Robert Dover's Cotswold Olimpick Games

Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games 2012 will be providing Gloucestershire residents and visitors with a unique sporting extravaganza during this Olympic year, 400 years after the games first began.

Thousands of spectators, and scores of brave competitors, will gather on Dover’s Hill in Chipping Campden on Friday 1 June 2012, attending what promises to be a particularly special sporting spectacle in the form of Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games 2012.

Celebrating its 400 year anniversary in 2012, the Cotswold Olimpick Games will be particularly popular this year, thanks to Britain hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games shortly after.

With a plethora of unusual sporting events, a whole host of family activities and plenty of demonstrations to keep visitors entertained, the Gloucestershire custom is a highlight of the summer events calendar and has attracted attention from around the world over the years.

Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games 2012

Uniquely this year, the fun will start at 2pm, with a Jacobean Village complete with entertainers in period costume, there will be arts and crafts from Creative Campden, falconry, tug-of-war demonstrations, as well as a climbing wall, bungee trampoline, face painting and more.

There will be a folk concert at 3.30pm featuring Mawkin, Beth Thornton, Bethany Weimers and the Robbie Boyd Band, and organisers say one of the big highlights of this year’s Games will be the world premiere of the Olympic 'Welcome Songs' by Eliza Carthy, Robert Hollingworth, I Fagiolini and a 150-strong choir led by Richard Stephens at 7pm.

Drawing upon customs established as far back as 1612, 7.30pm will see the official opening of the games by the nominated ‘Robert Dover’ and ‘Endymion Porter’, along with the Scuttlebrook Wake Queen, played in by a band with cannon fire awakening the spirit of the games.

From 7.45pm, spectators can watch The Championship of the Hill, a Five Mile Run through the grounds of Campden House and the Junior Circuit Race of Dover’s Hill take place. The Champion of the Hill competition, the tug o’war final and the British Shin Kicking Championships are also sure to prove popular with Olimpick crowds in the Lower Arena.

Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games 2011 video

While a number of events and activities take place on the Upper Level of the hill throughout the evening, as well, including marching bands, Morris Men, backswords demonstrations, performing dogs and a fairground.

From 9.45pm, the Torchlight Procession is not to be missed and includes the lighting of the bonfire by the Scuttlebrook Queen, a dramatic fireworks display and then the unique sight of thousands of people illuminated by torchlight making their way down the hill.

Chipping Campden town square will then fill with revellers and hours of entertainment and dancing is set to begin, with music from Vinyl Daze until 12 midnight. Many of Chipping Campden’s local hotels, pubs and restaurants will also stay open late for the special occasion.

History of Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games

Like many of Gloucestershire’s more unusual customs, the Olimpick Games have a somewhat unknown but certainly long history, rooted in paying homage to the ancient Games of Greece. The Cotswold Games as we know them today draw upon records from the early seventeenth century, in particular a collection of poems and illustrations from 1636 showing attorney Robert Dover presiding over what is now known as Dover’s Hill – with activities including dancing, backswords, coursing, throwing the sledge hammer, spurning the barre, pike drill tumbling and shin kicking all taking place.

Moreover, Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpick Games have in fact been cited by the British Olympic Association as a precursor to the Olympics as we know them today: ‘The Cotswold Games began the historical thread in Britain that was ultimately to lead to the creation of the modern Olympics’. And reigning King James I is said to have given the Games his stamp of approval, recognising the event’s ability to ‘promote good feeling among the common people towards their king’ according to an account from The Times newspaper.