Cotswolds National Landscape

At 790 square miles, the Cotswolds National Landscape is the largest of 46 AONBs in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It was designated in recognition of its rich, diverse, and high quality landscape.

The Cotswolds is the third largest protected landscape in England, after the Lake District National Park and the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It stretches from Bath and Wiltshire in the south, through Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire to Warwickshire and Worcestershire in the north. It cuts across 15 local authority areas.

The Cotswold Hills are the area’s central feature – rising gently from the broad, green meadows of the upper Thames to crest in a dramatic escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. Rural England at its most mellow, the landscape draws a unique warmth and richness from the harmonising presence and limestone beauty of its buildings. Beech woods, meadows, and bucolic valleys are also treasured features of the Cotswolds landscape.

Within the Cotswolds National Landscape boundary though, there is a wide variety of landscapes, each displaying distinctive patterns of landform, vegetation, and landscape elements.