leaping flames that consumed the great house. The torch had been touched to its timbers not by Parliamentarians, but by a retreating Royalist garrison, determined to prevent their enemies from making this strategic spot their own.

The destruction of the years of the English Civil War was immense. More than 130,000 died and tens of thousands were made homeless. Almost 200 country houses were destroyed and more than 150 towns were extensively damaged. Royalists and Parliamentarians alike wrought destruction. Some towns and cities were hammered by actual fighting, Colchester and Pontefract among them. Others saw wholesale demolition in anticipation of attack. Churches were targeted by Puritans, inside and out, their monuments and fittings considered abominably ‘Papist’. Stained glass was smashed, altars torn down and cathedral spires, such as that at Lichfield, bombarded with artillery.