Great Barrington

The Fox beside the Windrush

The beer garden at the Fox sits beside the River Windrush, with river views and the sound of the water close by. It won Best Beer Garden in the Cotswolds in 2025, and on a warm evening it is the reason to come. The pizzas are stone-baked and there is Donnington Gold beer-battered fish, a Fox beef burger with Monterey Jack and bacon, chargrilled chicken with apricot-and-raisin couscous and a curried coconut sauce, whole grilled sea bream with chimichurri, and wild-mushroom and Taleggio arancini. Children get battered fish goujons, Cotswold sausages with mash and gravy, tomato pasta or a pizza of their own.

The landlord is Terence, who has held a Cask Marque certificate for twelve consecutive years. Two or three real ales are usually on, all of them from Donnington Brewery down the road. Dogs are welcome. The building is an 18th-century limestone inn, listed Grade II, standing on the parish boundary; the King family took it over in early 2022, refurbished the bar, restaurant and seven bedrooms, and also run the Angel at Burford. If you want to eat by the river and then not drive, the rooms upstairs solve the problem.

A coaching inn and a useful food stop

A short way off, out towards Little Barrington by the A40, the Inn for All Seasons is the other option. The bar began as 16th-century quarry cottages and became a coaching stop, the New Inn, after the highway arrived in the 1700s. It was renamed in the late 1960s by Jeremy Taylor, a film horse master whose credits included Lawrence of Arabia and A Man for All Seasons. The kitchen does pan-fried duck breast with dauphinoise and blackberry jus, braised pig cheeks with horseradish mash, steak-and-ale pie, fish pie with dill mash, hake under a Provençale crust, and a vegan loaf with herb-crushed new potatoes. The renovated bar takes dogs; mention yours when you book so they can seat you there.

Bring what you need; the nearest stocking-up option, Upton Smokery, sits over towards Burford, dealing in smoked meat and fish, biltong, cheese, seasonings and wine.

Valley paths and Norman stonework

The village stands on the north side of the shallow Windrush valley, honey-coloured limestone under dry-stone walls, the flat meadows below and rising ground beyond. Barrington Park occupies the crest above, about a hundred hectares of pleasure grounds, walled deer park and long views south. The house is private and stays that way. A two-mile circuit on quiet footpaths, taking under an hour, links Great and Little Barrington with valley views the whole way; longer routes follow the Windrush on through Windrush village and Sherborne, past cascades laid out in the 18th century, cedars of Lebanon and a ha-ha. The deer park, at the last survey, still held spotted deer, sheep and black cattle.

The Church of St Mary is worth the few minutes it takes. It is Grade II*, late-12th-century in its oldest fabric, with a semicircular chancel arch carved with chevron and primitive ballflower, an early-13th-century four-bay nave arcade, and a panelled early-16th-century ceiling studded with foliate bosses. Inside are the Brays, who held the manor for more than two hundred years: Captain Edmund Bray lies in armour, dated 1620, and there is a large family marble alongside Nollekens's monument to Mary, Countess Talbot. Eight bells are still rung.

The estate and its deeper history

The Brays laid out the deer park in the 17th century and sold the estate in 1735 to Lord Chancellor Charles Talbot. His son William and daughter-in-law Mary were legally separated in 1742; Mary stayed on and made the gardens. A plinth in the grounds is believed to mark the grave of Smiling Billy, her favourite horse, who died in 1735.

The Domesday surveyors found three holdings here, sixty-six households, three mills and twenty-five plough teams, and valued the whole at eighteen pounds a year. It had been worth twenty before the Conquest.

Getting here and staying awhile

A car is the most flexible way in. The A40 runs about 1.5km south-east of Barrington Park, and Charlbury is the more useful station for services, though Shipton-under-Wychwood is closer but limited. The Villager V12 community bus calls in on Fridays only. Once you are in, you tend to stay: walking the river, then back to the Fox for the pizza.