City

Broadway

Broadway
Photo by Arpan Parikh on Pexels
Broadway
Photo by Jason Balansag on Pexels
Broadway
Photo by José Orlando Salazar on Pexels
Broadway
Photo by Yuting Gao on Pexels
Broadway
Photo by Artem Zhukov on Pexels
Broadway
Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Pexels

Broadway's High Street is one of the longest village streets in England, and the first thing you notice is that it's genuinely wide — wide enough that the red chestnut trees lining the central green don't feel crowded, and the honey-coloured limestone facades have room to breathe. This is a place that was built for volume: stagecoaches, wool merchants, travellers stopping to change horses before the long haul up Fish Hill.

Up on that hill, visible for miles across the Vale of Evesham, Broadway Tower stands on the second-highest point in the Cotswolds. Below it, the village moves at a pace that makes the 33 pubs it once had feel almost believable.

💛 What travellers fall for

People who keep coming back tend to walk up to St Eadburgha Church before anything else — it's the older of the two parish churches, only open in summer, and the field path to it is quiet in a way the High Street rarely is. The Gordon Russell Design Museum is easy to underestimate and worth at least an hour.

Good to know
Moreton-in-Marsh is your best rail entry point; the Stagecoach 1/2 bus takes 25 minutes from there. Spring and early autumn are gentler than the summer peak. The High Street can get slow on weekends — arriving mid-morning on a weekday gives you the stones to yourself.

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The story

How Broadway came to be

Broadway's story runs deeper than its photogenic surface suggests. Mesolithic flints found during 2004 excavations point to hunter-gatherer activity here thousands of years before the Beaker people settled around 1900 BCE, and Roman occupation followed. The name itself — from the Old English Bradsetena Gamere, meaning 'broad village' — appears in a royal charter of 972, when King Edgar granted land to the Benedictine Monastery at Pershore.

Wool made Broadway prosperous in the Middle Ages; the wide street was built to accommodate the trade. By 1600, it was a busy staging post on the Worcester–London road, once counting 33 public houses. The toll road formalised in 1728, the railway that arrived in 1904 and closed by 1960, and eventually the motor car each reshaped the village in turn — leaving behind the Lygon Arms (first recorded 1532) and a High Street that still reads like a palimpsest of every era.

People & landmarks

Who and what shaped it

People who shaped it

William Morris
Founded Society for Preservation of Ancient Buildings from Broadway Tower in 1877.
John Singer Sargent
Painted 'Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose' in a Broadway garden; first major Royal Academy success 1887.
Sir Thomas Phillipps
Manuscript collector who operated a private printing press in Broadway Tower 1822–1862.
Mary Anderson
American actress who settled at Court Farm, Broadway, in 1890.
Gordon Russell
Furniture maker and designer awarded Royal Warrant 1938, 1961; knighted 1955 for design contribution.

Landmark buildings

Broadway Tower
Hexagonal limestone tower completed 1798 on second-highest Cotswolds point; housed Phillipps' printing press 1822–1862; opened to visitors 1976.
The Lygon Arms Hotel
First recorded 1532; half its bedrooms in original 16th-century part; hosted Oliver Cromwell and King Charles I.
St Eadburgha Church
Christian place of worship since 12th century; current structure built c. 1400; used only in summer months.
St Michael and All Angels Church
Main parish church built 1839 within the village.
High Street
One of the longest village streets in England; lined with red chestnut trees and 16th-century honey-coloured limestone buildings.
Watch

See Broadway in motion

Practical

Plan your visit

On the map

When to go

The Cotswold hills make for changeable weather year-round; summers are mild and green, though July and August bring the most visitors. Spring arrives gently here, with clear light good for the limestone, and autumn can be sharp and golden — bring a layer regardless of the season.

Right now

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Weather data: Open-Meteo
Reviews via Google

What travellers say about Broadway

4.4 1,366 Google reviews

We've been to Broadway a few times never stayed at The Broadway before. Excellent location right next to the green in the heart of the village. We booked a snug room, it was very sizeable, with a large bed , table, a couple of chairs, a full size wardrobe and a full bathroom. We had a gorgeous private patio and was more like a little cottage, I loved it. The only downside was the carpet which was of an outdoor mat material and very painful to walk on. There is a beautiful residents only garden in the rear of the hotel which is a peaceful, tranquil oasis Breakfast was absolutely delicious, an international selection with locally sourced produce . I can recommend the scrambled egg on Sourdough. Service is excellent with polite, friendly and efficient staff. Resident's receive a 15% discount on food! Highly recommend

Tamara Sicharan 2 months ago · via Google

Top location, good food and drinks. This used to be my favourite spot to eat in Broadwa. Since the restaurant changed hands, they seem to be a bit short staffed, and staff usually looks quite stressed. Very rigid and contained kitchen capacity, makes waits a bit long. Once they even stopped taking orders half way through our large table, leaving half the table with no food.

Fernando Ortelli a month ago · via Google

The room was nice, but definitely on the pricey side. I just can’t get over how terrible the dinner was. Very overpriced and underwhelming. £19 for two tiny sides, lacked seasoning and sauce. Most reviews I read spoke of slow service and that’s why there were lower ratings, not the case for me, service was fine, slow when we wanted to leave only. In a hotel like this you expect expensive, but expensive is okay when you get the full experience. They need someone with passion for good food! The only redeeming part was a good breakfast. I also notice that there is no one commenting or thanking for people’s reviews, this to me is sign that they are checked out or poorly managed. Reviews matter!

Drea S 3 months ago · via Google

A lovely hotel that has a well managed combination of historical and modern architecture and design. We ate in the restaurant where the food was outstanding and the service excellent. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to others and I look forward to my next visit already.

Gerri Mc a month ago · via Google

A beautiful hotel we previously stayed at after our wedding 40+ years’ ago. We were bought the Sleep and Treats package by our lovely family. Everything was perfect and special thanks to Claire who made sure everything was perfect. The food was exceptional.

Barbara Tiley 4 months ago · via Google

Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.

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