The Moat House stands on what's left of an island. Its oldest wing, a four-bay, two-storey timber-framed range from the early 16th century, sits inside a medieval moat that once ran around all four sides of the site. When the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal was cut through in the later 18th century, it swallowed the moat's southern and western arms; the two arms that remain, with the moated island itself, are a Scheduled Ancient Monument, traceable from the towpath.
The hotel built around that timber wing is family-run, by the Lewis Partnership, and it's the only pub in the village; there's no shop or butcher either, and villagers shop in Penkridge or Stafford. The Moat House has 41 bedrooms and a beer garden, and opens 9am to 11pm daily, food served noon to 2pm and 5:30 to 9:30pm, Sundays until 9.
The restaurant, the Orangery, holds two AA Rosettes, which for a village this size is a fair amount of cutlery to keep polished. Reviewers mention a parsnip velouté amuse-bouche, beetroot panna cotta, a duck and butternut squash pithivier, and a Sunday lunch with beef or chicken; a three-course set menu has been reported at £30 a head. TripAdvisor rates it 4 out of 5 — the only hotel in the village, so no real competition, but reviewers mean it: "the ambience is delightful, the service is attentive and the food is some of the best," wrote one, though others note the kitchen can slow on a busy sitting. Three real ales are kept at the bar, Wainwright Amber the regular plus two changing guests from breweries including Black Sheep and Greene King. Dogs are welcome in the bar, with dog-friendly bedrooms too.
For a walk, the towpath is the obvious start. The Acton Trussell and Bednall Circular is an official four-mile route beginning on the canal — "one of the oldest in the country" — before crossing farmland around Bednall. Park at the lay-by by Parkgate Bridge on Teddesley Road, or just follow the towpath north into Stafford, or south to Penkridge alongside the River Penk.
St James' Church stands apart from the rest of the village, which puzzled local archaeologists enough in the 1970s that they started fieldwalking the churchyard. In 1984 they found out why: church and graveyard sit on a Romano-British villa, first built in the 1st century AD and rebuilt in stone in the 2nd, its dining room footings still in the ground. Two 3rd-century coins turned up in a dig that ran on and off for almost thirty years.
The church was founded in 1212, though the oldest stonework standing now dates from around 1300; G. E. Street restored and enlarged it in 1869. The churchyard holds Commonwealth war graves from both World Wars.
Domesday recorded the village as Actone: eighteen households, a mill worth two shillings, and a value to the lord that crept from five shillings in 1066 to a pound by 1086. The Trussell family, Norman lords, gave the village its name; the manor passed by marriage to the Earls of Oxford, then by 1658 to the Ansons of Shugborough.
Penkridge station is two and a half miles off, and Junction 13 of the M6 puts Stafford and the West Midlands within easy reach. The village's other export is a drag act. Patrick Fyffe, born here in 1942, became one half of Hinge and Bracket, and named his fictional stage village Stackton Tressel after his own.
