A Cotswold wool town of honey-coloured stone, and the home, since 1902, of the last working workshop of the Arts and Crafts movement.
AR-0014
A beta site · In partnership with
Chipping Campden is the archive’s first deep-partnership town - the beta for how The England Archive documents a place in full and then replicates it across the country. We are building this record together with the Chipping Campden History Society, whose decades of local research stand behind it.
Visit the History Society →Chipping Campden is one of the most complete medieval wool towns in England, a single curving High Street of honey-coloured oolitic limestone that has been added to but never broken since the fourteenth century. Its wealth came from the Cotswold wool trade, and the names of the merchants who made that wealth - chief among them William Greville - are written into its great Perpendicular church and its terraced frontages.
It is also, and this is the rarer thing, the place where the Arts and Crafts movement put down its deepest roots. In 1902 C. R. Ashbee moved his Guild of Handicraft out of the East End of London and into the Old Silk Mill on Sheep Street - some hundred and fifty men, women and children, a whole social experiment, transplanted to a quiet Cotswold town. The Guild itself did not last the decade. But its last working workshop never closed: Hart Gold & Silversmiths is still on the first floor of the Silk Mill, still raising silver by hand, four generations on.
This is the archive's first full town hub - the record of a place where the buildings, the trade that built them, and the living craft that still works inside them can all be documented at once. It is the template for the town hubs that will follow.
Editor's picks
Photograph archive
42 of 42 photographs in the archive. Click any image to open.
History
12th - 16th century
Campden grew rich on Cotswold wool. By the fourteenth century it was one of the most important wool markets in England, its merchants trading fleeces across the Channel to Flanders and Italy. The greatest of them, William Greville (died 1401), is remembered in St James' Church as "the flower of the wool merchants of all England". Their money built the church, the High Street houses, and the pattern of the town that survives almost intact today.
1612 - 1629
In the early seventeenth century the mercer and financier Sir Baptist Hicks, later Viscount Campden, gave the town two of its defining buildings: the Church Street almshouses (1612) and, in 1627, the open-arched Market Hall that still stands in the middle of the High Street, built so that the town's cheese, butter and poultry sellers could trade out of the rain. The Market Hall is Grade I listed and now in the care of the National Trust.
1902 - 1908
In 1902 the architect and social reformer C. R. Ashbee moved his Guild of Handicraft from Essex House in the East End of London to the Old Silk Mill on Sheep Street - a Ruskin-and-Morris experiment in fellowship and hand-craft, transplanted whole to the Cotswolds. The Guild taught silversmithing, jewellery, enamelling, woodwork and printing. It went into liquidation in 1908, undercut by machine goods, but several guildsmen stayed on in Campden and kept working, and the town has been a centre of craft ever since.
1924 - today
The etcher F. L. Griggs, who settled in Campden in 1904, fought to protect the town from unsympathetic change - buying Dover's Hill in 1926 to save it from development and helping found the Campden Trust in 1929 to preserve the character of the place. That instinct for preservation is why Campden reads today as a continuous historic fabric rather than a museum reconstruction. Court Barn Museum now tells the story of the town's craft and design.
The places
Jacobean market house, 1627
Home of the Guild of Handicraft since 1902
Perpendicular wool church, 15th century
Medieval market cross
First World War memorial cross
Almshouses, 1612
Natural amphitheatre; the Cotswold Olimpick Games
The people
Silversmith, third generation, Hart Gold & Silversmiths
Silversmith, fourth generation, Hart Gold & Silversmiths
Silversmith, founder of the Hart workshop 1882 - 1973
Architect, designer, founder of the Guild of Handicraft 1863 - 1942
Mercer and benefactor; built the Market Hall died 1629
Etcher; founder of the Campden Trust 1876 - 1938
Local institutions
Museum of craft and design
Tells the story of Campden’s craft and design heritage, from Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft to the makers working in the town today.
Charity preserving the Guild’s legacy
Holds the archive of Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft and works to keep its history and its craft tradition alive in Campden.
Preservation charity, founded 1929 · founded 1929
Founded by F. L. Griggs and others to protect the character and historic fabric of the town; the reason Campden survives so intact.
Charity securing the workshop’s future
Works to secure the future of Hart’s and its building as a piece of living national craft history.
Local businesses
The archive is not a commercial directory. These are the businesses that form the working village - listed so visitors can find them, and so the record is complete.
Campden Coffee Company
Coffee house on the ground floor of the Old Silk Mill.
The studio shop of the designer Robert Welch, who worked in the Silk Mill from the 1950s; cutlery, homeware and design still run from Campden by his family.
The working silver and goldsmith’s workshop on the first floor of the Old Silk Mill - the last working remnant of the Guild of Handicraft. Visitors welcome.
The Gallery at the Guild
Gallery in the Old Silk Mill showing the work of contemporary makers.
Visit
High Street, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, GL55 6AT
OS grid reference SP 151 391
Public car parks off the High Street and on Back Ends; on-street parking is limited.
Weekday mornings are quietest. The Cotswold Olimpicks and Scuttlebrook Wake fall on the Friday and Saturday after the Spring Bank Holiday.
Map
Open full map on OpenStreetMap
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database Licence.
Further reading
Alan Crawford, C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist (Yale University Press, 1985)
The standard biography of Ashbee and the fullest account of the Guild of Handicraft.
Fiona MacCarthy, The Simple Life: C. R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds (Lund Humphries, 1981)
On the Guild’s move to Campden and the experiment in the simple life.
Court Barn Museum, Chipping Campden
The museum of the town’s craft and design heritage.
Chipping Campden History Society
Detailed local history of the town, its people and its buildings.
Cite this page
AR-0014 · https://englandarchive.org/regions/the-cotswolds/chipping-campden
Suggested citation:
The England Archive. (June 2026). Chipping Campden [AR-0014]. https://englandarchive.org/id/AR-0014
The archive ID above is a permanent handle. /id/AR-0014 resolves to this page and will continue to do so if the URL ever changes. If you are citing one of the photographs on this page, each carries its own IM-NNNN - hover any thumbnail in the gallery above to see it.
Makers Third-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the last working workshop of Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. Grandson of George Hart, who came to Campden with the Guild in 1902; brought into the workshop by his father Henry in 1956. Eighty-seven at the time of the visit, and seventy years at the bench this July, still raising silver by hand.
Makers Fourth-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. Son of David Hart, great-grandson of George Hart of the Guild of Handicraft. Came to the bench from computer science, joining the workshop in 1990, the year his grandfather Henry died, and now carries the workshop forward.
Makers Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the only one of the workshop's silversmiths not a Hart by blood. Recruited from Chipping Campden School in 1982 while sitting his A-levels, aged eighteen, and apprenticed to David Hart, taught by David and his father Henry. Forty-four years at the bench.
Makers Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. David Hart's nephew and William's cousin, son of David's brother Basil. He joined the workshop in 1994, aged eighteen, after two years of motor-vehicle engineering at college - asked in to help with a busy order book while he looked for a job, and at the bench ever since.
The Cotswold Olimpick Games have been held above Chipping Campden since 1612. Shin-kicking, tug-of-war, championship of the hill. One person keeps it going.
A Morning at Hart Silversmiths · 21 May 2026
A working morning in the Old Silk Mill with David Hart, eighty-seven and seventy years at the bench, and his son William, fourth generation - the last working workshop of Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. JN-0017