The heart of Frampton on Severn is its 20-acre green, the longest in the county of Gloucestershire. A road runs down the middle, but there is still ample room for a cricket pitch, three ponds, and grazing animals. Along it are half-timbered buildings, stone Georgian villas, and some 19th-century brick cottages with tile or stone roofs. Nearly every style of vernacular English architecture is on view. Five of the cottages have cruck frames, a primitive form of half-timbering where whole oak trees were split down the middle and joined to support the framework at each end.
The most distinguished timber-framed building on the green is Manor Farm, built on the site of a Norman lord's manor in the 15th century, when a large barn and dovecote were added. Rosamund Clifford, who was a mistress of Henry II and repeatedly poisoned by agents of Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born in the manor about 1140.
A footpath leads from the green to the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, completed in 1831. This ship canal could take vessels up to 600 tons, more than any other canal, and took pressure off the River Severn at the height of the Industrial Revolution. The swing-bridge keepers' cottages, with their Doric columns and porticos, reflect the great commercial success of the canal. The towpath is now part of the Severn Way long-distance footpath.
From Splatt Bridge, the walk leads to the Church of St Mary the Virgin, consecrated in 1305. There is a rare and ancient lead font inside, as well as monuments to local families. A charming feature is a swallows' nest above the front porch lamp, which has been there as long as anyone can remember.
You return to the village along the Avenue, one of the joys of Frampton. Mature chestnut trees shade an unpaved path leading to a stone-roofed lychgate onto the street, below the green. A lane leads to the fishponds, dug to provide material for the banks of the canal. Now naturalised, these old gravel pits are very popular with fishermen and wildfowl alike.
The route enters the 18th-century parkland of Frampton Court, where lush grass once cropped by cattle and thoroughbred horses fattens gaggles of wild geese. In winter, white-fronted, pink-footed, and snow geese waddle about, while Canada geese predominate in the summer months.
The elegant court itself was built between 1731 and 1733 by a local architect who borrowed heavily from the work of Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh. Its first owner, Richard Clutterbuck, was a self-made man of some wealth and taste. He had the swamp beside the house drained to create the green, and later added an upright Gothic villa to serve as an orangery, and an ornamental canal in the Dutch style.
Tantalising glimpses of the house can be had over a high brick boundary wall, or through the splendid wrought-iron gates on your return to the green, but the best view — unless you visit on a rare open day — is across the grounds from the path by the Frampton Pools.
The presence of the canal and ponds meant that aquatic plants became a feature of the gardens. Generations of ladies from the Clutterbuck family and their successors, the Cliffords, passed the time drawing them. Their sketchbooks and portfolios discovered in the attic have since been published as the book entitled The Frampton Flora.
