Nottinghamshire village guide
Bunny
A village shaped by Sir Thomas Parkyns, with a Grade I church, ancient woodland and a 17th-century coaching inn.
- Best for
- Church history, woodland and pub food
- Give it
- Half a day, or longer with Ruddington
- Don't miss
- Parkyns wrestling Father Time in St Mary's
The Fox verdict
A small village with an outsized Parkyns story
Come for the wrestling monument, the ancient wood and a coaching-inn meal; add Ruddington when you want a longer day.
Bunny's strongest short visit combines St Mary's, Bunny Old Wood and the Rancliffe Arms. Sir Thomas Parkyns links the church, the inn and much of the village's surviving historic fabric, while the wood supplies the nature stop.
Your picks, your pace
Make Bunny yours
Choose a mood or build your own list. Your saved stops are an ordering aid, with a direct map route when you are ready.
Local signatures
3 placesSt Mary's Church
A Grade I church begun in the 14th century, with a 14th-century oak screen, an ancient font and Sir Thomas Parkyns' wrestling monument.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Bunny
The Rancliffe Arms
A Grade II early-to-mid 17th-century coaching inn associated with Sir Thomas Parkyns, serving carvery and steak nights and offering a beer garden and changing cask ales.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Loughborough Road, Bunny
- Access
- Dogs are welcome in the outdoor areas only.
Rushcliffe Country Park
A 210-acre country park with more than eight kilometres of footpaths, a lake, an extensive play area, a skateboard half-pipe, a BMX/4X track and a café.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 120 minutes
- Locality
- Ruddington
Walks & outdoors
1 placeBunny Old Wood (West)
Sixteen hectares of ancient coppiced woodland with a numbered waymarked trail, seasonal woodland flowers and around fifty recorded bird species.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Loughborough Road, Bunny
- Access
- Free to enter year-round; parking is limited.
History & heritage
2 placesFramework Knitters' Museum
A Ruddington museum focused on Nottingham's lace and knitting-frame heritage.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Ruddington village
Great Central Railway (Nottingham)
A heritage steam line running immediately next to Rushcliffe Country Park.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- immediately next to Rushcliffe Country Park
No places match this filter. Choose All places to reset the list.
On the map
Bunny at a glance
Tap a marker to jump to its guide card.
Three ways to explore Bunny
Signature outings
Ancient woodland trail
Walk the waymarked trail through Bunny Old Wood, watching for woodland flowers, butterflies and woodpeckers in their seasons.
Knitting-frame heritage
Use the museum in Ruddington village to explore Nottingham's lace and knitting-frame heritage.
Heritage steam nearby
Combine the Great Central Railway heritage steam line with Rushcliffe Country Park immediately next to it.
The village story
Bunny Village Guide
Wrestling, architecture and ancient woodland in a Nottinghamshire village shaped by Sir Thomas Parkyns.
The Wrestling Baronet's Village
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
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.
Woodland and Village Essentials
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.
Church, Domesday and Parkyns
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.
Nearby Stops and Parkyns' Last Word
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.
Stay around Nottinghamshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Nottinghamshire, linked directly to their property pages.
Nottingham
Camila's Penthouse Central Stay with Balcony
- Sleeps 16
- 5 bedrooms
Nottingham
Anna's Central Stay
- Sleeps 16
- 5 bedrooms
Nottingham
Blair's Central Stay
- Sleeps 16
- 5 bedrooms
Nottingham
Melissa's Central Stay
- Sleeps 13
- 5 bedrooms
Nottingham
Stephanie's Central Stay
- Sleeps 6
- 2 bedrooms
A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- St Mary's Church — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- The Rancliffe Arms — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Bunny Old Wood (West) — nottinghamshirewildlife.org other published source
- Rushcliffe Country Park — rushcliffe.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Framework Knitters' Museum — frameworkknittersmuseum.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Great Central Railway (Nottingham) — gcrn.co.uk other published source