The Square is Lower Slaughter at its most picturesque. In its centre, there’s a Gothic drinking fountain; to its north a row of fudge-coloured 17th-century cottages and to the south, the River Eye, which flows neatly between stone-lined banks, under tiny footbridges, and then on through the village, which is one of the prettiest and most peaceful in the Cotswolds. The village’s name has nothing to do with actual slaughter but with slohtre, an old English word meaning muddy place.