A Trent Valley pause
East Drayton
A small village for a pub stop, a richly detailed medieval church and routes across the flat Trent Valley landscape.
- Best for
- A pub meal, medieval detail and level routes
- Village landmark
- Grade I St Peter's Church
- Don't miss
- The church tower's painted wedding ‘cheeses’
The Fox verdict
Come for a pub, a church and the open Trent Valley
East Drayton is a compact base for a Sunday roast, medieval craftsmanship and nearby walking or cycling.
The Blue Bell and St Peter's give the village two clear anchors, while National Cycle Route 647 opens out the wider landscape. The pleasure is in a short, focused visit rather than a long list of attractions.
Where to go
Places in East Drayton
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Blue Bell Inn
East Drayton's traditional village inn has three changing real ales, a beer garden and outside seating; reviews single out the Sunday roast.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Low Street, East Drayton
St Peter's Church
A Grade I medieval parish church with a carved 15th-century south porch, a wooden rood screen and a 14th-century incised floor slab.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 45 minutes
- Locality
- At the crossroads of Top Street, Low Street, Church Lane and North Green
Dunham Toll Bridge
A historic Trent crossing built in 1832 and rebuilt in steel in 1978, between Newark and Gainsborough.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 20 minutes
- Locality
- About 3 miles east of East Drayton
Walks & outdoors
1 placeNational Cycle Route 647
A cycle route on the old Chesterfield–Lincoln railway trackbed, crossing the Trent on Fledborough Viaduct and its fifty-nine brick arches.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 150 minutes
- Locality
- Between Fledborough and Clifton-on-Trent
Things to do
1 placeEast Drayton Sports Club
An eight-acre sports site with a full-size football pitch, a cricket square, an outdoor practice net and a pavilion with a tea room.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 60 minutes
- Locality
- About half a mile off the A57
- Access
- Saturday football runs in winter; Saturday and Sunday cricket run in summer.
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Three ways to explore East Drayton
Signature outings
Sunday roast at the Blue Bell
Settle in at the family-run village inn for the roast singled out in reviews and a choice from three changing real ales.
Football and cricket at East Drayton
Take in the eight-acre sports ground, where a full-size football pitch and cricket square sit beside a pavilion with a tea room.
Ride Fledborough Viaduct
Follow the old railway trackbed across the river on a viaduct of fifty-nine brick arches and four metal girder spans.
The village story
East Drayton Village Guide
A village pub, an exceptional medieval church and routes through the flat Trent Valley landscape.
The Blue Bell, Past and Present
The Blue Bell Inn on Low Street is the only pub left in a village that used to have two. The other, the Old Harrow Inn on Top Street, is a timber-framed 17th-century cottage now, brick and pantile, with nothing pub-like left about it but the listing description.
The Blue Bell closed for a period and came back under new owners, family run. Time a visit for Sunday: food is served lunchtime only, 12:30 to 8pm, and the roast is what people come back for. Three real ales rotate through with no permanents, often Batemans or something from the Pheasantry brewery. There's a beer garden, a car park, and outside seating for the warmer months.
A Pub for Walkers
"Best pub by miles around here, a real gem, an oasis for walkers, cyclists, locals and dogs," runs one review, which is a lot to claim for a pub that's shut on Mondays. The dog-and-walker part checks out — it sits on a country lane that gets both.
Beyond the Blue Bell there isn't much to shop for. East Drayton has 266 people and no butcher, baker or farm shop of its own; you come here to eat and walk, not to browse.
St Peter's and Drayton
The village itself is four streets — Top Street, Low Street, Church Lane and North Green — meeting at a crossroads with St Peter's Church in the middle. It's Grade I, almost entirely Perpendicular outside, with a 15th-century south porch carved with human heads and animal figures under a ribbed stone vault built to look like timber. Inside there's a wooden rood screen of the same period and a 14th-century incised floor slab with a simple cross cut into it.
The Domesday survey recorded the place simply as "Drayton" — the "East" was added later to tell it apart from West Drayton, four miles off. Thirty-three households, thirteen plough teams, held by the king both before and after the Conquest.
Hawksmoor and the Trent
Nicholas Hawksmoor was born here around 1661, son of a farming family, though nobody can pin the date down because the parish's baptism records for those years are missing. Wren heard of his "early skill and genius" and took him on as a clerk at eighteen. He went on to work with Vanbrugh on Blenheim and Castle Howard and to design six London churches, Christ Church Spitalfields among them, and still owned land in the village he'd left by the time he died.
A circular walk starts three miles east at Dunham Toll Bridge, over the tidal Trent, passing three churches — Fledborough, Ragnall, Dunham — with views of Fledborough Viaduct, fifty-nine brick arches built from nine million bricks. A cycle route follows the old Chesterfield–Lincoln railway across the same river. The land here is flat Trent Valley clay, easy walking, and Cottam power station's cooling towers came down in August 2025.
Sport, Transport and the Tower
East Drayton Sports Club, half a mile off the A57, has a football pitch and a cricket square reckoned among the best in Bassetlaw, plus a pavilion with a tea room. Retford station, on the East Coast Main Line, is seven miles east; the 89 bus runs three times a day.
Up in the church tower's ringing chamber, painted onto the wall, are rings the bell-ringers call "cheeses" — commemorating local weddings dated between 1769 and 1865, still there.
Stay around Nottinghamshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Nottinghamshire, linked directly to their property pages.
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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.
- The Blue Bell Inn — camra.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Peter's Church — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- East Drayton Sports Club — fulltime.thefa.com other published source record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- National Cycle Route 647 — walkwheelcycletrust.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Dunham Toll Bridge — dunhambridge.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation