The clock tower inside Drayton Manor theme park is the only piece left standing of the mansion that used to occupy the site — an Elizabethan-style pile designed by Sir Robert Smirke, big enough to host Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on a visit in 1843, and demolished by 1926. The rides and car parks now cover what used to be the Peel family's grounds. You can see the tower from the entrance before you've paid for a single ticket.
The village sits about three miles south of Tamworth, with the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal marking its eastern edge. A white-painted Gothic footbridge crosses the water on cylindrical turrets built for a spiral staircase, put up in the 1780s and still standing, Grade II listed. Walk the towpath south and you reach Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve, 160 hectares of old gravel workings, then Kingsbury Water Park beyond that.
Drayton Bassett Village Club, on Drayton Lane, is the pub — a working men's club run largely by volunteers rather than a brewery. The menu covers fish and chips and burgers alongside vegetarian dishes, and reviewers mention Popara and Biko on the board. It's rated 4.6 from 78 reviews, ranked first of seven pubs and bars in the village. "Everyone is friendly, the drinks are reasonable and a good inside & outside space for the kids," wrote reviewer Kris Henscoe, while O'Toole UK praised "the dedication of the volunteers who keep the club running."
There's no confirmed butcher, baker or farm shop in the village centre — for that you'd want Tamworth, five to ten minutes' drive away, or Fazeley, a mile and a half off with a more frequent bus into Tamworth.
St Peter's Church was founded in 1327, when Ralph Lord Bassett was licensed by Edward III to build it, reportedly to settle a debt. The west tower is 15th century, Perpendicular, with a crenellated parapet and a buttress solid enough to look defensive. A storm wrecked the nave in 1792, and the first Sir Robert Peel rebuilt it the following year. His son, twice Prime Minister and founder of the Metropolitan Police, is buried in the churchyard, having died in 1850 after a fall from his horse on Constitution Hill in London. The memorial tablet inside reads: "to whom the People have raised Monuments in many places. His Children erect this in the place where his body has been buried."
The manor belonged to the Basset family until 1483, then passed through the Earls of Leicester and Essex; Lettice Knollys, Countess of both in turn, lived here from 1593 and raised her grandson on the estate. By Domesday the village was Crown land, held directly by King William I and valued at £4 to the lord, the same figure recorded in 1066 as in 1086, with nine villagers, three smallholders and two mills.
The Heart of England Way runs straight through, on its way from Cannock Chase to the Cotswolds. The stretch towards Kingsbury follows the canal past the RSPB reserve, a couple of hours of easy, mostly flat walking. Tamworth is the nearest station, three miles off, and the A4091 connects to the A5 and the M42 without much fuss.
Musician Julian Cope lived in the village through the late eighties and into the nineties, which nobody at the Village Club seems especially bothered about one way or the other.
