ESSEX HOUSE PRESS. ASHBEE, C.R. ~ The Last Records of a Cotswold Community: being the Weston Subedge Field account book for the final twenty-six years of the famous Cotswold Games, hitherto unpublished, and now edited with a study on the old time sports of Campden and the village community of Weston by C.R. Ashbee.
Preface by Sidney Webb. No. 61 of 150 copies on ordinary paper bound in boards. 7 illustrations of Dover’s Hill, Campden and the Guild of Handicraft and a double page map after drawings by Edmund H. New. Pp. [4], lvx, 60. Sm. 4to., original paper covered boards, printed paper spine label, sympathetic repair to joints and headcaps. Endpapers and edges browned, occasional spotting.
A remarkable copy being inscribed and signed by C.R. Ashbee, the author and founder of the Essex House Press and Guild of Handicraft, to E.G. Stevenson in August 1905. Stevenson was his office manager between 1902 and 1907.
Most interestingly on the last blank is pasted an original albumen print of a photograph taken in 1871 of Giles Cockbill, mentioned in pp.41-43 et seq. of the book. He was a ranger on Weston Field up to the time of the Enclosure in 1852 and after this time travelled on foot as a carrier between Chipping Campden and Weston SubEdge.
A scarce account intended to perserve the story of this Cotswold community and its traditions. Ashbee recounts the final twenty-six years of the famous Cotswold games and old time sports of Campden and Weston. The Cotswold Olimpick games is an annual celebration of games and sports which began in 1612 and ran until 1852. The games were subsequently revived in 1963 and continue to this day.