Coberley

From the Churn Valley to Cockleford

Coberley does not announce itself. The village sits low in the Churn valley, in a dispersed parish of about five and a half square miles. The A435 and A436 cross the wider parish rather than its centre; limestone hills, woodland and pasture fill the space between.

Food and drink sit a short way off, at Cockleford, where the Green Dragon Inn keeps a 17th-century room going with beamed ceilings, stone-flagged floors and log fires. The furniture is worth a second look, handmade by Robert Thompson, the "Mouseman of Kilburn." The kitchen runs to steak-and-kidney suet pudding, beer-battered fish with crushed peas, a fish pie of hake, cod, smoked haddock and prawns, marinated lamb chops, and a squash, brie and beetroot tart, with Butty Bach, Otter and Sharp's Atlantic on the bar. One visitor, Marc Jones, called it a "Lovely country pub, we loved the log fire. Lots of character." There are nine bedrooms if you want to stay put.

The Village Larder and Old Coberley

Attached to the inn is the Green Dragon Shop, which covers the basics, bread, butter, eggs, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables, then keeps going into olive oil, balsamic vinegar, anchovies, passata and pasta, Salcombe ice cream, Cornish ale and Bordeaux wine. In a village with no shop of its own, it is the nearest thing to a larder.

Coberley's written record reaches back to Domesday. Roger of Berkeley held the manor in 1086, when the survey counted 19 villagers, four smallholders and four enslaved people. It valued the manor at £8 a year, up from £7 before the Conquest.

St Giles and the Berkeley Story

St Giles is reached on foot along a signed, gated track through Coberley Court's grounds, about a quarter-mile east of the village centre. The church is in regular use and usually open. It rewards the walk. The building has 12th-century origins, was enlarged in the mid-14th century, and had its nave and chancel rebuilt in the Early English style by John Middleton in 1869–72. On the tower, above the Berkeley arms, is a sundial dated and initialled "P.C. 1693" for Paul Castleman.

Inside is a stranger inventory. Sir Giles Berkeley's heart is buried here. There is a 15th-century Crucifixion, tomb effigies of Sir Thomas Berkeley, Lady Joan Berkeley and a small girl, and a low-side window that once held an internal bell rung during Mass. A piece of 12th-century chevron stonework has been reused in the south chapel, which Sir Thomas built around 1340. The manor here is also, by long tradition, where Dick Whittington grew up, though Pauntley claims his birth and the village wears the connection lightly.

Buried Rome and Open Ground

Coberley's fields conceal a scheduled Roman villa. The H-shaped complex, about 75 metres by 50, stood near the Churn and two and a half kilometres off Ermin Street, the road between Roman Gloucester and Cirencester. It was occupied through the second and third centuries, with continued use well into the late Roman period. Metal detectorists turned up part of a geometric mosaic in 2002–03, Time Team excavated in 2007, and the site proved to have made its own tiles, and perhaps bricks. The best mosaic probably floored the triclinium, the dining room, with flowers, a guilloche knot and a cup worked into its grid. The remains still lie beneath farmland.

For open ground there is plenty. Coberley Parish Footpaths offer short walks and longer crossings of the limestone hills, woodland and pasture. On the western edge, Crickley Hill Country Park holds a Neolithic settlement and an Iron Age fort above the surrounding valleys.

Between Cheltenham and Cirencester

Cheltenham is four miles north, with the nearest rail station and the nearest substantial centre for shops; Cirencester is ten miles south. Route 51 connects the towns through Coberley, although stops can lie some distance from village homes. Between them, Coberley keeps to its valley.