Our Model Village

The Old New Inn is known all over the world for the fascinating model village in its garden.

Built by an earlier inn owner and a small team of local craftsmen during the early thirties, the Village is a 1/9th replica of Bourton-on-the-Water, built from the local Cotswold stone.

It was opened on the Coronation day of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937.

Through the heart of the Model Village runs a miniature River Windrush - about a metre wide, it flows from the working water mill, beneath replicas of five of Bourton's famous stone bridges, on its way to the Thames.

From the Church of St Lawrence can be heard the voices of the choir, and nearby is the model of the Baptist Church, the original of which was built in 1876.

Built in the warm Cotswold stone of the original, the walls and roof tiles of the model buildings weather and mellow, so that each year the model becomes more and more like the original village.

Houses and shops - the butcher's, the baker's, the post office and the blacksmith's, are all represented. And in the garden of the model Old New Inn there is yet another model village, with its own miniature river, this time around ten centimetres wide, running through it.