Main Street rises straight out of the riverbed and climbs to a large horse chestnut standing on a raised green. That is the shape of Coln St Aldwyns: a line of limestone cottages, most of them 17th or 18th century, following the ground up from the River Coln. It is an estate village; later cottages were built for Williamstrip Park.
The New Inn sits on Main Street, close to the water meadows. Historic England dates the building to the late 18th century, with early-19th-century additions. Since 2020 it has been run by a local food pair trading as Baz & Fred, with a restaurant, a garden looking out over the meadows, a sun terrace and fifteen ensuite bedrooms. Two of the rooms take dogs by prior arrangement. Some Booking.com reviewers praise the breakfasts and evening meals.
Up the street stands Coln Community Stores. It is owned by the village and combines a shop, a café and the Post Office, and in 2026 it won the Countryside Alliance's South West award for best shop and post office. The shelves lean local: Cacklebean eggs, meat from Kelmscott Butchers, Blackwoods charcuterie, Woodlands Farm yoghurt, and Lynwood sourdough delivered on Saturdays. Café Coln, alongside, serves Little Jack Horner sausage rolls, panini, wraps, pies, pasties and homemade cakes, among them Sarah's legendary Carrot Cake, with coffee from Rave in Cirencester. There is a garden with parasols and a covered gazebo, toilets, and everything can be taken away — useful for walkers and cyclists heading out from the village.
The village is the start of a six-mile circular walk to Bibury and back, laid out as one of the Cotswolds' stile-free routes and taking about three hours. It begins by the Post Office, crosses the Coln, climbs a bridleway past the line of Roman Akeman Street and a dewpond, then drops into Bibury at Arlington Row before returning through old mill buildings and water meadows along the valley, past the New Inn. The paths are unsurfaced, so sturdy footwear is recommended.
The church stands above the street, dedicated to St John the Baptist — to his beheading, specifically, as the parish is careful to note. Its oldest stone is late 12th century, including a Norman south doorway carved with chevron and waterleaf capitals; the chancel and tower followed in the 13th century, the belfry in the 15th, and a thorough restoration ran from 1853 to 1868. Look for a small blocked Norman window whose carved head shows a demon chasing a man, grotesque heads on the tower, an octagonal font cut with a Greek palindrome, and a two-tier chandelier of about 1767. John Keble the elder was vicar here for forty years and his son curate for ten before going on to found the Oxford Movement; the east windows remember them.
The Domesday surveyors found 22 households, two mills and a value of eight pounds, all of it held by St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester. The mill by the river was rebuilt as a corn mill in 1858 and still holds its machinery, minus the wheel.
Getting here means the A417 from Cirencester, nine miles off, with Kemble the nearest station and Bibury and Fairford each about three miles away.
Back at the top of the village the road levels out at the raised green, and below it the street runs down to the river it climbed from.
