Elkstone

Food and Fire at Elkstone Studios

The food hall at Elkstone Studios stocks fresh meat, organic vegetables and gourmet pantry goods. This is Jesse Smith & W.J. Castle, a butcher and delicatessen whose family trade runs back to 1808, with Marley Thorn running the Elkstone shop and Old Spot pork, new-season lamb and hung sirloin over the counter. The Studios fill a reimagined former farmyard, which is how a butcher comes to share a yard with a bakery, a restaurant and two covered padel courts.

Next door, KNEAD is an artisan bakery and brunch café with indoor seating and a heated courtyard, and it welcomes dogs. It turns out pastries, breads and patisserie, serves locally roasted coffee, and runs afternoon teas and themed supper clubs alongside hot seasonal brunches.

Lardon opened in June 2026 in the same complex, a wood-fired, ingredient-led restaurant of small plates built for sharing. The head chef, Mikey Bain, came from Calcot Manor and Whatley Manor. The dishes include wood-fired cod with butterbean ragù, chorizo and parsley; milk-fed lamb shoulder with broad beans, cavolo nero and mint; lobster flatbread with brown butter and Gruyère; and gâteau Basque with pastry cream and sour cherry.

Play, Padel and the Highwayman

The rest of the Studios runs to a gym, wellness studios, and Padel Shift's two covered courts, which take pay-and-play bookings the year round. Near the Elk Tipi there is a wooden children's playground and a public park.

For a pub you go to Beech Pike, just off the A417, where the Good Pub Guide describes the Highwayman Inn's rambling 16th-century interior of low beams, stripped stone, alcoves and log fires. It belongs to Arkell's and is kept by Ian Blake. The kitchen has served beer-battered haddock with garden peas and chunky chips, ham and eggs with triple-cooked chips, cauliflower curry with chickpeas and basmati rice, grilled venison with haggis, and a house-made Scotch egg served with Houses of Parliament sauce. Three cask beers pour regularly, Arkell's 3B, Kingsdown and Wiltshire Gold, with a local guest each month. Dogs are allowed in both the bar and the restaurant, and there is a garden with a play area for children.

Old Names and Norman Stone

The inn has answered to several names. It was the Huntsman & Hounds by 1781 and the Masons Arms by 1856, and became the Highwayman only after a later enlargement, around 1960.

Elkstone sits nearly a thousand feet up, and the parish council calls St John the Evangelist the highest church in the Cotswolds. It was begun around 1160. The south doorway carries a carved Christ in Majesty over beakheads and chevrons, with the four Evangelist symbols and an Agnus Dei, and animal-head corbels run the length of the nave outside. When the central tower was taken down in the 13th century, the raised chamber above the rib-vaulted chancel was turned into a dovecote; it still holds its pigeon holes and a stone spiral stair. Inside are box pews, a 15th-century font, a Jacobean pulpit of 1609, a reading desk of 1604 and a vault boss cut with four masks. A local description calls it a prayer in stone.

Valley Walks and Village Connections

Two circular walks start close by. The Hidden Valleys route is five and a half miles from the Green Dragon at Cockleford, following the Churn Valley up into remote side valleys to Elkstone and on towards Cowley Woods, with views across to Cowley Manor. The Elkstone Lanes Only walk is six miles of hilly farm lanes from the Highwayman, laid out as a lower-mud winter option, though it still involves a fair stretch of road.

The village is halfway between Cirencester and Cheltenham. Cheltenham Spa is the nearest station, about 6.4 miles away in a straight line and farther by road. Buses are thin: the 882 calls here, but check the current timetable before counting on it, and the bookable Robin service will collect from Westerleigh Crossroads and Newcombe End if you arrange it ahead.

Rectory, Romans and Remembrance

Jane Austen visited the rectory here more than once. The Old Rectory survives on the edge of the village, chiefly early 18th century. At nearby Combend, a Roman villa discovered in 1779 was partly excavated in 1794 by the antiquary Samuel Lysons, who found a hypocaust, tessellated floors and a stone sarcophagus. The Domesday clerks folded Elkstone in with Great Colesbourne, so its earliest tallies belong to the two places together.

One village account remembers 1912 as the year the first aeroplane was seen, when most people had never seen one, and the year the church sang special hymns after the Titanic went down. The electricity did not reach the houses until 1926.