A reptile is carved into one buttress of St Faith's central tower, up among the gargoyles and the Tudor-flower stringcourse. It has been there since the late fifteenth century. The church is Grade I, twelfth-century on older ground, rebuilt in stages across the medieval centuries and restored in 1879-80 by Richard Norman Shaw. Inside, the font is carved with a priest, a bishop, a Latin cross, a dove and foliage; the pulpit reuses fifteenth-century rood-screen woodwork; the pews keep their traceried panels; and the chancel is a vaulted piece of Early English work that Historic England calls "a particularly interesting and well-detailed Early English chancel."
Overbury is an estate village on the southern slopes of Bredon Hill, on the Worcestershire side of the border with Gloucestershire and inside the Cotswolds National Landscape. Stone cottages, a school, the church, and a linear park that climbs from the pools at the bottom to arable and orchard higher up. At the north end are the pools, Silk Mill Pool among them, the quiet remainder of textile mills that worked here from the medieval period into the nineteenth century, and possibly an iron forge before that.
Overbury itself has no pub. The Yew Tree, in Conderton, keeps an open fire and outside seating and makes a point of welcoming children, dogs, cyclists and walkers with muddy boots. The kitchen currently serves fish and chips with garden peas and homemade tartare sauce, a shortcrust pie with winter greens, and salmon with ham, confit-onion bubble and squeak and a chive sauce. In the other direction, The Crown at Kemerton has four rooms, a log fire and a sunny courtyard; its meat comes from Meadow Farm in the next village and its vegetables are grown at home where they can be, with real ale and local cider on.
For coffee, the Old Post Office at Beckford is dog-friendly, pours Ritual Coffee and bakes its own cakes, with a courtyard and a small collection of work by local makers under the Beckford Collective. The old village shop in Overbury itself is no longer a shop; it has become meeting rooms and workspace, so bring what you need or plan a stop on the way in.
The walking is the reason many people come. The Overbury and Bredon Circular starts at St Faith's and climbs to Parson's Folly, an eighteenth-century tower on the summit, before following the Wychavon Way down to the churchyard at Ashton-under-Hill and crossing fields back to the village. It runs to a little over nine miles, with around 1,260 feet of climbing and something like ten stiles, two of them stone. There is no parking at the church, so work that out first. Higher up you can take in Conderton Camp, a scheduled Iron Age fort on the hill whose earthworks still hold the ring ditches of round houses and roughly 140 stone-lined pits.
The history sits lightly. In 1086 the whole manor was valued at six pounds a year, exactly what it had been worth in 1066, and it belonged then to the Bishop of Worcester. The later manor passed by lease from the Dean and Chapter of Worcester to the Parsons family, and then to the banker John Martin, who rebuilt Overbury Court; that house burned down in 1735 and was replaced by the one that stands. Shaw altered the court in 1897-1900 and, in 1895-96, built the village hall for Robert Martin, cruciform and limestone, still in use for music, sales and whatever else the village puts on.
Getting here, the nearest station is Ashchurch for Tewkesbury on GWR; the M5 is about eight minutes off at Junction 9; and the 540 bus between Evesham and Tewkesbury stops in the village, though it is worth checking the current times before you rely on it. Tewkesbury itself, six kilometres away, has its abbey for a half-day out, begun in 1102 and bought back by the parishioners for £453 after the Dissolution.
The cricket club has played here since 1886, and at the edge of its pitch stand two swings, about thirty years old, which the village is quietly raising money to replace.
