Sir Thomas Parkyns designed his own monument in St Mary's before he died in 1741, and had strong views about how he wanted to be remembered: one bay shows him life-size in a wrestling stance, hands up and ready to grapple; the other shows him having just thrown his opponent, who is Father Time. It was carved, reputedly, by his own curate, in a barn near the church.
That gives you a fair idea of the village before you've even parked. Bunny sits on the A60 about seven miles south of Nottingham, sandwiched between Bradmore and Costock, with Bunny Old Wood pressing up against its edge on the Loughborough Road side and open fields on the rest.
The Rancliffe Arms is the reason to stop. A cream-painted brick coaching inn from the early-to-mid 1600s, Grade II listed, refurbished in 2006 to expose the original features underneath. It does carvery and steak nights — gammon, cauliflower cheese, fillet steaks — with cheesecakes, sticky toffee pudding and fudge brownies to follow. Sunday carvery runs around £16.50, the Christmas version closer to £25. Four changing cask ales, a beer garden, and a Google rating around 4.5, with reviewers describing the pricing as fair rather than a rip-off.
Dogs are welcome, but outdoors only — "four paws only outdoors," in the pub's own words — and at least one visitor reports being turned away at the door with one. Worth knowing before you walk over with the lead in hand. Sir Thomas Parkyns is credited with commissioning the pub as a coaching inn, which fits: he seems to have had a hand in most of what still stands here.
Bunny itself has no butcher, no bakery, no farm shop — the fuel station on the A60 covers the essentials, shop and cash machine included, but for anything more you're driving.
What it does have is Bunny Old Wood: sixteen hectares of ancient coppiced woodland, free to walk year-round, with a waymarked trail and around fifty recorded bird species, including great and lesser spotted woodpeckers. Bluebells in spring, wood anemones later on. The parish council publishes twelve further circular walks from the village, and footpaths run out across the fields to Bradmore.
St Mary's is Grade I listed, its present structure begun in the 14th century — work was interrupted when plague reached the village in 1350. Inside there's a 14th-century oak screen and a font believed to date to the 11th century, older than the building around it. The Domesday entry, under the name Bonei, records eighteen villagers, seven freemen and a priest, a mill worth a shilling, and a value that dropped from £4 in 1066 to £3 by 1086.
Parkyns ran an annual wrestling tournament in Bunny Park from 1712 to 1810, first prize a gold-laced hat worth twenty-two shillings. He wrote the book on it — Progymnasmata: The Inn-Play, or Cornish-Hugg Wrestler — and taught himself architecture on the side, designing the Hall's north wing, the village school and almshouses, and a three-mile park wall said to be the first in England built entirely on arches. The architectural historian Howard Colvin called Bunny Hall "a highly eccentric building dominated by a castellated tower which interpenetrates with a huge segmental pediment," which is one way of putting it.
Rushcliffe Country Park is fifteen minutes away by car; Gotham, a few miles off, gave its name — by way of Washington Irving — to Batman's city. Nottingham is reachable on the hourly Kinchbus service 9, about eighteen minutes from the Primary School stop.
Parkyns is said to have favoured hiring, as his own servants, whichever wrestler had just beaten him.
