Oakamoor

Pints beside the brook

The Cricketers Arms on the Square is a four-roomed pub with brookside seating, traditional games and charity quiz nights supporting Dougie Mac. Hancock's HB is its regular ale, while Marston's Pedigree and Sharp's Doom Bar are among the changing beers.

The village hall has a Post Office counter on Fridays. Beyond the Square, wooded valley paths give Oakamoor its pull.

Into the wooded valley

Dimmingsdale's wooded valley has sandstone outcrops, streams, ponds and lakes. The Rambler's Retreat tearoom at its walking base has served homemade food since 1981.

For a longer walk, Christopher Somerville's 7½-mile Churnet Valley route starts and finishes at Oakamoor car park, passing Cotton Dell and Rock Cottage before Whiston. He describes meadowsweet, grasses and small creatures along the river. The former railway trackbed gives walkers and cyclists another route towards Alton and Denstone.

Copper, cable and river

Oakamoor Park, on Mill Lane, is a riverside play area and picnic site built on what used to be Thomas Bolton's copperworks. There's a cricket club too, at the Davies/Worthington ground.

Thomas Bolton bought the Oakamoor works in 1851, and wire drawn there was used in an early transatlantic telegraph cable. The works closed in 1962 and its buildings were demolished in 1963. Gateposts and raised stone platforms survive at the former works site. A blast furnace at what is now Oldfurnace Cottage operated between 1593 and 1608.

Church, weather and connections

Holy Trinity Church, built in 1832 to a design by J.P. Pritchett of York, has a crenellated west tower and a basement that doubles as the church hall, on account of the sloping site. Clement Wragge went to the church school here, raised by his grandmother, before he grew up to become the meteorologist who started naming cyclones after people.

Buses run on the D&G 32A between Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter via Cheadle and Alton Towers; the nearest stations are Blythe Bridge, Stoke and Uttoxeter, Oakamoor's own having closed in 1965.

Wire fairies, full circle

Robin Wight made wire fairies for a trail at Oakamoor's village festival in 2012. The idea led to FantasyWire's fairy trail at Trentham Gardens, where his sculptures can still be seen. It is a fitting echo of Oakamoor's earlier wire-making industry.