Salford

The green and the quiet village

A weathered cross base stands on the green at Chapel Lane, where it was moved from the A44 in 2003. Its plaque dates it to around AD 700; the stonework has also been dated to the 14th or 15th century. Salford lies a mile and a half west of Chipping Norton.

Salford parish had 332 residents in 2021. The village sits among open farmland and stone cottages, with a spring-fed stream running through the narrow valley west of the church.

Field paths, stones and fishing

Walking is Salford's main draw. The green is the start of a 4.7-mile circular to the Rollright Stones, about three hours at a moderate pace, crossing farmland, a stream and stiles to reach the Whispering Knights and the King's Men stone circle before returning along the D'Arcy Dalton Way through Little Rollright and two patches of woodland. The grass, climbs and stream crossings can be muddy, and the walk is not wheelchair-friendly. A field path from Chipping Norton leaves by the cemetery and descends towards Salford with open views across the Cotswolds.

Half a mile from the village, at Rectory Farm, Salford Trout Lakes has two fly-fishing lakes stocked with rainbow, brown, Sparctic, blue and tiger trout. Prolonged summer heat can restrict fishing. The grassy green by the village hall has a playground.

Practicalities and St Mary's

For food and supplies, Chipping Norton, a mile and a half away, has independent shops, markets, a theatre, a museum and a heated outdoor lido. Salford sits just off the A44. Kingham station, about four miles away, has 140 parking spaces. The Villager V8 and other community buses connect Salford with Chipping Norton.

The Church of St Mary is the one building that rewards a slow look. Its 12th- and 14th-century origins were largely rebuilt by G. E. Street in 1854–55, but the Norman north doorway survived and was reset: a Maltese cross flanked by a centaur drawing a bow and a lion, with carved beast-heads at the stops. Inside is a circular 12th-century font ringed with intersecting arcading, and two rustic Bolter family memorials. The earlier, from 1640, remembers John Bolter and his son, both dead that same year. The later, from 1694, records the baby Joseph Bolter and his mother Sarah, who died three weeks apart.

The vanished great house

Beside the church the ground itself keeps the outline of a house that is no longer there: three broad garden terraces, a dry fishpond, a buried gatehouse and service ranges, a great house that geophysics suggests ran to more than forty metres by twenty. In 1086 the Domesday commissioners found six households and half a mill, and valued the whole place at three pounds. It had been worth exactly the same twenty years before.

Chastleton and the landscape close at hand

Chastleton House, about two and a half miles away, preserves four centuries of family life in a Jacobean setting. The short journey makes an easy extension to a visit centred on Salford's fields and village green.