Elford

Cellars, Ale and the Village Pub

The Crown Inn's former courtroom was upstairs; the cells were in the cellars below. At the back is a vaulted room called the Old Cellar. Food is served at advertised themed events.

The pub is the only one left in Elford — brick-built, mainly 18th century, with a Victorian bar-back and period panelling. It is Grade II listed, and its interior has a one-star rating for special national historic interest. There's a pool table, table football, a dartboard and a real fire. Draught Bass is the standing order at the bar, alongside two changing guest beers; briefly, in the late 2010s, the pub brewed its own on a one-barrel kit called Crown Brewhouse.

Outside there's a beer garden with a converted horsebox pouring cocktails, and the pub is dog friendly. One Tripadvisor review is headlined, simply, "Best pub in the constituency." The address is The Square.

Garden Walls and Tame-side Paths

Elford has no general shops — no butcher, deli or bakery — but the village hall hosts a Tuesday Post Office service. The Walled Garden is a twelve-foot enclosure that once fed Elford Hall's kitchens, left to go wild for fifty years after the Hall itself was demolished, and rebuilt from 2009 by volunteers under David Watton, later awarded a British Empire Medal for it.

Sophie, Countess of Wessex, opened it officially in 2011. The garden is free, with a rose garden, a boules court, a boat house on the River Tame, and a children's play area optimistically named the Giant Garden.

Footpaths follow the Tame out towards Harlaston, a mile and a half east. Croxall Lakes is a restored wetland about 2.4 miles north of Elford in a straight line, where the river has been allowed to braid and wander the way it used to.

Tombs, Legends and the Stanley Boy

St Peter's Church sits at the end of a tree-lined avenue, its tower dating to 1598, the body rebuilt in the 1840s and 1860s. Inside are alabaster tombs Pevsner rated among the finest in the county.

Sir Thomas Arderne and his wife Matilda lie holding hands in effigy. Sir John Stanley is carved in armour, an eagle by his head. In the Stanley Chapel is the monument known as the Stanley Boy: a figure in hard grit stone holding a tennis ball, his hand raised to his temple where it struck him.

The Latin on the plinth reads Ubi dolor ibi digitus — where the pain is, there is the finger. The story was first written down by the antiquarian Sampson Erdeswicke around 1600. It has no record to back it up, and later scholars think the carving is a century too early to be him at all.

Manor, Mills and Mercian Memory

The manor belonged to Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, before it was forfeited to the Crown in 1066. Domesday records twenty-four villagers, eight smallholders and two mills working the Tame.

Robert Bage, the novelist, ran a paper mill here and wrote from the Mill House. Three of his six books were rated by Walter Scott among the fifty best of the age.

Rails, Roads and a Riverside Dusk

Elford's own railway station closed long ago. Tamworth and Lichfield, both about five miles off, cover the trains now, and the number 84 bus still comes through on its way to Harlaston.

Walk the riverside path at dusk, where dogs on leads and an unhurried village feel complete the scene.