Above the porch of Ablington Manor, five carved heads look down at anyone approaching the door: Elizabeth I, Mary, Henry VIII, Philip of Spain and James I. Beneath them a line was cut into the stone in 1590 — "Plead thou my cause O Lord" — set there by John Coxwell, who built the house that year. The manor is Grade I listed, was enlarged in the seventeenth century and altered around 1780, and its grounds slope down to the River Coln.
Ablington is a small hamlet, a scatter of limestone houses in a sheltered valley about a mile upstream from Bibury. Water meadows follow the river; a ridge above carries the earthwork of an old hillfort. The village's pub, shop and church are all a mile downstream, in Bibury. What Ablington keeps is quiet, and Bibury does not.
That distance is walkable, and the walking is the reason to be here. The Coln Valley Walk 6 is an 8.4-mile figure-of-eight, roughly four and a quarter hours at a leisurely pace, starting at the war memorial opposite the manor and following the Coln down to Bibury, its trout farm and the cottages of Arlington Row. If that is too much, the Bibury and Ablington Circular covers 4.1 miles in a little over two hours, on defined tracks and country lanes, and comes back through Ablington's cottages.
The amenities are all in Bibury, which is close enough to treat as your local. Two pubs sit near the river. The Catherine Wheel is a busy sixteenth-century place with open fires, a family room and a beer garden, and pours three changing cask ales. The Swan is a former coaching inn on the Coln, now a country bar and brasserie with a log fire and a riverside terrace, serving seasonal British food; its scones come with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Dogs are allowed in the Swan's bar and its designated dining area, and at the garden tables in good weather.
For food to take back, or a meal you build your own trip around, there is Bibury Trout Farm. It is a working farm founded in 1902, with a fish counter, a deli and gift shop, and a cafe. The shop sells fresh and smoked trout, preserves, local honey and fudge, bread, eggs, milk and cheese. The cafe leans on its own fish: trout Benedict, a trout croque monsieur, crispy trout bites, trout chowder, whole trout, fillet of trout with beurre blanc, and a smoked trio of trout. Beyond the counter the grounds run to catch-your-own fishing, barbecue hire and crazy golf, with plenty of outdoor seating.
Bibury's church, St Mary's, is worth the mile. It is Grade I listed, with fabric reaching back to the eleventh century and additions across the twelfth and thirteenth. Inside are Saxon pilasters in the nave, carved Saxon fragments, a chevroned Norman north doorway, an unusual Transitional north arcade whose carved capitals are the most interesting thing in the building, a Perpendicular roof of ten bays and a square early-thirteenth-century font. Gilbert Scott restored it in 1863.
The manor's later life is why some visitors arrive already knowing the name. In the 1890s it was home to J. Arthur Gibbs, whose 1898 book *A Cotswold Village* did a good deal to bring people to this stretch of country in the first place. The ridge behind the houses holds Rawbarrow, or Ablington Camp, an oval enclosure of about 4.4 hectares, broadly Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. A nearby barn has a sixteenth-century portion and a later addition dated, over the door, to 1727.
A car is simplest; public transport means checking current connections, with a taxi likely at the end of the journey. Ablington is reached by local lanes, with Cirencester about six miles to the south-west. The nearest station is Kemble, roughly fourteen miles from Bibury, with direct trains from London Paddington but a taxi at the far end. Further afield lie the Corinium Museum in Cirencester, heavy with Roman finds, and Chedworth Roman Villa, known for its mosaics, bath houses and latrines.
Many visitors come to Bibury to photograph Arlington Row. The walk from Ablington ends where it begins, at the war memorial opposite the manor, with the five stone faces still watching the door.
