Windrush

Church, Green and Vanished Pubs

Two rows of beak-heads run around the Norman south doorway of St Peter's, small carved birds gripping the stone. The church stands above a triangular green planted with six mature lime trees, built from limestone cut in the village itself. Step inside and the older work is everywhere: a king-post roof from the 1400s carried on corbels shaped as animal heads, an arcade of around 1200 ending in sheep's-head terminals, a carved oak pulpit from the seventeenth century, and a fine octagonal font. Henry Woodyer restored the chancel in 1874; many historic features survive.

The green is where four roads meet, on a slope that drops toward the River Windrush. The village and the river share a name, and the water runs on eastward toward the Thames south of Witney. Around the green stand the church, the manor and a cluster of limestone houses, forming the village's central group.

There's no pub in the village these days. A Red Lion was trading here in 1759, and the Fox opened before 1835.

A Riverside Table and Two Circuits

The Fox now sits at Great Barrington, on the river, a gastropub with rooms that the King family took over in 2022. It was once the Wharf Inn, associated by tradition with loading local stone onto river barges. Mike Burkert runs the kitchen: Donnington Gold beer-battered fish, whole grilled sea bream with chimichurri, sweet-pea-and-mint ravioli, wild-mushroom and Taleggio arancini, a goat's-cheese, spinach and onion-chutney pizza. The bar keeps two or three cask ales from Donnington Brewery, and the landlord Terence has held Cask Marque certification for twelve years running. Dogs are welcome, and there is a garden by the water.

If you enjoy walking, this makes a good base. A six-mile circuit from St Peter's follows the Windrush down through Little Barrington, Great Barrington and Sherborne, over farmland walled in dry stone and past honey-coloured houses; allow three hours and expect a few steep pitches. West of the village, the National Trust's Sherborne Park Estate has a shorter two-and-a-half-mile family loop from Ewe Pen Barn, through farmland and old quarry workings in Quarry Wood. It can be muddy, and dogs should be kept close.

Stone Working and Wartime Traces

The stone underfoot has a long working history. Windrush quarries supplied stone for St George's Chapel at Windsor in 1478, and men were still cutting here until 1911. The overgrown pits above the village are what remain of it.

South of the A40, at the highest point of the parish, RAF Windrush trained pilots from 1940 until 29 October 1945. The control tower, a pillbox, a firing butt and a Blister hangar are still out there in the fields.

Historic Buildings and Practical Connections

The Manor by the green mixes a sixteenth-century range with later work up to a 1919 extension; a reset carving shows a bird perched on a bowl and a Hungerford shield dated 1570, the same family whose chapel is in the church. It is a private house. The village hall, up the lane, was the school until it closed, built around 1840, with the Sherborne arms over the porch and a bell near the apex.

The A40 Cheltenham–Oxford road crosses the parish south of the village, and lanes run west to Sherborne and east to the Barringtons. The nearest station is Shipton, about eight miles off by the old road reckoning, though it has no ticket office, machine or waiting room.

Nearby Wildlife and Evening Quiet

Burford, with its long hill of a high street, is under four miles away. Beyond it the Cotswold Wildlife Park keeps Asiatic lions, white rhinos, red pandas and a raised walkway over the giraffes, a good option for a wet afternoon with children.

Back on the green the lime trees do most of the work, shading the triangle of grass. The church stands above, the river runs below, and in the evening the village feels quiet.