The story of Guyting Power is one that closely follows the fortunes of the agricultural communities in the region. When Evans passed through here in 1905 it had just started to recover from a period of deep decay, and I will read to you what he wrote at the time shortly.

The village is built on the site of an Anglo-Saxon settlement which was called Guyting Broc, and there is evidence that people lived here from at least 780ad. It was a royal estate or manor under Edward the Confessor, but by the time of the Norman invasion and the Doomsday Book of 1086, the village had started to decline. It sits on a tributary of the river Windrush, which could have something to do with the origin of its difficult to pronounce name. The Anglo Saxon word Getinge, meant rushing. The Power bit certainly refers to the name of the Medieval lords of the Manor.

In the 1930s around a dozen of the village cottages were bought by one Moyra Davidson with a view to restoring them to their former beauty, but her timing was unfortunate and the war and the depression that followed thwarted her admirable intentions and by the 1950s the village was once again in a state of dreadful disrepair. However, in 1968, the manor of Guiting Power and half the houses in the village were bought by Raymond Cochrane. He formed the Guiting manor Amenity Trust, a charitable organisation who still own and run the estate. They have restored many of the houses and the village now has an air of energy and drive it hasn’t seen for a while. The green around the war memorial cross has a buzz, even with all that’s going on in the world at the moment and the old Post Office, whose owner recently retired, has been taken on anew and was due to reopen a few days after our visit, offering, along with its normal post office services, food and drink from local producers.