Gnosall

Four pubs and the Bridge 34 survivor

Gnosall used to have seven pubs. It's down to four now, but four in a village this size is still a fair showing, and each one does something different.

The Boat Inn sits on Wharf Road at Bridge 34, single-roomed, canal-side, with window seats looking out over the boats going past. It began as a horse staging post for fly-boats and still leans into the trade: homemade pies (chicken and chorizo; steak and stilton), fish and chips, all-day breakfast, food served every day of the week. The ales are Banks's Amber, Wainwright Gold, Courage Directors. There's a craft shelf of handmade items raising money for local groups and charities. Licensees on record go back to Mary Roscoe in 1896 and John Roscoe in 1900.

Bridge 35 and the village high street

Round at Bridge 35, the Navigation Inn is an 18th-century coaching inn with mooring for boaters and a sundeck looking down over the canal. Dogs are allowed in the bar if they behave.

On the High Street, the Horns has a five-star hygiene rating, a refurbished pool table, a weekly quiz, and a kitchen doing what its regulars call "new twists on classic dishes," and it holds 4.4 out of 5 on Tripadvisor. The Royal Oak, out on the A518, has a large beer garden, open fires, and a reputation among regulars as "always improving," and it sits at 3.8. The Bakery on Wharf Road does pork pies and pasties to take on a walk.

Norman stone and canal miles

St Lawrence's is the reason the village turns up in serious architectural surveys. It's cruciform, with a central tower, and the crossing arches are 12th-century Norman work built over an Anglo-Saxon minster church - one of only six such survivals in England. The carving is unusual: chevron and billet patterns, dragons, a green man, and, near the belfry window, a chalice cut into the stone by the 15th-century masons who extended the tower. Two Royalist soldiers, John Bayne and David James, were buried in the churchyard within six months of each other, in 1642 and 1643.

The canal is the other spine of the place. The towpath runs level and accessible - there's a ramp by the Boat Inn - for about three miles to Norbury Junction, past Oulton and Cotonwood, toward Aqualate Mere, the largest natural lake in the Midlands. A four-mile circular walk closer to hand strings together footpaths and a stretch of the old Stafford-Shrewsbury railway line, now followed by the Way for the Millennium.

Play spaces and long connections

For families there's the Acres, 25 acres along Doley Brook with a boardwalk over a wetland site, a play park renewed in 2022, and a free tennis court; older children get a zip wire and assault course at Chippy Jumps on the A518.

Gnosall appears in Domesday as Geneshalle, worth 2 shillings before the Conquest and 15 shillings by 1086. Its own railway station closed in 1966; these days it's Stafford by car, about seven miles, or the Arriva 5 and 5A buses. Reverend Adam Blakeman, born here, went on to found Stratford, Connecticut, in 1639.

A hall built to remember

The Memorial Village Hall was built in 1921 to remember the village's First World War dead. It seats 240 under one roof with a stage at the end, and these days it's where you'll find indoor bowls of an evening.