Behind the Ram's Head, at the top of the village, sit two crown green bowling greens. The pub itself was built by the Legh family around 1640 as a lodge of the Lyme Park estate, and it spent the next two centuries as the region's premier coaching stop on the Manchester–London road. After three visits, Viscount Torrington voted it "the best inn in England" in 1790. It is Grade II listed, log fires and all, and it does an all-day menu of stone-baked pizzas, steak grills and pub grub. One TripAdvisor reviewer said of the Sunday roast: "I can honestly say this is the best Sunday lunch I have had in a pub." The sea bass gets a mention too. Dogs are welcome in the bar and gardens, where the tables come with water bowls and treats, and the rear garden has heaters for people coming off the hills.
The railway put an end to the coaching trade in 1857, which is roughly the same railway that now runs roughly hourly to Manchester Piccadilly and to Buxton via Stockport. The station is in the village. The A6, on its way from Carlisle to Luton, runs through the middle of it.
The other pub is the White Lion on Buxton Road, one of the first brick buildings in Disley and, before its long closure, a CAMRA award-winner known for ever-changing real ales. It reopened in August 2025 with an open-plan refurbishment, a real fire, homemade pies off a pie board, baguettes and jacket potatoes. A carvery is planned. The cask ale, at reopening, was "available soon."
Above the village is Lyme Park: 1,400 acres of moor and parkland, a National Trust hall, formal gardens and a herd of deer. It stood in as Pemberley in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. The Gritstone Trail, a 35-mile waymarked route over millstone-grit country, begins here and heads south toward Kidsgrove. If you want less of a commitment, there's a circular of about four miles taking in the hall and the canal towpath. Up on the ridge are the Bowstones, two upright cross shafts from which seven historic counties are said to be visible.
To the north, the River Goyt and the Peak Forest Canal border the village. The towpath is flat walking to New Mills — about ten minutes away by road, and home to the Millennium Walkway, a 160-metre wire-hung stilted path across a gorge above the river.
St Mary the Virgin sits on a hill overlooking everything. It was built between 1527 and 1558, originally meant as a chantry chapel for the fifth Sir Piers Legh of Lyme, who died before it was finished. Grade II* listed, buff sandstone, earliest register from 1591.
The Legh name runs through all of it. An earlier Piers Legh was wounded at Agincourt and, the story goes, protected as he lay by his mastiff — the animal that founded the Lyme Hall mastiff line. The dog, in other words, has been here longer than the pub.
