The pub on the High Street doesn't call itself a pub anymore. The Olive Tree is a bed and breakfast with tea rooms, in a building that's been serving food and drink here since at least 1890, when landlord Thomas Griffin ran it as the Hare & Hounds and made farm workers' boots on the side with his son — a trade that outlasted the century's turn and carried on until 1950.
It closed as a pub in the late 1990s, spent time as a private house, reopened in 2008, closed again in 2018, and was bought in 2017 by Rebecca and David, who'd relocated from Spain and reopened it as the Olive Tree guest house and tea rooms, with new en-suite bathrooms. There's a full English with free-range eggs, homemade lunchtime food, and cakes in the tea room. Dogs are welcome in the garden and bar. There's no real ale — draught lager only, since the place is licensed as a restaurant rather than a pub — but live music plays every third Friday, and there's a quiz on the first. "What a wonderful find," wrote one guest, Beverly Padgham. "The hosts made us feel very welcome."
Beyond the Olive Tree, Stramshall doesn't have shops. It's a residential village that leans on Uttoxeter, two to two and a half miles away, for its butchers, its pharmacy, its racecourse, and its railway station.
What it does have is a village hall on Vicarage Drive, built in 1979, running Pilates, Zumba Gold, Short Mat Bowls, Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, with an outdoor defibrillator on the wall. There's a playing field on Creighton Lane with swings and a junior football pitch, and allotments on the High Street with a waiting list.
Stramshall Village Green, also on Vicarage Drive, has a micro-library housed in an old red telephone box. Spath Village Green is the other one, on Stramshall Road. Stramshall Football Club, founded in 2005, plays in yellow shirts with black sleeves, and holds an annual Lads vs Dads match to raise money for the pitch.
The village sits on a hill above the Tean and Dove valleys, with the Tean Valley Meadow nature reserve close by. There's no single named trail through the village itself, but footpaths connect out into the wider East Staffordshire network toward Bramshall and Uttoxeter.
St Michael and All Angels, on St Michael's Road, was built in 1850–52 by Thomas Fradgley of Uttoxeter, in sandstone, with an octagonal font ringed in trefoil arcading and a hexagonal pulpit cut with dog-tooth moulding. The east window shows Christ in Majesty and St Michael slaying the dragon. One vicar, Rev. Charles Frederick Lowry Barnwell, held the post for 54 years, from 1853 to 1933.
Julia Cavendish worshipped there after surviving the Titanic. Her husband, Tyrell, of Crakemarsh Hall next door, did not; his body was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett. The hall itself is gone now — demolished in 1998 after a fire, with only the North Lodge gatehouse and the old stables still standing. JCB's founder, Joseph Bamford, rented premises there in 1948 before moving to Rocester.
Stramshall turns up in the Domesday Book as Stagrigesholle, seven households under a lord named Alric, valued at five shillings a year.
Uttoxeter station is about two miles off, and the First bus route 32 runs from the village through Uttoxeter to Stoke-on-Trent. On a Friday night, though, most of the village is at the Olive Tree, for the quiz or the music, in a room where the beer is only lager and nobody seems to mind.
