Perrys of Eccleshall has been trading on the High Street since 1927, and everything in the window carries a promise the shop states outright rather than implies: every animal was reared within five miles of the door. It has won Countryside Alliance's Best Butcher in Britain, and Butcher's Shop of the Year for the Midlands and East of England, mostly on the strength of its pork sausages and pies. Round the back there's a cookery school, Perrys Field to Fork, run by the shop's own Master Butcher, Stephen Hill, who teaches artisan butchery to people who turn up wanting to learn how to break down a carcass properly. The Kings Arms next door sources its meat from Perrys because it would be strange not to.
The High Street itself is Georgian mostly, with a scatter of Victorian shopfronts and older timber underneath some of the plaster, and it's a conservation area, which around here just means nobody's been allowed to ruin it yet. Walk it end to end and you'll pass the 13th-century church and the castle ruins without detouring for either. It's a short street for what it holds.
What it holds, mainly, is pubs. Seven of them once stood within 350 metres of each other, between the Eagle and the Ecclian, which for a town this size is either a statement of intent or a design flaw, depending on your evening. The Royal Oak, at number 25, is the pick for atmosphere — a coaching inn that predates the toll roads, with real fires, arched stone cellars, and attic rooms that used to house servants. It's a Joule's Brewery house now, pouring Joule's Pale Ale, Slumbering Monk, Pure Blonde and a craft lager called Green Monkey, all brewed with Shropshire mineral water. There's a beer garden for more than fifty and a heated covered courtyard called the Coachhouse. The Farmers snug at the back is where the local book club meets once a month, and the pub itself was once owned by Geoff Hurst, who scored a hat-trick in the 1966 World Cup final. Local legend holds that a tunnel once ran from the cellars to Gaol Butts nearby, which nobody has ever quite proved and nobody in the pub seems keen to disprove.
The Kings Arms Hotel, a few doors along, is the 16th-century building with the busier kitchen. Steak and ale pie with mash is £13, a classic cheeseburger with chips is £11, an 8oz sirloin with chips is £15, and there are at least six burgers on the menu if none of those appeal. Sunday carvery starts at noon. The building was a stopping point on the London–Chester coach route and the stables are still there, though refurbishment in 2017 turned the place into something livelier — live music, festival weekends, darts matches.
The Little George occupies part of the old George Hotel site on Castle Street, a 17th-century coaching inn that spent years as Slater's Brewery tap before closing for refurbishment in 2014 and reopening as Bent's Brew House in July 2017. It's a café by day — deli sandwiches, breakfasts, cakes and pastries, proper coffee from nine in the morning — and a bar with four guest rooms above it. Lymestone Ein Stein is the regular on the pumps, with three guest beers rotating alongside it.
The Ecclian, at number 27, is Grade II listed and run by Martin and Helen, who took it over after it spent a stretch trading as Merckx Bar. It stocks over a hundred whiskies, a hundred gins and ten brandies, which is a lot of shelf space for a pub this size, and hosts monthly bingo. Dogs are welcome on leads but not on the seats. Down the street, the Bell Inn was CAMRA's Branch Pub of the Month in April 2012 and has kept the standard up — four regular ales including Draught Bass and Timothy Taylor Landlord, two rotating guests usually from Izaak Walton, Lymestone or Titanic, and a rear garden for the smokers. It sponsors Eccleshall Rugby Club and runs a Thursday quiz.
The Old Smithy is the one to book for dinner. Reviewers call it a "super classy gastropub," and the menu backs that up: scallops and black pudding, garlic mushrooms, a gluten-free leg of lamb, sea bass, whitebait, stroganoff, tuna, pork loin. It's small inside, locally sourced where the kitchen can manage it, and there's a secluded garden for when the weather cooperates.
Not every pub survived. The Eagle, on Horsefair, closed in February 2024 after its owner had already sunk around £150,000 into turning it into a sports bar — it just couldn't pull custom off the High Street's own circuit, despite the signage and the themed nights. It sat vacant from the previous December and is now becoming a house, though it kept a collection of historic Eagle Inn pub signs in the beer garden while it lasted, and hosted the town's community defibrillator. The Badger Inn went the same way, after its licensee moved to another pub closer to the centre and the building was converted to housing. Eccleshall still has plenty of pubs left. It's just had more.
Beyond the High Street, Fletcher's Garden and Leisure Centre on Stone Road does the job of keeping children occupied for an afternoon — mini golf, a ride-on miniature railway, a play area, and the Gentleshaw Wildlife Centre, which has reptiles, emus, owls and whatever else has turned up. There's also a tennis club on Chester Road with floodlit courts, and the Jubilee Playing Field, which is exactly what it sounds like: trails, open grass, somewhere to run.
Holy Trinity Church, Grade I listed, has stood in some form since at least 1195, with the chancel, arcades and west tower dating largely to the 13th century and the aisles rebuilt in the 15th. The south porch has a restored quadripartite vault. Inside are the tombs of Bishops of Lichfield — Historic England counts four, including a memorial to Bishop Overton, who died in 1609; other sources put it at five. It's called one of the most important churches in the county, and given how long Eccleshall spent as an episcopal seat, that's not an idle claim.
That seat goes back a long way. The name comes from the Primitive Welsh word for church and the Old English for a nook of land, which points to a Christian site here before the Saxons arrived. The estate was given to the Bishop of Lichfield as early as 669 AD, and by the time the Domesday surveyors came through in 1086 it was already an episcopal manor — held by the Bishop of Chester in both 1066 and 1086, with 14 villagers, 2 smallholders, 2 slaves, a priest, 11 plough teams between lord and men, two mills, and a total valuation of £4. Bishop Walter Durdent secured a market charter in 1153; the town was recognised as a borough by 1199; it had grown to around 500 people, mostly craftsmen and farm labourers, by 1298.
The castle came in 1200, when King John granted Bishop Geoffrey de Muschamp a licence to crenellate, and it was rebuilt on a grander scale in 1305 by Bishop Walter Langton — four corner towers, a wide moat. Queen Margaret of Anjou stayed there around the time of the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459. Its worst week came in 1643, when Sir William Brereton's Parliamentary forces besieged it, camping around the church and battering the walls with their guns for weeks. The castle held out until the end of August, when it finally fell — the bishop under siege, Robert Wright, had already died of a heart attack, and most of his defenders were found drunk in the town's taverns rather than at their posts. The castle was slighted afterwards, though a nine-sided tower, the moat walls and a medieval bridge survived the demolition. Bishop William Lloyd built the house that still stands there in 1693, using fragments of the old fortress, and Sir Walter Scott visited as a guest of a later bishop, James Cornwallis. Bishop William Overton, a century before Scott's visit, brought two families of Lorraine glassmakers, the Tyzacks and the Henzeys, to nearby Bishop's Wood around 1580 — the industry lasted about thirty-five years. Leather and shoemaking ran the local economy for roughly three centuries after that, fading out by the 1800s. The last bishop to live at the castle, John Lonsdale, died there in 1867; his successor blamed the lack of a railway and sold up, ending the town's centuries-long tie to Lichfield. The castle is privately owned today, by the Carter-Motley family, closed to visitors but occasionally opening its gardens for weddings and charity events.
Cop Mere, a lake about two kilometres west of the town, is the anchor for the best local walk — a loop from the castle out past Elford Heath and Pershall, with views over the River Sow, on to Platt Bridge and along a woodland path on the lake's northern shore. The parish council keeps up a wider network of footpaths with stiles and waymarking, and publishes walking booklets from the library for anyone who wants more than the one loop. The Sow itself runs on through the town, out past Stafford, and joins the Trent at Shugborough.
Once a month, on the fourth Saturday, the farmers' market sets up on the High Street under the Royal Oak's arches, running nine till one. Once a year there's the Eccleshall Show at Sugnall Parks on the edge of town, with the usual trade stands and competitions, and the town collects Britain in Bloom awards often enough that the floral displays feel less like decoration and more like a standing commitment, organised by the local civic group, the Ecclian Society. As Visit Staffordshire's own listing puts it: "The phrase 'market town' fits Eccleshall. Though imperfectly. It does more than sell. It delays the moment of exchange long enough to remember why it matters."
Getting here takes a bit more planning than it once did. Norton Bridge station, three miles east, closed in 2017, so the nearest working stations are now Stafford and Stone. The A519 runs through the middle of town and Junction 14 of the M6 is five miles south. Buses run too — the 432 to Stafford Monday to Saturday, about thirty-five minutes, and the 103 to Stone on weekday daytimes — with the nearest stop at the Post Office, three minutes' walk from the centre.
There's more within easy reach if a week here isn't enough: Stafford Castle and its Norman earthworks six miles off, Shugborough's parkland and riverside gardens at five, Weston Park at nine, and the Fitzherbert Arms at Swynnerton, built in 1818 on the site of an old smithy and repeatedly named Best Pub in Staffordshire. Sugnall Walled Garden, an 18th-century kitchen garden with a tea room, sits just past the show ground.
On a fourth Saturday morning, the market traders are setting up under the arches while the Royal Oak's fire is still being lit for the day, and somewhere on the High Street a dog on a lead is deciding which of seven pubs to wait outside first.
