3. History
• in the Domesday Book (1086), a record of survey done under William the
Conqueror, the place is named Becheberie, and it is recorded that the
lands and church in Bibury were held by St. Mary's Priory at Worcester,
from whom it passed in 1130 to the Abbey of Osney, near Oxford: the
Abbey continued to hold it until its dissolution in 1540.
• The Church of England parish church of St Mary is very late Saxon with
later additions and listed in the top of the three heritage/architecture
categories, Grade I. Its main material is random (cobblestone)
and coursed rubble limestone with a slate roof. It is formed of a nave with
north and south aisles, south porch, north west tower and chancel, tower,
arched doorways. There is an early canonical sundial on the south wall.
From AD 1130 until the English Reformation during the sixteenth century,
it was a peculier of Osney Abbey in Oxford
4. Visitor attractions
• The nineteenth-century artist and craftsman William Morris called Bibury
"the most beautiful village in England" when he visited it.
• The village is known for its honey-coloured seventeenth century stone
cottages with steeply pitched roofs, which once housed weavers who
supplied cloth for fulling at nearby Arlington Mill. Until the 1980s, that
building also housed the museum of Arlington Mill with a collection of
period clothing, before it was shifted to Barnsley House.The Mill is now a
private residence.
5. Geography
• The Coln, a tributary of Thames, flows in a very steep valley in
Thames Basin terms south-eastwards. It flows alongside the
midsection of Bibury (with Arlington)'s main street
which doglegs to achieve this. Each side has a similar
concentration and scale of development; each bank's
development falls mainly in the Bibury conservation
area which has an insightful district surveyor's statement for
building owners and visitors.