Staffordshire community spirit
Shareshill
A small village with a volunteer-run shop, a historic church and a pub, with more places to visit nearby.
- Best for
- Community character and compact history
- Give it
- Editorial estimate: half a day, or longer with a nearby stop
- Don't miss
- The shop residents saved
Photo: Roger D Kidd · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Small scale, strong local character
Shareshill suits a short, unhurried visit built around its community shop, historic church and village pub.
The appeal is a living community story rather than a dense sightseeing list. Add nearby Hollybush, or link the visit with Moseley Old Hall or Cannock Chase for a longer day.
Where to go
Places in Shareshill
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesShareshill Community Shop and Post Office
Saved from closure through resident shares, grants and loans, Staffordshire's first community shop is run entirely by volunteers.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 20 minutes
- Locality
- Shareshill village
- Access
- The community shop includes a Post Office counter alongside its retail services.
Hollybush Garden Centre & Aquaria
A garden centre and aquaria on Warstone Road that makes a practical browsing stop near the motorway junction.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Warstone Road, near Shareshill
- Access
- Garden centre with gardening, aquatics, pet care and a restaurant and coffee shop.
Cannock Chase Visitor Centre
Cannock Chase Visitor Centre at Marquis Drive provides a practical starting point for exploring the wider National Landscape.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours 30 minutes
- Locality
- Marquis Drive, Cannock Chase
- Access
- Cannock Chase Visitor Centre at Marquis Drive is the visitor point for this wider National Landscape record.
Food & drink
2 placesThe Elms
A Davenports village pub serving pub meals, with games and a covered terrace known as the gin garden.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Church Road, Shareshill
- Access
- Davenports village pub with pub meals, games and a covered terrace known as the gin garden.
The Wheatsheaf
A quiet traditional pub combining British pub meals and Punjabi food, with a children's play area at the front.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Laney Green, near Shareshill
- Access
- Traditional pub with British pub meals, Punjabi food, a garden and a children's play area.
History & heritage
2 places
Church of St Mary and St Luke
Georgian red-brick rebuilding meets an earlier west tower, with a saltire-cross frieze outside and Swynnerton alabaster effigies inside.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 35 minutes
- Locality
- Shareshill village
- Access
- A Grade II* listed parish church on Church Road, with a Georgian nave and chancel and an earlier west tower.
Moseley Old Hall
A National Trust timber-framed house associated with Charles II's escape after the Battle of Worcester.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Fordhouses, Wolverhampton
- Access
- Free parking is on the car park opposite the property.
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Three ways to explore Shareshill
Signature outings
Georgian brick, older stone
Look for the saltire-cross frieze below the crenellated parapet, then compare the Georgian rebuilding with the earlier west tower.
A pub with distinct rooms
The Elms combines pub meals with a lounge, games room and covered gin-garden terrace.
The house that sheltered a king
Use nearby Moseley Old Hall to follow the story of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester.
The village story
The Shareshill story
Community ownership, old earthworks, Georgian brick and seasonal traditions give this small Staffordshire village its particular character.
Community ownership and pub life
The village shop at Shareshill was bought by the people who use it after facing closure in 2009. Residents bought £1 shares, applied for grants and took out loans to save the first community shop in Staffordshire, which is run entirely by volunteers. Its motto, "for the community by the community," captures the story; its success helped inspire a second Staffordshire community shop in Marchington.
Shareshill's pub life includes The Elms, a Davenports house on Church Road with a large bar, a lounge hung with prints of birds and hunting scenes, and a plainer games room for darts, pool and karaoke. Its menu includes roast lamb, homemade pies, fish and chips and lasagne, while the covered terrace is known as the gin garden. Dogs are welcome in designated dog-friendly areas, with an adult controlling the lead.
Food, family and ancient ground
The Wheatsheaf sits at Laney Green, about 1.1 miles from Shareshill's centre in a straight line. It serves pub meals and Punjabi food, with a children's play area at the front and a quiet traditional-pub character. Hollybush Garden Centre and Aquaria is on Warstone Road, about 1.3 miles from the village centre in a straight line, with gardening, aquatics, pet care and a restaurant and coffee shop.
Two stretches of earthwork border the village — one by the school, one by the shop — thought to be Roman encampments, with a line said to run north into Saredon, which has its own Roman mound and two Bronze Age ones.
Church and manor history
St Mary and St Luke is a Grade II* listed church: its Georgian brick nave and chancel date from about 1742, while the earlier west tower carries a frieze of saltire crosses below its crenellated parapet. Inside are alabaster effigies of Humphrey Swynnerton and his wife Cassandra. William Henry Havergal was vicar from 1860 until his death in 1870, and his daughter Frances Ridley Havergal became a noted hymn writer. Major roof-repair costs have prompted parish discussions about the building's future.
Sir William de Shareshull held the manor before becoming Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1350, drafting the Statute of Labourers before retiring to a Franciscan house in Oxford, where he died within the year. The Domesday survey knew the place as Servesed: seven households, land for three ploughs, valued at ten shillings.
Village rhythms and traditions
Compared with neighbouring Featherstone, Shareshill has more of the feel of a typical country village. The village hall has a grass football pitch and an indoor short mat bowls club, and the WI still meets. Bus route 67 runs through to Cannock, and the Chase Line from Landywood reaches Birmingham International twice an hour on weekdays and Saturdays, and once an hour on Sundays.
Each summer there's a vintage fair and classic car show, revived by residents who missed it, and in August a scarecrow festival, when front gardens fill with straw figures nobody is paid to make.
Stay around Staffordshire
Make a longer stay of it
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Greenways House - Parking, Pool Table and Garden!
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Silkwood House | Boutique 4 Bed nr. Peak District
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Stoke-on-Trent
Heather's House
- Sleeps 6
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For homeowners
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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
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:Church of St Mary and St Luke in Shareshill, Staffordshire - geograph.org.uk - 8260082.jpg — photograph by Roger D Kidd; Church of St Mary and St Luke in Shareshill, Staffordshire by Roger D Kidd. 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.
- Shareshill Community Shop and Post Office — postoffice.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Church of St Mary and St Luke — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- The Elms — theelmspub.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Wheatsheaf — camra.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Hollybush Garden Centre & Aquaria — hollybush-garden.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Moseley Old Hall — nationaltrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Cannock Chase Visitor Centre — cannock-chase.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation