The "broad way" is the wide grass-fringed main street, centred on the Green, which is lined with red chestnut trees and honey-coloured Cotswold limestone buildings, many dating from the 16th century.

This work makes the known history of the village to be over 5,000 years and so may be evidence of one of the first partially settled sites in the United Kingdom.

The first existing documentary evidence of importance is embodied in a charter that King Edgar granted to the Benedictine Monastery of Pershore in 972.

For Broadway this marked a considerable departure from the entirely peasant community that had existed in former times, though the following two centuries saw it decline in the wake of the Black Death.

The village provided all the services that might be needed, including grooms, places of refreshment and extra horses for the steep haul up Fish Hill.

Victorian artists and writers were drawn to the village's calm and the famous Arts and Crafts movement made its home in the area.

In 1932 Millet's son Jack donated £120 to St Eadburgha's Church for the construction of lychgates in his father's memory at the churchyard on Snowshill Road.

The arrival of the motor-car at the turn of the 20th century, and the advent of popular tourism, restored Broadway's vitality, placing it now among the most frequently visited of all Cotswold villages.

B. Priestley published his book English Journey, a travelogue in which he re-visits areas of the Cotswolds, including Broadway.

Even when the sun is obscured and the light is cold, these walls are still faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the trick of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering about them.

Water used to flow down from the hills and straight through the village then in later years the streams were mostly hidden inside underground pipes, only emerging at occasional ‘dipping’ points.

[11] The village's accommodation includes the Broadway Hotel, Russell's "a restaurant with rooms", the 1600s Cotswold inn the Lygon Arms, a caravan site, holiday cottages, bed and breakfast lodges, old pubs including the Swan Inn and Crown & Trumpet, shops, restaurants and tea rooms.

Local attractions include the Gordon Russell Design Museum[12] (celebrating the work of the 20th-century furniture maker Sir Gordon Russell MC), the Ashmolean Museum Broadway[13] displaying objects from the 17th to the 21st centuries in 'Tudor House' a former 17th-century coaching inn, the 65-foot-high (20 m) Broadway Tower on its hilltop site in the Broadway Tower Country Park,[14][15] Chipping Campden, Snowshill village, Snowshill Manor (owned by the National Trust), horse riding and, for the many ramblers, the Cotswold Way.

"In 1903 "Sydney Bolton Russell [Gordon's father] bought the inn on the main street, The Lygon Arms, restoring it ...

Originally a craftsman in the Arts-and-Crafts mould (although he was later frowned-upon by purists for his willingness to increase output by using machines), Gordon Russell opened a workshop in the village.

Nevertheless, the Church of St Eadburgha has been a Christian place of worship since the 12th century and continues to be a significant aspect of village life.

The building was constructed as a Benedictine monastery chapel in 1828–1829; it was extended and altered in the 1850s when a school was added, and the interior was modified slightly several times afterwards.

The Trust completed the laying of tracks on 23 December 2017, with a test train arriving at Broadway later the same day, and had passenger services running from 30 March 2018.