The hills above the Vale of Evesham had long been a meeting place for country people, with a shepherds’ king, dancing and feasting. Early in the 1600s Robert Dover, an attorney of Burton-on-the-Heath, enlarged the meeting into regular games with wrestling, leaping and dancing, as a deliberate answer to the Puritans, and appeared every year as master of the ceremonies. The games stopped with the Civil War, and a book of verses in their praise, Annalia Dubrensia, came out in 1636. They are held again today as the Cotswold Olimpicks.
Dover’s Cotswold Games
31 May · Dover's Hill, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire
Still kept
He pictures these rustics dancing hand-in-hand to the music of the bagpipe and tabor, around a flag-staff erected on the highest hill
From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 1, pp. 713-715. Read the original
Get a copy: Amazon · Bookshop.org · AbeBooks
We may earn a small commission if you buy through these links.
Questions and comments