Cirencester (Map)
 
Cirencester is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles (150 km) west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in Cotswold District. It is home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world founded in 1840. The town's Corinium Museum is well-known for its extensive Roman collection. The Roman name for this place was Corinium, which is thought to have been associated with the ancient British Cornovii tribe, having the same root word as the River Churn.[2] The earliest known reference to the town was by Ptolemy in 150 AD.
Cirencester has an important tourist trade as well as providing shopping, entertainment, and sports facilities for the inhabitants of the town and the surrounding area. Cirencester boasts a number of popular pubs.
 
 
Sites of interest
 
St John the Baptist parish church

The Church of St. John the Baptist, Cirencester is renowned for its Perpendicular porch, fan vaults and merchants' tombs.

The town also has a Roman Catholic Church of St Peter's; the foundation stone was laid on 20 June 1895.

To the west of the town is Cirencester House, the seat of Earl Bathurst and the site of one of the finest landscape gardens in England, laid out by the first Earl Bathurst after 1714.

Abbey House, Cirencester was a country house built on the site of the former Cirencester Abbey following its dissolution and demolition at the English Reformation in the 1530s. The site was granted in 1564 to Richard Master, physician to Queen Elizabeth I. The house was rebuilt and altered at several dates by the Master family, who still own the agricultural estate. By 1897 the house was let, and it remained in the occupation of tenants until shortly after the Second World War. It was finally demolished in 1964.

On Cotswold Avenue is the site of a Roman amphitheatre which, while buried, retains its shape in the earthen topography of the small park setting. Cirencester was one of the most substantial cities of Roman-era Britain.
 
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