Cotswold Olimpick Games

Chipping Campden, England. Country sports festival begun by Robert Dover in the early 1600s

Overview

Lawyer Robert Dover began an annual festival of country sports on a hillside above Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire in the early 17th century, with horse racing, running, wrestling and shin kicking among the contests. Poets of the day celebrated it as the Olimpick Games in a 1636 collection of verse. The festival lapsed in the 19th century, was revived in the 20th century and is still held on the hill that bears his name.