The Old Royal Ship keeps the village shop, a coffee counter and a skittles alley under the same roof as the bar. It is the only pub in Luckington today. The Ship Shop sells essentials, hot drinks, filled rolls and cakes, so you can pick up essentials and a hot drink without leaving for Malmesbury.
The food runs from a full English breakfast to steak-and-ale pie, ploughman's, battered halloumi and Sunday roasts, with bread-and-butter pudding and cheesecake to finish and a specials board that changes, so it is worth reading the board rather than assuming. The pub is family-run, roomy but cosy, with a garden and patio for warmer evenings. Dogs are welcome, though it's worth checking which areas allow them. Wadworth 6X and Flying Monk Elmers usually appear on cask, alongside a rotating guest.
The centre of the village is a small knot of roads. Five of them meet around two triangular greens that were once a single larger one, and the buildings around them are Cotswold stone, dairy and arable country beginning almost at their edges. Springs in the south of the parish are the source of the Bristol Avon, which leaves here for Malmesbury and Chippenham.
Walkers start from the green. The Luckington and Sherston circular is a five-mile loop, roughly two hours, on almost-level field paths and lanes to stone-built Sherston and back along the river; a longer six-mile version takes in Alderton as well. The parish church sits on the Macmillan Way, which makes it a natural marker on any of these routes.
That church, St Mary with St Ethelbert, is Grade I and mostly the work of the 13th to 15th centuries, with a three-bay arcade of about 1200 carrying circular piers and trumpet-scallop capitals. Inside there are arch-braced roofs, a large stone-bowl font, a mosaic reredos, stained glass by W. E. Tower of about 1910, and painted biblical texts dated 1663 still on the walls. The chancel was rebuilt in the 19th century. Fitzherbert family monuments are also inside, and the church is open at all times.
The Fitzherberts held the manor from the 16th century, and the family name later grew a tail: the last heiress is said to have eloped in 1798 with a Bristol man named Jones, reportedly a butcher, producing the Fitzherbert Jones line. Before them the manor belonged to the Earls of Hereford from 1141, which is the likeliest reason a Wiltshire church carries Hereford Cathedral's dedication. At Domesday there were two manors here, twenty-one households between them, one mill valued at five shillings, and a combined worth to the lords of seven pounds.
Luckington Court, Grade II* and built about 1700 on a much older core, is one of the grandest houses in the village. By tradition the site was a manor of King Harold before 1066. In 1995 its rooms and front became Longbourn, the Bennet family home, in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. It is a private house rather than somewhere to visit, so admire it from the lane.
The actors John Thaw and Sheila Hancock lived here for years, until Thaw's death in 2002. Hancock, recalling the photographers who gathered at the Post Office after his diagnosis became public, said: "Luckington has never seen such an unseemly display."
There are a few routes in. The B4040 runs through the parish between Malmesbury, about seven miles north-east, and Old Sodbury. Bus 41 calls near the school and village hall, connecting Sherston and Malmesbury one way and Badminton, Chipping Sodbury and Yate the other, though the timetable is thin and worth checking for your date. Yate is the nearest station, with Chippenham another practical option worth comparing for road connections.
The old shop by the greens has closed; the building is Grade II listed. The name Luckington is thought to mean Lucca's farm. Today it holds a church, a manor, a pub with a shop in it, and dairy fields starting where the houses stop.
