History of Broadway

slation dated 1728. Tolls were collected at Turnpike House, which can be found in the upper High Street. However, the introduction of the railways in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century reduced the passing trade on which Broadway relied, and the village settled down to become a very quiet place. Broadway became home to artists and writers, including Elgar, John Singer Sargent, J. M. Barrie, Vaughan Williams, William Morris and Mary Anderson. Broadway is thought to have been the model for Riseholme, the home of Lucia in the novels of E. F. Benson, before she moved to Tilling (Rye) in Sussex.

The arrival of the motor-car at the turn of the twentieth century, and the advent of popular tourism, restored Broadway's vitality, placing it now among the most frequently visited of all Cotswold villages.

Broadway takes its name from the wide main street. In the beginning Broadway had two small streams that ran through the village; people built on either side of the streams, and a road formed down the middle. In the winter the mud from the road was piled up, and in the summer grass grew on the piles; these verges still remain today