Cranham

The Black Horse Reborn

The Black Horse stands up a side lane in lower Cranham, easy to miss if you keep to the main road through. It was two cottages once, and later a 17th-century free house; when closure loomed, more than 260 shareholders formed a benefit society, raised about £260,900 and bought it in 2023, reopening after refurbishment in May 2024. It is community-owned and independently run now, with three changing cask ales that often include Uley Pigs Ear alongside beers from Hook Norton and Hop Union. There is a beer garden, a real fire, a single room to stay in, and a drawer of board games, cribbage and shove halfpenny. Dogs are welcome. One recent visitor called it "Romantic. Friendly. Good selection for wine," which covers most of what a village pub needs to be.

The kitchen leans on seasonal West Country food, and the Sunday roast has its admirers.

Coaching-Inn Food and Village Provisions

Cranham's other pub, Foston's Ash, sits out on the B4070 at The Camp, still within the parish. It was built around 1800 as a coaching inn and keeps its former stables; the sign shows a rider jumping an ash tollgate, which is how local tradition explains the name. The food is owner-chef-led and moves with the season. Typical changing beers include Butcombe Gold and Gloucester Cascade, with cask cider too, and the garden has an enclosed play area for children and shepherd huts to sleep in. The third pub, the Royal William at Cranham Corner, has closed.

For provisions the village runs on an outreach Post Office and a short list of local producers: goat's cheese from Liz Holmes, organic lamb and beef from Martin and Pauhla Whitaker at Overtown Farm, pork from Mike Marks's Reeva Pigs, and deliveries from Bisley Farm Shop. It is worth arranging ordering or collection before you arrive rather than expecting a shop counter.

Getting There and Into the Woods

The village lies east of the A46 between Brockworth and Painswick, and is also reached off the B4070. Stroud is the practical railhead, and the 228 bus threads through on Thursdays, though it's worth checking times before you travel.

The reason most people come is the woods. Cranham sits in a steep western Cotswold valley wrapped in Buckholt and Rough Woods, ancient beech that turns blue with bluebells in spring. A four-mile circular from the village climbs the Cotswold Way to Cooper's Hill and comes back down through Cranham — stile-free, but the slopes are steep, and it takes two to three hours, with an optional Black Horse detour. Cooper's Hill is where they roll a seven-pound Double Gloucester down a very steep bank and send people after it, a habit recorded since the 1800s. A second four-mile loop from Cranham Common runs out through the National Trust's Ebworth estate and Sheepscombe Common; it can be muddy even in summer, and there are Welsh Black cattle on the commons all year, so dogs stay on leads. In the grassland you will find pyramidal orchids, rock-rose and butterflies.

Gladys Leap and St James

One footbridge on that ground is called Gladys Leap. It is named for Gladys Hillier, a postwoman who used to jump the brook there rather than walk a two-mile detour on her round; the village asked, and Ordnance Survey made the name official in 1977. Fairport Convention borrowed it for an album, and volunteer wardens later built a footbridge there.

St James the Great is twelfth-century at its core, much altered later and enlarged in the 1890s. The late-medieval west tower carries two carved sets of sheep shears, possibly signalling a gift from a local wool merchant. Inside there is a wagon roof over the south aisle, a vine-carved rood screen and beam, a Baroque monument to Obadiah Done, rector, who died in 1738, and glass by Wailes of Newcastle.

Holst and the Cranham Feast

Across from the Black Horse is Midwinter Cottage, where Gustav Holst is said to have written the music for "In the Bleak Midwinter" while staying there. On the Saturday before the second Monday in August the village holds the Cranham Feast and Deer Roast, among the oldest customs in the county, and it runs through the weekend.