Acton Turville

The Village Green and Coaching Inn

A canopied well stands on the small green at the centre of Acton Turville, on the site of a sanctuary traditionally dated to Saxon times. The Wiltshire border is close, and Badminton lies about two miles north.

The Fox & Hounds is the village pub, a former coaching inn that gave travellers and their horses a stop on the road towards the medieval market at Chipping Sodbury. It has four en-suite bedrooms, a bar and cosy dining rooms. Badminton Estate took over and reopened the pub in April 2026, when the Duke of Beaufort poured the first pint. The kitchen serves seasonal, locally sourced food, and diners praise the Sunday roast. Dogs are welcome in the garden courtyard, and the bar serves local ales.

The Stores and St Mary's

The village shop and Post Office at 7 Tormarton Road cover the essentials: the counter for postal business, cash withdrawals and deposits, bill payments and top-ups.

St Mary's stands a little behind the houses, reached by a public right of way that runs through mature trees. The core of the church is 12th century, with 13th- and 15th-century alterations, though a good deal of what you see is the work of T. H. Wyatt, who restored and partly rebuilt it in 1853, added the north aisle and vestry, and took down the central tower. The bell turret that had sat on that tower, spirelet and cylindrical pinnacles and all, was moved to the east gable of the nave. Inside there is an Early English chancel arch, a plain circular Romanesque font, and a south doorway with dog-tooth moulding framing an inserted 14th-century image niche.

Turnpike and Domesday Stories

The turnpike past turns up again at Pike Cottage, an early-19th-century tollhouse built half-hexagonal to face the road. The tollboard is long gone; the clock that hung above it is still there. The village has a habit of keeping the useful part of a thing after the rest has vanished.

Acton Turville appears in the Domesday Book as land held by Arnulf of Hesdin: seven households, comprising four villagers and three smallholders, fifteen acres of meadow, and a value of five pounds. The recorded value was also five pounds in 1066. Farming carried the village for centuries afterwards, and Church Farm and Hollybush Farm remain among its more prominent buildings.

Walking, Recreation and Arrival

Badminton Walks on Wheels begins at Badminton village hall. This generally level 2.5-mile circuit follows lanes and public rights of way past paddocks, Park Pond and the horse-trials arena. Some stretches are unsurfaced and call for basic fitness; the park path closes during the Badminton Horse Trials. Farther afield, Castle Combe has honey-coloured cottages in a wooded valley, while Dyrham Park pairs a baroque house with a deer park near the A46. Acton Turville's community tennis court on Littleton Drew Lane offers pay-to-play sessions and coaching from LTA-accredited coaches.

From M4 junction 18, drivers reach the village via the A46 and B4040. Yate has a railway station, and Coachstyle service 41 links Acton Turville with Yate and Malmesbury; the stops served vary by journey.

The Green and the Village Edge

From the green, lanes pass Cotswold stone buildings with steeply pitched stone-slate roofs, boundary walls and gate piers, then reach the open fields of the Cotswold plateau.