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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
