Ground Hollow is the local name for the quarries at the edge of Hollington, and the pink-red sandstone that comes out of them — soft enough to cut, hardening once it meets the air — has gone into Coventry Cathedral, Warwick Castle, Trentham Hall and Alton Towers itself.
The Raddle Inn is built into the bank at Quarry Bank, looking over Croxden Abbey and the Moorlands, five minutes' drive from Alton Towers. Uttoxeter, under five miles off, has the nearest station. The 32 bus runs through toward Tean and Uttoxeter, and the demand-responsive 411 minibus links on to Denstone.
It's an 18th-century pub with food made from local suppliers, a specials board that changes daily, and a pensioners' menu served 12 to 2pm, Monday to Saturday. Behind the bar: Brains Rev James, Marston's Pedigree, Timothy Taylor Landlord, and two rotating guest beers.
The beer garden holds a pool table and a bouncy castle, with a play area for smaller children, and dogs are welcome in the bar. CAMRA named the Raddle Pub of the Season twice, in 2017 and 2019. Stay longer and there are six log cabins with hot tubs, two cottages, and a function room for up to 44.
There's no shop in the village — it closed in 1992 and nothing has taken its place.
St John the Evangelist was built between 1859 and 1861, designed by George Edmund Street, the architect behind the Royal Courts of Justice in London. He also designed the font and the Minton tiles, laid to his own pattern. The east window, curving into the apse, shows the Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and St John. A sedilia hanging inside was designed by William Morris, part of a set of altar frontals embroidered in 1861 by "Miss Hutchinson and friends" — said to be the largest surviving group of embroidery made to Street's own designs.
Croxden Abbey, a ruined 12th-century Cistercian abbey, is under a mile away and free to walk round, with paths heading there straight from the Raddle, whose own grounds look out towards it. The Hollington Circle, a six-mile loop kept up by the Staffordshire Long Distance Walkers Association, is timed to finish back at the Raddle Inn.
The quarry was reopened after years of dereliction by John Stevenson, who ran two workings — White Turn for the white stone, Red Quarry for the red — until his death in 1916, after which his widow Mary kept White Turn and his stepson George Stephenson kept Red Quarry. Thirty thousand tonnes of Hollington stone went into Coventry Cathedral alone, over the seven years it took to build it.
Hollington sits on a ridge, the ground dropping into valleys to the north, with views wherever the land allows it — most of the village, home to 212 people at the last census.
The Star, the village's other pub, is older still — sandstone, built around 1700, converted into a pub in the 1870s, with exposed beams and a working fireplace, looking over the Tean Valley rather than the abbey. It's currently closed and up for sale — for now, past tense. Someone who drank there put it best: "Made fabulous friends with the landlord and his wonderful lady and return frequently throughout the year, every year."
