Chalford

Hillside village and community stores

The cottages climb. Chalford's houses are stacked up the steep side of the Frome valley, weavers' terraces of Cotswold stone linked by narrow paths that thread between them, and from the railway line on the valley floor the effect has long been called Alpine. The valley bottom is where everything runs together: the River Frome, the partly restored Thames and Severn Canal, the A419 and the Golden Valley railway all squeezed into parallel corridors beneath the houses.

Start at Chalford Community Stores on the High Street. It is owned by the village and run by volunteers, and it does the work of both shop and post office: fresh food, everyday groceries, newspapers, local produce down to organic vegetables, and a shelf of things made by people who live here, sold under the name Made in Chalford. For a village pinned to a hillside, having a shop at all is not to be taken for granted.

Pubs past and present

Up on Chalford Hill at Midway, the Old Neighbourhood Inn has a traditional bar, a separate dining room and a large beer garden, with changing menus and bar snacks. Formerly the Mechanics Arms, the inn carries on Chalford's long pub tradition.

Older pub names linger in local memory. "We had 9 pubs and 9 churches," recalls John Hemmings, born in 1936, in the parish's oral-history collection. Among the names remembered are the Companies Arms, the Valley Inn, the Anchor, the Bell Hotel, the Fleece and the Wheatsheaf. The Old Company's Arms ceased trading in 1964; the former building, Chalford Place, later became a residence transformed by Damien Hirst.

Valley walks and cloth-making history

A level Golden Valley circuit of up to about two and a half miles continues beyond the High Street with one stile. The Dimmel's Dale and Rack Hill round is a similar length and stile-free, with one steepish paved descent; it takes in woods, streams, canal and the Frome. A longer three-mile loop through France Lynch and Strawberry Banks has climbs, three stream crossings, stiles and possible mud, with orchids, bluebells and butterflies. For a canal walk, the towpath runs about 3.2 miles from Bell Lock at the foot of Cowcombe Hill towards the Sapperton Tunnel, where the canal enters quieter countryside above Valley Lock.

Rack Hill is named for the racks that once held cloth stretched on tenterhooks to dry. Chalford began at the ford where a drovers' road crossed the fast Frome, and the springs and water power turned it into a valley of mills; at the height of the trade as many as nineteen stood between Ashmeads and St Mary's. Donkeys carried wool, cloth, bread and coal along the paths, which earned the place the nickname Neddyshire, a practice that survived into the 1930s and was briefly revived by one resident for shop deliveries.

Christ Church and getting here

Christ Church, above the valley, was built in 1725 as a chapel of ease and grew through the nineteenth century into a limestone Neo-Norman church with a squat tile-hung spire. Inside is a quiet gathering of Arts and Crafts work: an openwork choir screen and organ-loft panelling by Norman Jewson, a Peter Waals lectern inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and a font carved with fish by William Simmonds. The interior is accessible during services; for a visit at other times, contact clergy or a churchwarden.

Stroud, with its free Museum in the Park, is about four miles off along the A419; Cirencester lies eight miles east. Stroud is the nearest station; Chalford's station ceased service in 1964.

Play beside the Frome

Down by the water at Valley Corner there are swings, a zip wire and an outdoor table-tennis table, with the canal, the road and the old railway line running on past in a row.