Edgehill

Castle, inn and ales

The building that dominates Edgehill is an octagonal tower with battlements, machicolations and a Gothick upper room — an ornamental sham castle rather than a real one. Sanderson Miller raised it in ironstone around 1746 as an eyecatcher for his Radway estate, modelled on Guy's Tower at Warwick Castle and placed on the spot where the Royal standard was said to have flown before the battle of 1642. Today it is The Castle at Edgehill: a pub, restaurant and five-room inn, with a beer garden that looks out over the old battlefield and the Warwickshire plain.

Recent dishes have included steak and chips, venison lasagne, and fish and chips with mushy peas. The regular cask beer is Hook Norton Hooky, with Hook Norton Flagship among the changing ales, alongside real cider. Dogs are made welcome. Many reviews mention the setting, and one visitor rated the chips "the best in England by far."

Gin above the escarpment

Up the tower, reached by fifty-seven stairs and a narrow spiral, is Pinnock Distillery and the Castle Gin School. Dan Beckett founded it, and its Warwickshire Dry Gin is made with locally sourced honey, lavender and quince; there are Rhubarb and Strawberry and Sloe, Damson and Honey blends too. You can book a session, choose your own botanicals and make a recipe on a mini copper still, or take a shorter tasting instead.

Edgehill sits on a steep, west-facing edge of the escarpment that forms the north-eastern outcrop of the Cotswolds. Ratley, Edgehill and Upton together make Warwickshire's highest parish, at around 200 metres, and the land drops away sharply to the plain. The walking follows the ridge. From Upton House there is an easy route of about 2.3 miles across arable fields and woodland to the escarpment, reaching roughly 700 feet; in clear weather the view stretches perhaps forty miles to the Malvern Hills. The ground gets slippery when wet, and dogs are allowed on leads. Footpaths run steeply down to Radway and back, and near Upton House the Centenary Way and Millennium Way pass close by for anyone wanting a longer day.

Country houses, churches and battle

Upton House itself, a National Trust place on the A422, is a 1930s country retreat with terraced gardens and a serious art collection, and the start of that Edge Hill walk. Down in Radway, St Peter's church holds a permanent battlefield exhibition, "The People's Struggle," and re-set memorials that include Captain Henry Kingsmill, killed fighting for Charles I, and Sanderson Miller himself. The older parish church, St Peter ad Vincula at Ratley, is built of golden Edge Hill stone and keeps a medieval preaching cross in its churchyard, two mass dials scratched into the outside walls, and a single pillar carrying four arches.

The battle that gives the ridge its fame was fought on 23 October 1642, on the plain below rather than in the hamlet. The Royalists held the high ground, about fourteen thousand strong; a nearly equal Parliamentarian army deployed towards Kineton. The first attack gained some ground, but confusion, exhaustion and dusk brought England's first major Civil War battle to a close without a decision. A little of the older landscape survives in the fields, where you can still make out ridge-and-furrow.

From jet tests to today's journey

The escarpment kept working after that. At what was RAF Edgehill, the Gloster E28/39 made test flights in 1942 as Britain's first jet aircraft; the eighty-acre field is now home to the Edgehill Gliding Centre, and the ridge that carried horsemen in 1642 now lifts gliders on a winter afternoon.

Banbury station, about seven or eight miles off and managed by Chiltern Railways, is the nearest railhead, with step-free access to every platform. The village is reached from the A422 Banbury–Stratford road, with the M40 at Gaydon roughly seven miles away, and the 76A bus runs between Stratford and Banbury. For daily shopping the parish points you towards Tysoe and Kineton.

A last look across the plain

Below the pub there is an old stone seat set into the slope, facing out over the field where the two armies met. It is a good place to sit for a while and watch the light move across the plain before walking back up for supper.