Marshfield

High Street and Plateau

At the western end of the High Street, eight single-storey almshouses sit behind eight stone gables, with a small clock tower over a central chapel. The Crispe Almshouses are dated 1612 to 1619, and they close the view down the street the way the church tower closes it at the other end. Between the two runs about 350 metres of broad, gently irregular road, lined with 17th- and 18th-century Cotswold-stone houses. Long medieval plots still run back from the frontages to Weir Lane and Back Lane, and the medieval plan remains legible in the street you walk today.

Marshfield stands high and exposed on the dip slope of the southern Cotswolds, on a mostly treeless plateau surrounded by open farmland. South of the village the ground drops into a protected valley with St Catherine's Brook in the bottom. The A420 Bristol–Chippenham road runs past; Bath, Bristol and Chippenham are each about nine miles off. Bus 635 goes to Chippenham for the trains, and the X79 runs the Bath corridor, though it is worth checking the times before you rely on either.

Two Historic Pubs

There are two pubs. The Catherine Wheel is a 17th-century building with rooms and a kitchen that leans on local vegetables and game and British meat. The menu has run to smoked mackerel with a caper-and-lemon salad, fish pie with cheesy mash, crispy bass with roast potatoes, chorizo, red pepper and spinach, and a mushroom-and-lentil ragù for anyone skipping the meat. Sticky toffee pudding and Marshfield Farm ice creams finish it off, and dogs are welcome inside. The front rooms and façade were added in 1680; by 1740 it was a coaching inn called The Star, and it took its present name in the 1780s.

The Lord Nelson reopened under new management in March 2025, with a large bar, plenty of seating, a covered patio and a garden. The cask beers are Sharp's Doom Bar and Butcombe's Adam Henson's Rare Breed. It keeps rooms and a real fire, and dogs are welcome here too.

Village Food and Open Country

For the middle of the day there is the Sweet Apples Teashop, and Marshfield Country Stores handles the everyday shopping. The name to know, though, is Marshfield Farm Ice Cream, run by the Hawking family since 1988 on 1,100 acres along the Cotswold Way, where the milk travels only metres from the herd to the creamery. Flavours include Caramelised Biscuit, Funky Banana, Blackcurrants in Clotted Cream and True Coffee, and there is a reduced-lactose ice cream for dogs called Scoop's, named after and tested by the family dog. The farm is B Corp certified, which is a lot of accreditation for something you eat with a small wooden spoon.

Walking starts from Market Place. Three signposted circuits of 2.5, 3.5 and just under 4.5 miles use Green Lane, Beek's Lane, Halldoor Lane and Ayford Lane, passing the church, the old school and the almshouses; they cross livestock fields and can be steep and muddy. The longer Cavaliers and Roundheads trail is a proper day out at 6.5 miles and four to five hours, following St Catherine's Brook and part of the Limestone Link through secluded valleys and Burmead Wood to Cold Ashton, then back past Great and Little Moody's Woods.

St Mary the Virgin

St Mary the Virgin sits at the east end, a 12th-century church rebuilt around 1470 in the Perpendicular style. Inside are a 15th-century octagonal font, a Jacobean carved-oak pulpit, a 17th-century communion table and a Bristol-made brass chandelier of 1725, under a three-stage pinnacled west tower. The council's conservation appraisal describes the whole place as having "a very strong character as a medieval planned town with its historic High Street."

Barley, Malthouses and Traditions

That plan survives for a plain reason. Marshfield's economy was based on barley rather than wool; the town ran up to 18 malthouses, and by 1334 was reckoned the area's fourth most prosperous town after Bristol, Gloucester and Cirencester. Industrial growth bypassed the village, which helped preserve the street plan. Families arriving now find a playing field with a skate park rebuilt in 2024, a cricket club going since 1901, and, on Boxing Day, the Old Time Paper Boys walking the High Street in paper-strip costumes, performing a mummers' play revived after a local rector heard his gardener recall verses.