[4] Daniel Henry Haigh, a noted Victorian scholar of Anglo-Saxon history and literature, is certain that "swell" means "burning", or "funeral pile".

David Royce, who is the Vicar of Lower Swell, has said that during the reconstruction of the church "a long deep bed of ashes was discovered in his churchyard, and that, of eleven barrows in the parish, the largest is called Picked Morden, a name which seems equivalent to "selected slain".

[5] After he heard this testimony, Haigh came to the conclusion that the place where the Lower Swell church stands now was once used to bury "the burnt corpses of the nobles".

[6] The most widely accepted theory behind the name "Swell" is that it relates to a spring that rises in the grounds of the Abbotswood Estate to the north of the village and is an abbreviated version of "Our Lady's Well".

In the 13th century the Lower Swell manor was sold to Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall (formally "King of the Romans", from 1257).

His son Sir Robert Atkyns lived in Lower Swell and wrote Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire.

[9] Scott's elder brother Sir John Murray Scott was for many years personal secretary to Sir Richard Wallace of Hertford House, London and Sudbourne Hall, Suffolk,[10] and became a patron of Covent Garden Opera House.

He had an important influence on the career of the famous singer Count John McCormack, who visited and sang for Scott at Nether Swell on occasions in 1912; and in 1922 (after Scott's death) McCormack recuperated from a severe infection and recovered his voice at Nether Swell.

[18] Another legend states that the Whittlestone is a moving megalith, and every night, "when the Whistlestone hears Stow clock (a mile off) strike 12, it goes down to Lady-well (and the hill’s foot) to drink".