Stroud - Character and Amenities

Character and Amenities

Stroud has a significant artistic community that dates back to the early part of the twentieth century. Jasper Conran called Stroud 'the Covent Garden of the Cotswolds', the Daily Telegraph referred to it as 'the artistic equivalent of bookish Hay-on-Wye' while the London Evening Standard likened the town to 'Notting Hill with wellies'.

The town was one of the birthplaces of the Organic food movement and was home to Britain's first fully organic café, Woodruffs. The Biodynamic Agricultural Association is based in the town. For many years Stroud has hosted a fringe festival on the second weekend in September. A new committee took over in early 2009 and now runs the fringe on the first weekend in September each year, to coincide with the Stroud Festival Fortnight, including the walking and food festivals. The town also hosts an annual Vintage Fashion, Textile and Accessories Festival, and the fifth annual International Textile Festival was held in May 2010. This is the U.K's only festival to celebrate the diverse culture of textiles.

The Stroudwater Textile Trust was founded in 1999 to link the past and present of textiles in the Five Valleys and to manage the opening of several mills in which historic textile machinery, including a working waterwheel, has been restored and is demonstrated. The Trust has produced a DVD, Rivers of Cloth, using archive film and interviews to be released in early 2011 and a photographic survey of surviving woollen mills is being undertaken for a book, Wool and Water, to be published in 2012.

Stroud has a strong community of independent shops and cafés, which provide the mainstay of the retail experience in the town. Alongside this, the town centre has witnessed two controversial developments in the form of a new cinema (which replaced the bus station) and a branch of McDonald's which, when plans were unveiled in 2004, came against opposition from locals.

The Subscription Rooms in the heart of the town centre provides a venue for a wide variety of entertainment and also houses the local Tourist Information Centre. There is also a small theatre, the Cotswold Playhouse, which is home to the amateur Cotswold Players; it occasionally plays host to visiting professional companies.

On the fringes of the town are Stratford Park, originally the park of a small local weaver, now home to a leisure centre with an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, and the Museum in the Park, a museum of the history and culture of the Stroud valleys.