Limestone and deep history
Long Compton
A linear limestone village in a steep-sided valley, with a medieval church, a historic inn and prehistoric monuments on the ridge to the south.
- Best for
- Medieval church details and prehistoric monuments
- Give it
- A village visit, or longer with the Rollright walk
- Don't miss
- The church's 1620 doors and carved nave-roof figures
The Fox verdict
A village with a remarkably long timeline
Long Compton pairs a limestone valley setting with a Grade I church, a surviving medieval cross and the prehistoric Rollright complex immediately to the south.
The Red Lion gives the village a historic inn as well as a place to eat, while St Peter and St Paul rewards attention with its dated porch doors, scratched sundial and carved roof supports. The ridge walk to the Rollright Stones adds wide views and monuments spanning almost two thousand years.
Where to go
Places in Long Compton
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Red Lion Inn
A Grade II-listed limestone country inn dated 1748, with a bar, restaurant, seven rooms, an inglenook fireplace, high-backed settles and a spacious garden with a children's playground.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- in Long Compton
- Access
- Dogs are welcomed for drinks, meals and overnight stays.
Long Compton Village Cross
The Grade II-listed surviving base and part-shaft of the medieval village cross, standing on a later limestone plinth with a spring to the east.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 15 minutes
- Locality
- Long Compton
The Rollright Stones
A complex of three local-limestone monuments spanning almost 2,000 years: the Whispering Knights dolmen, the King's Men circle and the solitary King Stone.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Cotswold ridge
- Access
- Do not use the Stones' limited parking as a base for longer walks.
Food & drink
1 placeThe Village Stores
A village food retailer on Main Street that also sells raffle tickets for the village fete.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 15 minutes
- Locality
- Main Street
Walks & outdoors
1 placeThe Rollright Stones Walk from Long Compton
A walk through rolling country to the prehistoric monuments, with far-reaching views; a separate mapped version is about 4.8 miles and hilly, with roughly 620 feet of ascent.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 3 hours
- Locality
- Ridge between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire
- Access
- Use an OS map or current route description rather than relying on the user map alone.
History & heritage
2 placesChurch of St Peter and St Paul
A mostly early-13th-century church with 1620 south-porch doors, a scratched sundial and a reconstructed nave roof supported by carved figures.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Long Compton
- Access
- Pale walls and mostly clear glass make the restored medieval interior notably light.
Long Compton Church Lychgate
A late-16th- or early-17th-century former cottage undercut to form a passage, later used as a cobbler's and antiques shop before it was given to the church in 1964.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 20 minutes
- Locality
- Long Compton
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Three ways to explore Long Compton
Signature outings
Three prehistoric monuments
Meet the Whispering Knights, the King's Men and the King Stone, three local-limestone monuments made across almost two thousand years.
Doors, sundial and carved roof
The church's south porch keeps doors dated 1620 and a scratched sundial, while carved figures support the reconstructed nave roof.
A cottage turned passage
The Grade II lychgate began as a late-16th- or early-17th-century cottage before a passage was cut through beneath it.
The village story
Long Compton Village Guide
An unchanged Travel Fox story of the village inn, limestone setting, medieval church, prehistoric ridge and local history.
An eighteenth-century inn
The Red Lion carries a moulded datestone inscribed WW/1748, set into limestone. Inside there is an inglenook fireplace, high-backed settles, a bar, a restaurant and seven rooms upstairs. Sarah and Lisa managed the place from 2004 and took over the lease at the end of 2023, and they run it themselves now. It is the village's pub, and the Parish Council thought enough of that to have it registered as an Asset of Community Value.
The menu changes with the season; past diners have singled out the roast beef with homemade Yorkshire puddings, Hooky Pie with new potatoes, and sticky toffee pudding with salted-caramel ice cream. The Hooky in the pie is Hook Norton beer. Dogs are welcome for a drink, a meal or the night: there is a dog menu, a stay kit of bowl, towel and mat, and a pub dog called Bella. The garden is large and has a children's playground, and indoors there is a games room with a pool table and a dartboard.
Village essentials and valley setting
For everything else, the Village Stores sits on Main Street and sells raffle tickets for the village fete. A mobile Post Office pulls into the parking area on the same street for Royal Mail and Parcelforce business.
Long Compton runs in a single line along the A3400, the old Oxford–Stratford road, down in the valley of a stream that feeds the River Stour. The houses are warm Cotswold limestone with stone walls, thatch and stone-slate roofs, and the whole village is hemmed in by steep slopes. Around Back Lane and to the north-east of Weston Gardens the fields still carry the corrugation of medieval ridge and furrow. Kingham station is about five miles off and Moreton-in-Marsh a little further; the Stagecoach 50 runs through the village between Stratford, Shipston and Chipping Norton.
Church, carvings and lychgate
The church of St Peter and St Paul is Grade I and mostly early thirteenth century, with a chancel a little later, a porch from the late fourteenth, and a chantry chapel and clerestory added in the fifteenth. Henry Woodyer restored it in 1862–63. The south porch keeps its double plank doors, dated 1620, and a sundial scratched into the stone. Look up inside and the reconstructed nave roof is held by carved figures — angels, a woman's head, a mitred bishop, and a priest holding a chalice and a book. Six bells hang in the tower, two from 1652, three from 1731 and one from 1823. Pale walls and mostly clear glass make it notably light inside, and it is normally open in daylight hours, the largest of the seven churches in its benefice.
The lychgate began as something else. It is a former cottage, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, cut through underneath to make a passage; it once ended a row of cottages, later did service as a cobbler's and then an antiques shop, and was handed to the church in 1964. The local history society meets in the room above.
Ancient stones and Domesday
The land around the village is what most people come for. South of Long Compton, on the ridge between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, stand the Rollright Stones: the Whispering Knights dolmen, raised around 3800–3500 BC, the King's Men circle from about 2500 BC, and the solitary King Stone from about 1500 BC. The walk up to them from the village is about 4.8 miles and steadily uphill, some 620 feet of climb, with wide views from the top. The D'Arcy Dalton Way passes close by the stones; Shakespeare's Way runs through nearby Little Rollright and calls for a short detour to reach them.
The Domesday commissioners counted eighty-six households here in 1086, along with twenty-five enslaved people, a priest, and a mill worth ten shillings, and valued the manor at thirty pounds — double what it had been worth twenty years before.
Witchcraft tragedy and village green
There is a darker page. In September 1875 a farm labourer named James Haywood killed Ann Tennant, an eighty-year-old widow, with a pitchfork, in the belief that she was one of about twenty witches in the area. The Times described her as "an old woman, of harmless character, whose ill fame as a witch depended on her sex and age and absolutely nothing else."
Behind the Village Stores lies Aunt Phoebe's Recreation Ground, a small green kept for the people who live here. The fete is held on it each summer, and the raffle tickets on the shop counter are for that.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Red Lion Inn — redlion-longcompton.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Village Stores — ratings.food.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Church of St Peter and St Paul — southwarwickshirechurches.co.uk other published source
- Long Compton Church Lychgate — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Long Compton Village Cross — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- The Rollright Stones — rollrightstones.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Rollright Stones Walk from Long Compton — ramblers.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access