The Town Behind the Postcard

Cloud presses down on the valley. I step onto a path tangled with ivy that catches at my feet. Across the valley, the 53-metre steeple of St Mary’s Church rises above pale limestone houses and clipped trees shaped like broccoli florets. Wrens chatter overhead while the air hangs still. The hedges lining the lane do not move. Tourist brochures call Painswick the “Queen of the Cotswolds”, a title grown from the medieval wool trade. Behind the honey-coloured stone lies a harder history.

I enter from the southeast along Ticklestone Lane. An old mill now serves as a private house, its gravel drive holding a Mercedes, a Jaguar and an electric Range Rover. The climb from Painswick Stream is steep enough that sweat drips from my forehead. It is half past ten and the lane is empty except for a single woodpigeon lifting and settling again. Along Tibbiwell, I pass an estate agent’s board and check local prices on my phone. The cheapest two-bedroom house is nearly half a million pounds. On Bisley Street, the oldest road in Painswick, a branded holiday cottage company car waits outside a property while former cider houses and wool workers’ homes now operate as tea rooms, boutique stays and short-term lets. The stone remains. The people are gone.

Opposite the tourist information hut stands St Mary’s Church, drawing me from the street into the churchyard. There, more than a hundred yew trees are clipped into shapes that resemble ice lollies. Guidebooks still repeat the claim that only 99 trees are allowed, and that the Devil removes the 100th. The trees now clearly exceed that number; the story survives in print. Near the red and gold clock, a circular dent marks where a Royalist cannonball struck the tower in 1643. The northern wall carries a reddish stain from exploding hand grenades. Inside, three hundred embroidered kneelers line the pews, the same style as in my own church in Devon, made by parishioners in 2000. On a hexagonal pillar, I notice scratched graffiti: Be bolde, Be bolde, be not too bold. An imprisoned Puritan soldier carved it during the Civil War. I sit beneath the crossing and think of my mum, as I do in every church I visit.

Outside, the churchyard opens into a pyramid tomb built for a master mason, set slightly apart from the rest. Victoria Square sits nearby, where the war memorial now stands on the site of the old workhouse for the poor. The lock-up once stood close by, now reduced to a plaque and a break in the street line. The Falcon, once a coaching inn, is now a restaurant. I look at the menu. Main courses start at £26. A laminated notice tied to a lamppost asks drivers not to block emergency vehicles when parking. I pass the former public toilets with GENTS carved into the stone. Now it's an art studio called the "Looovre". I catch passing tourists sniggering.

On St Mary’s Street, I find the spectacle stocks, low to the ground and almost completely hidden behind parked cars. On Friday Street, sheep once walked towards the slaughterhouse, led by an old ram named Judas. In June 1941, eight Luftwaffe bombs fell here, damaging the Catholic church and killing two evacuees.

Further up Gloucester Street, Christ Church stands closed. It shut in 2010 after 350 years of continuous worship. The doors are locked. At Gyde House, the former boys’ orphanage has been turned into luxury apartments. Some locals say the ghosts of the boys still walk its corridors at night.

Vicarage Street carries the smell of pollen from pink hollyhocks outside the Quaker meeting house. Built in 1706, it has only two small windows. The graveyard holds nameless stones. Quakers were buried outside consecrated ground, kept to the edge in life and death. Nearby, a teenager sits alone on a bench, hood up, eyes fixed on his phone. One shop remains for residents. The rest are galleries, cafés and holiday lets. Another house is for sale. A freshly painted door stands open to the street, curtains already hung.

I head towards the car park, where Deep Heat, insect repellent and sun cream hang in the air as runners stretch for the Cotswold Way Relay. A few bend forward, stretching their calf muscles. Others jog in place, shaking out their legs. No one stands still. I watch as they warm up and my breathing shifts, my steps already matching theirs.

Beyond the town, the cloud lifts from the valley floor and sunlight reaches the long grass. The last limestone wall gives way to open fields. Painswick drops out of view.