Hilltop Staffordshire
Hanbury
A small village above the Dove Valley, shaped by old paths, deep history and the lasting mark of the RAF Fauld explosion.
- Best for
- Country walks, church history and a pub lunch
- Give it
- Editorial estimate: a measured half-day
- Don't miss
- The Dove Valley view from Hanbury Hill
Photo: Bikeboy · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
A small village with an outsized story
Hanbury pairs broad valley views and three waymarked walks with a remarkable medieval church and the surviving Fauld explosion crater.
This is a walking-led outing: begin around Hanbury Hill, choose from the routes that start at The Cock Inn, make time for St Werburgh's Church and return to the village's only pub.
Where to go
Places in Hanbury
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 places
Start here
Church of St Werburgh
A mainly 13th-century church over a 12th-century core, with two Anglo-Saxon crosses in the west wall and alabaster monuments to the Hanbury, Adderley and Egerton families.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Church Lane, Hanbury
Hanbury Walks
Three circular waymarked routes start at The Cock Inn: one reaches Tutbury Castle, one runs towards Draycott in the Clay past St Werburgh's Church, and a shorter route enters the eastern hills.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 120 minutes
- Locality
- starting at The Cock Inn
Tutbury Castle
Ruined Norman and medieval castle remains associated with Mary, Queen of Scots, reached from Hanbury by one of the waymarked walks.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Tutbury
Food & drink
1 placeThe Cock Inn
Hanbury's only pub is a free house with a public bar, lounge, separate snug, 60-seat restaurant, spacious beer garden and rotating guest ales.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- on Hanbury Hill
Walks & outdoors
1 placeHanbury Common Picnic Place
A 4.9-acre area of brambles and trees with parking, picnic space and views across the Dove Valley.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Hanbury Hill
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Three ways to explore Hanbury
Signature outings
Hanbury's village pub
Start or finish at The Cock Inn, a hilltop free house with separate bar rooms, a restaurant, beer garden and the three Hanbury Walks at its door.
Centuries inside St Werburgh's
The Grade II* church holds two Anglo-Saxon crosses in its west wall alongside a remarkable group of alabaster monuments.
A picnic above the Dove
Hanbury Common combines a small area of brambles and trees with picnic space and wide views over the Dove Valley.
The village story
Hanbury Village Guide
The original Travel Fox account of Hanbury's hilltop pub, historic paths, medieval church and the landscape left by the Fauld explosion.
The Hilltop Pub
The Cock Inn sits on top of Hanbury Hill, about 600 yards from a crater you could lose a house in. More on that later. It's the only pub in the village, and it earns the position — public bar, lounge, a separate snug, and a 60-seat restaurant, run as a free house since 1998.
The food is straightforward and properly done: cod and chips, steak and kidney pudding, burgers, pizza, a Sunday roast served as a trio of meats. Raspberry cheesecake and crumble and apple pie for afterwards. A two-course lunch comes in under £15, and burgers are 25% off on Tuesdays.
A Welcome for Walkers
Dogs and horses are both welcome, with water bowls provided. There's a spacious beer garden, and three waymarked routes, the Hanbury Walks, all start from the door. On the bar you'll find Draught Bass and Marston's Pedigree alongside two rotating guest ales.
A blogger once wrote that the Cock Inn is "not far from the A50 but a totally different pace of life and a pub that hits the spot." That's about right.
Rebuilt After the Blast
A pub has stood on this site since at least 1839. The current building dates from around 1950, after the original was badly damaged by the RAF Fauld explosion in 1944. Local lore has it that the brewery's rebuilding plans for Hanbury got swapped with plans meant for a Birmingham housing estate — so what's standing on the hill now was drawn for somewhere else entirely.
Of the three Hanbury Walks, one heads to Tutbury Castle through old RAF land, one goes to Draycott in the Clay past the church, and a shorter loop climbs into the eastern hills. The village stands on a headland 250 feet above the Dove Valley, looking north to the Weaver Hills and the Derbyshire Dales.
The Church and the Crater
St Werburgh's Church is Grade II* listed, mostly 13th-century work over a 12th-century core, with two Anglo-Saxon crosses built into the west wall by the south door. It began as a nunnery, founded in 680 AD by Ethelred, King of Mercia, for his sister St Werburgh, who was buried here before the Danes destroyed the place in 875. Inside are alabaster monuments to the Adderley and Egerton families, and the effigy of Sir John de Hanbury, buried in 1303 with a dog at his feet; the manor itself was held for centuries by the Vernon family.
The crater is the other thing. On 27 November 1944, at 11:11am, 3,500 to 4,000 tonnes of explosive went off at the underground RAF Fauld munitions depot in the parish — one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, reportedly heard 30 miles away in Coventry. It destroyed a reservoir holding 450,000 cubic metres of water and a farm below it, killing an estimated 70 people. A secret wartime inquiry blamed a technician who used the wrong tool to remove a live detonator. The crater survives: 100 feet deep, up to 1,007 feet across.
Village Life and Old Footnotes
There's no shop in the village, but the Post Office operates out of St Werburgh's Church itself. St Werburgh's School, a Church of England primary built in 1848, is still teaching, and Draycott and Hanbury Cricket Club has played on Knightsfield Road since 1979. Sudbury station once served the village; today it's Burton-on-Trent or Uttoxeter, both a short drive, with the Bus Link 412 running to Burton.
The Thatches, a 15th-century building near the church, used to be a pub called the Fighting Cock. Its old cockfighting ground is now the back lawn of the vicarage next door, mown and unremarkable.
Stay around Staffordshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Staffordshire, linked directly to their property pages.
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Leek
Silkwood House | Boutique 4 Bed nr. Peak District
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Stoke-on-Trent
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
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- File:St Werburgh's Church, Hanbury.jpg — photograph by Bikeboy; Bikeboy. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Cock Inn — thecockinnhanbury.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Church of St Werburgh — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Hanbury Common Picnic Place — staffordshire.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Hanbury Walks — staffordshire.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Tutbury Castle — staffordshire.gov.uk statutory register or public authority