Stroud sits where five valleys meet, and the mills that made cloth here are strung along the water all the way up them. Nailsworth, Painswick, Minchinhampton and Stonehouse are the valley towns and villages around it. South of them the district opens into the Vale, where Dursley, Cam, Wotton-under-Edge and Berkeley face Bristol and Gloucester rather than Stroud.

Stroud Today reports what the record shows across the whole district. Stroud District Council decides planning, bins, car parks and licensing; Gloucestershire County Council runs the roads and the schools; and much of the district lies within the Cotswolds national landscape, which affects what can be built and where. We name the responsible body in every story and link to the document.

The useful bits

  • Stroud house prices: what each town and village actually sold for, from Land Registry records. The middle Stroud home cost £320,000; the middle Woodchester one cost £625,000.
  • Stroud trains to London: direct to Paddington in 1 hour 24 at best, and £13,152 a year for a season ticket.
  • Stroud roadworks and travel: what is actually booked on the A419, what three hours in each car park costs, and who to report a pothole to.
  • Things to do in Stroud: the free museum, the commons, Berkeley Castle and Slimbridge, with prices and opening days.
  • Stroud planning news: 3.24 years of housing land against the five required, and what that means for the applications going through.
  • Local Info: all five pages above in one place, kept current and linked back to the source each figure came from.

Every fact carries a link to the source it came from.