Owthorpe

A Hall the Size of the Parish

Owthorpe's community hall sits down the lane past a collection of old ploughs, and it is, by all accounts, a surprisingly large building for a place this size — it can seat 102 people, which is roughly the population of the parish. That tells you most of what you need to know about Owthorpe before you've even reached the village proper.

There is no pub here, and the closest, the Nevile Arms on Owthorpe Lane in neighbouring Kinoulton, closed for good in August 2025. For a drink now you go to Cropwell Bishop, three miles off, where the choice is the Chequers, the Lime Kiln Inn, or the Wheatsheaf Inn down by the canal. Colston Bassett, about the same distance, has the Martin's Arms.

Stilton and the Five-Mile Circular

Owthorpe has no shop either. What it has instead, within easy reach, are two of the county's better-known cheesemakers. Colston Bassett Dairy has hand-ladled its Stilton since 1913, when a local doctor persuaded the farmers around him to raise £1,000 in capital to get the business going; it is one of only six dairies in the world licensed to make PDO Blue Stilton, and the Dairy Door is open to anyone who wants to buy some. Cropwell Bishop Creamery, on the canal walk out of the village, makes Blue and White Stilton that has picked up Supreme Champion honours at the Virtual Cheese Awards.

The walking starts at the door. A five-mile circular route from Cropwell Bishop's playing field follows the Grantham Canal towpath, crosses meadows and a couple of stiles, passes Owthorpe's fishponds — the last visible trace of Owthorpe Hall, which burned down in the late 1820s — and enters the churchyard by a kissing gate. A longer 11.1-mile loop pushes out to Old Wharf and Hickling Basin along the disused canal. There's fishing too: Woodview Holiday Cottages, on a working arable farm, has two stocked lakes, Spring Hill and Garton's Pond, with day tickets for coarse fishing. The Little Retreat Day Spa, just outside the village on Colston Bassett Lane, does massages, facials and afternoon tea.

St Margaret's in the Fields

St Margaret's Church stands apart from everything else, alone in farmland on the site of the old Hall, reachable only by a grass footpath that turns to mud in winter. It is often padlocked. "At a glance it is a small cluster of residential farm buildings, a community centre and a padlocked church," wrote the Notts Villages blog in 2016, and a large padlock prevented them getting in too. Inside, there's a three-decker Jacobean pulpit still in use, a 15th-century font with a castellated top, and a monument to Colonel John Hutchinson, one of the men who signed Charles I's death warrant, who retired here and died in 1664. In 1859 the nave floor gave way and revealed the Hutchinson family vault beneath it, seventeen coffins deep.

Lucy Hutchinson's Owthorpe

His wife Lucy wrote her husband's life story at Owthorpe after his death — one of the great first-hand accounts of the Civil War, and a 19th-century bestseller once it was finally published in 1806. She also produced the first complete English translation of Lucretius.

Domesday, Transport and Hunting Season

The Domesday Book valued the whole place at £1 in 1086, down from £1 10s twenty years earlier. It hasn't grown much since. The nearest station is Radcliffe-on-Trent, four miles off; buses now run on demand rather than to a timetable. In hunting season the lanes round Owthorpe fill with the cars of people who've come to watch, rather than ride.