Reservoir, woodland and Bagot history
Blithfield
A scattered Staffordshire parish where waymarked trails, watersports and seven centuries of Bagot history gather around a 790-acre reservoir.
- Reservoir
- 790 acres
- Waymarked walks
- Three routes
- Nearest station
- Rugeley Trent Valley, about 4.5 miles
Photo: Rod Grealish · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Come for a slow day shaped by the water
Blithfield has no conventional village centre: its strongest visits combine a reservoir activity with the parish church and a nearby food stop.
Choose a short waymarked circuit for woodland and wetland, or make the reservoir itself the activity through the sailing club. St Leonard's supplies the close-up history; Hixon and Abbots Bromley supply the pub tables, pies and cheese that Blithfield lacks.
Your picks, your pace
Make Blithfield 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 placesBlithfield Walks
Pick a 1.25-mile woodland circuit, a 1.75-mile wetland route or a 2.75-mile route through Stanley Wood, known for its bluebells and wildflower meadow.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 1 hr 30 min
- Locality
- Newton Hurst Lane, Blithfield
- Access
- Dogs are welcome on leads; use the on-site notices for current access conditions.
Blithfield Sailing Club
An RYA-recognised training centre for dinghy sailing, windsurfing and wing foiling, with junior and adult courses and racing on the reservoir.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 2 hr 30 min
- Locality
- Blithfield Reservoir
- Access
- Participation is through the club and its courses or events; check the Official site before travel.
Bank House Inn
A 17th-century former farmhouse pub with a surviving malt cellar, Titanic real ales, traditional British food and wood-fired pizza.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 1 hr 15 min
- Locality
- Hixon
- Access
- Check the pub's Official site before making a special journey.
Food & drink
3 placesThe Goats Head
A 17th-century timber-framed pub facing the Market Place, with beamed rooms, an open fire and a room linked by tradition to Dick Turpin.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 1 hr 15 min
- Locality
- Abbots Bromley
- Access
- Check the pub operator's page before making a special journey.
Wilson's Butchers
A local butcher known for award-winning sausages, bacon, cooked meats and meat joints, with an associated Pie Shak for handmade pies and pasties.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 25 min
- Locality
- Abbots Bromley
- Access
- Check current trading details before making a special journey.
The Cheese Locker
An award-winning cheesemonger with a wide range of British and Continental cheeses.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 25 min
- Locality
- Abbots Bromley
- Access
- Check the shop's Official site before making a special journey.
History & heritage
1 place
St Leonard's Church, Blithfield
A Grade I church with a core dating from around 1300, Bagot family tombs, ancient stained glass and a floor paved in Minton tiles.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: 45 min
- Locality
- Blithfield
- Access
- Check the church page for worship and visitor access before travel.
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On the map
Blithfield at a glance
Tap a marker to jump to its guide card.
Three ways to explore Blithfield
Signature outings
Trade open water for Stanley Wood
Start at Newton Hurst Lane and choose the blue-and-yellow circuit for woodland and seasonal bluebells rather than attempting to circle the entire lake.
Look down for the Minton-tiled floor
When the church is accessible, move from the medieval fabric and 1525 tower glass to the Bagot tombs and the Minton tiles underfoot.
Settle into a timber-framed pub
The Goats Head adds beams, an open fire and the local Dick Turpin tradition to a day otherwise dominated by water and woodland.
The village story
Water, inheritance and the village that vanished
The original Travel Fox article follows Blithfield from its submerged geography and reservoir pursuits to Bagot tombs, Civil War loyalties and a semi-wild herd older than the lake.
A parish shaped by water
Blithfield Reservoir takes up so much of the parish that it's easier to say what isn't underwater: a scatter of hamlets — Admaston, Newton — a hall, and a herd of goats that has been running semi-wild in the surrounding parkland since the 1380s.
There's no pub in Blithfield itself, and no shop — the parish never had a centre to put one in. What it has is water: 790 acres, up to 16 metres deep, fed by the River Blithe, the Little Blithe and Tad Brook. The B5013 crosses it on a causeway; the nearest station, Rugeley Trent Valley, is four and a half miles south.
Ways onto the reservoir
Blithfield Sailing Club runs dinghy racing, windsurfing and wing foiling, with RYA courses and races most Sundays. Blithfield Anglers has over eleven miles of bank fishing plus boats, a four-fish limit, and day permits from £30.
Three waymarked walks start from the free car park on Newton Hurst Lane: blue (1.25 miles, through the woods), red (1.75 miles, into the wetland), and a combined blue-and-yellow route (2.75 miles, through Stanley Wood, bluebells in season). A longer loop, about 5.6 miles, goes past Admaston towards Abbots Bromley. A walking blogger called Carter wrote that the paths give "so much to take in that this is very much a walk you'll want to revisit."
Pubs, pies and the Horn Dance
For a pub, Hixon (two or three miles off) has the Bank House Inn — once a thatched farmhouse that brewed its own beer, Titanic ales on now, wood-fired pizzas Wednesday to Sunday. Abbots Bromley has the Goats Head, a 17th-century timber-framed pub with a room Dick Turpin is said to have slept in after stealing Black Bess from Rugeley Horsefair.
Abbots Bromley also has Wilson's Butchers, whose sausages and pies have picked up awards, plus its own Pie Shak and the Cheese Locker next door. Every September the Horn Dance — reindeer antlers, one dated to the 11th century — passes through, stopping at Blithfield Hall.
Church, hall and the Bagots
St Leonard's Church, Grade I listed, dates from around 1300, its chancel restored in 1851 by Pugin. Inside are Bagot family tombs and a floor paved in Minton tiles; the tower's stained glass dates to 1525. A First World War RFC officer is buried in the churchyard.
The Bagots have held Blithfield Hall since 1360, when Ralph Bagot married Elizabeth Blithfield and acquired the manor. The house is mostly Elizabethan, with a neo-Gothic front added in the 1820s and an Orangery by James "Athenian" Stuart in 1769. Sir Hervey Bagot backed the King in the Civil War; his son died of wounds from Naseby. In 1945 the 5th Baron sold the Hall and 650 acres to the water company; the Queen Mother opened the reservoir in 1953. Lady Bagot bought it back at auction in 1959; it's since split into four houses, the family still in the part with the Great Hall.
The vanished village and its goats
Domesday valued the whole manor at £1. The settlement had vanished by 1334, leaving the water and the goats as the only original residents.
The goats are Richard II's doing — given to John Bagot around 1380 after a good day's hunting in Bagot's Park, and semi-wild ever since, one of the country's oldest breeds and now classed vulnerable. Walk the blue route and you're more likely to meet them than anyone from the Hall.
Stay around Staffordshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Staffordshire, linked directly to their property pages.
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Greenways House - Parking, Pool Table and Garden!
- Sleeps 10
- 4 bedrooms
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Lee House Cottage + Annexe
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- 8 bedrooms
Leek
Silkwood House | Boutique 4 Bed nr. Peak District
- Sleeps 8
- 4 bedrooms
Stoke-on-Trent
Heather's House
- 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.
Photography credits & licences
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:Tower of St Leonard's church, Blithfield Estate, Staffordshire - geograph.org.uk - 8278307.jpg — photograph by Rod Grealish; Tower of St Leonard's church, Blithfield Estate, Staffordshire by Rod Grealish. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Blithfield Walks — discovereaststaffordshire.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Blithfield Sailing Club — blithfield.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Leonard's Church, Blithfield — achurchnearyou.com national body or asset manager
- Bank House Inn — thebankhousehixon.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Goats Head — camra.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Wilson's Butchers — ratings.food.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- The Cheese Locker — thecheeselocker.com operator, sector body or destination organisation