Gloucester, England — Vacation Base; History Center

by Marilyn Jones

Nestled between the River Severn and the Forest of Dean to the west — and the Cotswolds to the east — Gloucester is the perfect base for visitors, especially since there are so many historic treasures to discover right in the city.

This is a walking city. In the mid 1990s, the city centre was pedestrianised making it easy to find Roman ruins, Tutor architecture and the Medieval Gloucester Cathedral without worrying about driving from site to site.

Gloucester’s recorded history can be traced back more than two centuries. First a military settlement guarding the lowest crossing point of the River Severn and the route to Wales followed by a Roman town — known as Glevum — where the city  stands today.

Glevum was a special high-status city, one of only four to be established in Roma England. A base for retired, elite soldiers modeled on Rome itself, Glevum became an important Roman town and a powerful center of Romano-British culture. Its inhabitants had the full rights of Roman citizenship, and their city was a showcase for Roman ideals, values and beliefs.

The existing street patterns often follow those of Roman Glevum. When the Romans retreated from Britain, the city’s great buildings were destroyed. Today the only visible remains are a stretch of the city wall located under the City Museum, some recycled Roman masonry at St Oswald's Priory and a fragment of mosaic floor under St Mary de Lode.

Hands-on History Lesson

The Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery, and the Gloucester Folk Museum are located in the heart of the city and house centuries of historic artifacts spanning Roman and Saxon rule, and Medieval, Tudor and Stuart times.

Housed in a stunning Victorian building, City Museum features a large archaeology collection which includes Roman sculpture, including votive tablets showing Roman gods, tombstones and an antefix — ornate building decoration — with a human face.

Also on display are dinosaur fossils, natural history displays, Queen Anne furniture, topographical paintings and priceless pottery and glassware, all left behind by Ancient British princesses, Roman soldiers and medieval citizens.

The Roman city wall is part of the museum's foundations; you can see it below floor level in the west side gallery.

The Folk Museum is one of the oldest-established museums dedicated to social history through crafts, trades and industries of the city and County of Gloucester.

The museum is housed mainly on three floors of some of the oldest surviving timber-framed buildings in Gloucester — a Tudor merchant's house and a 17th century town house. {place folk museum photo here}

This museum is a complex of rooms on different levels allows visitors to understand the people of Gloucester, not just their possessions.

A reconstructed Victorian classroom and the original pin factory; the story of the river Severn fisheries and the life of the dairy; and historic clothing plus hundreds of other elements of local history are found here.  This museum is for all ages including children. Local history, domestic life, crafts, trades and industries from 1500 to the present, including the Toys and Childhood gallery with hands-on toys and a puppet theatre, the Siege of

Gloucester and domestic life are illustrated for anyone wanting to do a little time travel.

If you go:

For more information on the Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery check this website.

For more information on the Gloucester Folk Museum check this website.

For information on accommodations, restaurants and additional attractions check this website.