Ever since architect and designer Charles Robert Ashbee (1863–1942) moved his Guild of Handicraft here from east London in 1902, Chipping Campden has been linked with the Arts and Crafts movement. This small but interesting museum displays work by nine luminaries of the movement, which celebrated traditional artisans in an age of industrialisation. Sadly, robberies in 2011 and 2017 removed its prize jewellery collection, but surviving artefacts include sculpture, book-binding and ceramics. It also stages two selling exhibitions each year.
The 17th-century barn that holds the museum originally belonged to adjacent Campden House, a grand merchant's pad burned down by Royalist soldiers during the Civil War. Two of its restored banqueting houses can now be rented through the Landmark Trust (www.landmarktrust.org.uk).
