Sherston

The Rattlebone Inn

The Rattlebone Inn stands at the entrance to what used to be Sherston's marketplace, a Grade II-listed, seventeenth-century inn with a double garden and terrace, boules pitches laid out on the grass and a skittle alley round the back. It is the village's one pub, and it takes its name from a Saxon hero. The kitchen, under head chef Roger Payne, holds an AA Rosette. You might find smoked mackerel and cream-cheese parfait on sourdough, honey-and-chilli glazed local pork belly with dauphinoise potatoes, or Wiltshire ham served with two Sherston free-range eggs and hand-cut chips; the crab-and-chilli linguine and the baked Camembert fondue turn up as well.

The beer changes. There are usually three rotating ales alongside Ramsbury Gold, the regular. Dogs get their own snacks and a bowl of water. CAMRA describes it as a classic old Cotswold pub with "rambling rooms, perfectly conditioned ales and a warm welcome," and there are fireside tables.

Cafés, shops and the medieval High Street

For coffee and daytime food, The Angel is a café with five rooms in a restored seventeenth-century coaching inn, doing breakfast, brunch, lunch and freshly made cakes. The espresso comes from James Gourmet Coffee, roasted over at Ross-on-Wye, and there is cycle parking in the courtyard if you have ridden in. Down at the old Carpenters Arms site, The Bridge is now an Indian restaurant and takeaway. The village shop and Post Office sit together in the Old School on the High Street, and a farmers' market has brought in local meat and cheese, Close Farm vegetables, fish, and sourdough and bakes from Holly of The Loaf Shack Bakery, though what's on the stalls varies week to week.

The High Street is unusually broad for a village this size, which is the visible trace of a medieval borough. A marketplace was laid out here between about 1170 and 1241, and the long, narrow burgage plots running back from the street have survived the eight centuries since. A Tuesday market was granted in 1241. A fire in 1511 took much of the settlement; the stone rebuilding you walk past today followed on the same old plots, and the market never came back.

The Church of the Holy Cross

The Church of the Holy Cross is Grade I-listed and has Norman origins. Its Norman nave arches are round-headed and cut with zig-zag decoration, and inside there is a thirteenth-century octagonal font, a Jacobean pulpit and a walk-through squint. A monument of 1715 remembers Joyce Hitchings. The tower was rebuilt in 1730 by Thomas Sumsion of Colerne. In the churchyard lies Private George Strong, one of the earliest men to receive the Victoria Cross, awarded for the Siege of Sevastopol.

Walking the southern Cotswolds

Sherston sits on a flat-topped spur above a branch of the River Avon, in the southern Cotswold Hills and within the Cotswolds National Landscape. The stone underfoot is Forest Marble and a harder shelly limestone, which is why the buildings look the way they do. The walking is genuinely good: the parish keeps ten circular routes and a village trail. The Easton Grey circular runs six miles by Forlorn Bridge, Pinkney Park and Easton Grey's stone bridge, returning along part of the Roman Fosse Way. The shorter Pinkney circular crosses the infant Avon twice and passes fields that may or may not hold alpacas, with views towards Cherhill Down. Westonbirt, the National Arboretum, is very close, with seventeen miles of paths and a treetop walkway. Malmesbury and Tetbury are each about five and a half miles off. Chippenham, the nearest station, is under nine miles as the crow flies; the 41 bus links the village to Malmesbury and beyond, and the X79 runs to Bath on Thursdays only.

The Rattlebone legend

The legend the village keeps returning to is John Rattlebone, who supposedly fought on at the 1016 Battle of Sherston after being mortally wounded, holding a stone tile to his side, though some historians place the battle across the border in Hampshire. His name is on the pub, and a weathered medieval figure on the outside of the church is pointed out as him, though the listing describes it, more soberly, as probably a cleric. Local tradition still leans toward Rattlebone.