About
Housed in a medieval tolsey building on the main street of one of England's finest small towns, Burford Museum brings to life the rich and layered history of the Cotswolds' most celebrated wool town and its wider surrounding area.
Burford prospered enormously in the medieval and Tudor periods as a centre of the wool trade that made the English Cotswolds famous throughout Europe, and the fine stone buildings that line its broad sloping high street — many dating from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries — bear witness to that prosperity.
The museum explores how this wealth was accumulated and spent: the wool merchants, the tanners, the leather workers, and the craftsmen who built the town's enduring stone architecture.
The building itself has considerable historic interest: the Tolsey was the medieval market hall where traders paid their tolls and the town's commercial and judicial business was conducted.
Local archaeology is well represented, with finds from the surrounding Thames-side villages and Cotswold countryside spanning prehistoric, Roman, and Saxon periods. The museum traces Burford's role in the pivotal events of the English Civil War, when the town was the site of the Burford Mutiny of 1649 — one of the last significant acts of the Levellers, the radical egalitarian movement within the New Model Army, whose leaders were shot in the churchyard of St John the Baptist.
The church itself, a magnificent Perpendicular wool church, is explored as both an architectural treasure and a record of the town's history. Local crafts including glovemaking and the distinctive regional craft traditions of the Cotswolds are documented alongside natural history and social history of the Oxfordshire region.
The museum is run by dedicated volunteers who bring considerable local expertise to the collections and are happy to discuss any aspect of Burford's history with visitors.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum is only open afternoons (2pm–5pm) from Easter to October — plan your arrival accordingly
- Burford Church of St John the Baptist is just down the hill and is essential visiting: look for the carved Amazonian Indians on Edmund Harman's tomb
- The High Street slopes steeply from top to bottom — wear comfortable shoes and take time to explore the historic alleyways and courtyards off the main street
- Arrive early or late in the day — Burford is extremely popular and the car parks fill quickly at weekends and school holidays in summer
- The Pytts Lane free car park at the top of the High Street is the most convenient for the museum
- Volunteer staff are a wonderful resource — ask them about the Leveller Mutiny story; it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of the English Civil War
- Witney (8 miles east) has the Museum of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds and the Cogges Manor Farm Museum nearby for a full day of Cotswold heritage
Highlights
The Tolsey Building
The museum occupies the medieval Tolsey, a 16th-century market hall that was the commercial and judicial heart of medieval Burford.
In this building, wool merchants paid their tolls and the Portreeve (the town's chief magistrate) conducted business. The open-sided lower storey allowed market trading to take place beneath while administrative functions were conducted above.
The building is one of the best-preserved medieval tolsey buildings surviving in England, and the museum's presence within it preserves its historic function as a repository of the town's memory.
The Tolsey's location at the junction of the High Street and Sheep Street is the defining point of Burford's historic core.
The Burford Mutiny of 1649
The museum documents one of the pivotal events of the English Revolution: the Burford Mutiny of May 1649, when approximately 340 Leveller soldiers of the New Model Army were captured and imprisoned in the Church of St John the Baptist after a failed uprising against Oliver Cromwell.
The Levellers were radical democrats who advocated equality before the law, religious toleration, and an extension of the franchise — ideas that were far ahead of their time. Three ringleaders — Cornet Thompson, Corporal Perkins, and Private Church — were shot in the churchyard.
The event is commemorated annually by Leveller Day, and the museum places it in the context of the broader English Civil War and the radical politics that it generated.
Cotswold Wool Trade History
Burford's wealth was founded on wool. The museum traces how the rich sheep pastures of the Cotswolds supported a thriving wool trade from the 12th century onwards, making this part of England among the most prosperous in medieval Europe.
The term 'Cotswold lion' was applied to the distinctive long-fleeced sheep whose wool fetched the highest prices from Flemish and Italian merchants.
Burford's fine stone churches, merchants' houses, and almshouses were all built from the profits of the wool trade. The museum documents the various trades that sustained the town — wool merchants, weavers, tanners, saddlers, and glovers — and the powerful merchant guilds that organised commercial life.
Local Archaeology Collection
Finds from archaeological investigations in and around Burford and the surrounding Thames valley illustrate the long human occupation of this beautiful Cotswold landscape. Bronze Age metalwork, Roman pottery and coins from the period when this area lay near the important Roman road of Akeman Street, and Saxon grave goods from early medieval cemeteries populate the collection.
The museum also holds finds from excavations at local historic buildings, including material uncovered during restoration work on Burford's churches and larger houses.
The archaeological collection places the historic town in the context of thousands of years of human settlement in the upper Thames valley.
Collections
The Burford Museum collections cover the archaeology, history, and natural history of Burford and the surrounding Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire Cotswolds. The museum holds medieval documents relating to the wool trade and the town's commercial history, archaeological finds spanning prehistoric through to the post-medieval period, records and artefacts relating to the Civil War and the Leveller mutiny of 1649, social history collections documenting domestic and working life in the town through the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, craft tools and products from the gloving and leather-working trades, and natural history specimens from the Cotswold countryside.
The collection is particularly strong on the medieval wool trade and on the English Civil War period.
The museum is staffed entirely by volunteers who bring specialist knowledge of local history to their work with visitors.
Burford's History
Permanent displays tracing the town from prehistoric times through the wool trade peak, Civil War, and to the present
The Leveller Story
Dedicated display on the 1649 Burford Mutiny and its significance in English radical history
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.