Minster Lovell!

Okay, let's get started! The first stop on our whirlwind tour was the teeny tiny town of Minster Lovell. The town gets its name from the Lovell family, who owned most of the land here back in the day.

It's a very tiny town situation west of Oxford in the lovely English area known as the Cotswolds. You can see on the map just how small it is:

Yep. That's it. And it's perfect. And very English.

This is the Old Swan Inn. It's made up of two parts, a 19th Century mill and a 14th Century Inn. We didn't go inside, but the outside sure is lovely. And at 80 quid a night, its not too bad of a deal.
The main road leading from the Old Swan is lined with lovely thatched-roof houses. Our tour guide said that thatch will last quite a long time, and when it wears out you can just plop more thatch on top of it - that's why the roof is so thick.
See?
People also seem to be in the habit of naming their houses - usually this is because the house served this kind of purpose on the days of yore... but not always.
Everything is made in Cotswold stone - a type of limestone. Depending on the iron content of the earth in the area, the color varies from honey colored to brown. Here in this area it tends to be honey-colored.
This house is on the edge of the old town. It's very pretty and has a name!
It's called the Old Post House. And it was the post house! There was a post out front (sadly no longer there) where they would hang the mail to be picked up, and as the carrage came by with mail, they would drop off the new mail to be picked up.
This is St. Kelelm Church. According to ancient legend or myth or... whatever, Kenelm was a boy king, who managed to piss off this sister because he was so religious. She then seduced his tutor and convinced the tutor to kill Kenelm. Upon killing him, a dove apparently flew from his body, and headed straight for the Pope where it told him about the situation (yeah.... ). The Pope apparently got angry and came back to the body of the boy where it was perfectly preserved and they made him a saint. They may have killed the sister, too, but I can't remember.
Directly behind the church was hidden these awesome ruins! They are huge and awe-inspiring.
They are the ruins of a 15th Century manor house owned by Lord Lovell (hence the name). The guide said something about, once the manor had fallen into disrepair that the roof was taken off to avoid paying taxes and left just like this to decay. (Apparently in the U.K. you don't have to pay taxes if you don't have a roof...).
See? Told you that they are huge. We only had about 20 minutes to walk around here, although I could've spent an entire day here.
Even the floors are pretty!
There's a rumor about these ruins, too! In 1708 a skeleton was found hidden in the manorhouse. It is suspected that they belong to Lord Lovell, who, after fighting at the battle of stoke in 1487, had hidden himself in a closet/cupboard in the manor, with only one servent aware of his location. This servent would bring him food and keep him alive. The servent then died suddently and poor Lovell had no food and starved to death. I'm assuming he couldn't get out of his little closet.


There's even a medieval dovecot on the grounds, too! This was located on the other side of the grounds, on the other side of the church. We didn't get close to the church since there was a funeral going on. Usually we would've. It would be nice to see the inside.


This manorhouse would've been huge - the floorplans cover quite a bit of ground. Lots of fun to poke around an explore.
While the BBC said that it was supposed to be sunny, they lied. While the sun was there, it was covered up by a huge amount of fog. At least it was warm, though.
Stone stone everywhere...
I snapped this picture right before hopping back on the coach that would take us to our next Cotswold destination - Burford! This was on the ground of the Old Swan - I guess its too cold for their patio guests.

That's all for now, It's past midnight and I'm tired of editing photos. Hope you've enjoyed this bunch and I will post the rest of the journal tomorrow!