The Star Inn has thirteen different floor levels, all caused by subsidence over the years, and Guinness World Records has certified it as the most differing levels recorded in a pub. There's a plaque by the door. The pub dates from 1568, sits directly on the Trent & Mersey Canal towpath, and its two original flag-floored bars are dog friendly. It also keeps Spitfire memorabilia — Stone raised the money to buy the RAF a Spitfire during the war and named it "Star of Stone."
The canal runs through the centre of town and organises the place. Walk the towpath west and you reach Meaford Locks; walk it the other way and, eventually, a 10.4-mile stretch takes you to Barlaston and Trentham.
The Swan Inn, a Grade II-listed former canal warehouse from 1771, is the last true free house in Stone — eight changing beers plus a regular, including Old Priory, recreated in 1992. Multiple CAMRA Pub of the Year wins, a "Poems & Pints" night, no children admitted, ever. Food is bar snacks — baps, sausage rolls, pork pies — plus a free Sunday buffet.
The Royal Exchange pours Titanic Brewery pints across eleven hand pulls and has its own resident pub dog, Rocco, who belongs to landlady Michelle. There's a Monday meal-deal night that includes cottage pie, a small beer garden, and an outside room they call the Lifeboat Room. The Borehole, tap for Lymestone Brewery, sits on the old well of the vanished Bent's Brewery — hence the name.
Griffins of Stone, the family butcher off the High Street, has picked up awards for its locally sourced produce. On the first Saturday of every month the Market Square and High Street fill with around thirty stalls for what's billed as Staffordshire's biggest farmers' market.
Westbridge Park, the town's largest green space, was rebuilt as a "destination park" in 2024 — aerial runway, sunken trampoline, wheeled sports plaza, riverside paths.
St Michael and St Wulfad's was built between 1753 and 1758 using stone salvaged from the collapsed medieval priory it replaced. Pevsner called it "a remarkably early piece of Gothic Revival... without any Rococo frills." Part of the priory survives under a house nearby, called simply The Priory — a rib-vaulted cellar, probably 14th century. The priory itself was founded around 1125; Henry III granted the town its market charter in 1251.
The canal reached Stone in 1772, turning it, in one old account, from a sleepy market town into a busy inland port. Joule's brewery grew up alongside the wharves and for a while exported beer to America ahead of Bass, and supplied the Titanic. Bass bought the firm in 1968, closed the brewery in 1974, and demolished it — an act still not forgiven.
Stone station is a five-minute walk from the centre, on the Crewe–Stafford line. The M6 is ten to fifteen minutes off at Junction 14 or 15, and the 101 bus runs up to Stoke and down to Stafford. Alton Towers is thirty-odd minutes down the A50.
A Little Bit of Stone, the local community site, put it simply enough: canal walks, a coffee where they know your name, and the fact that you can't get far without bumping into someone. Stone's happiness isn't a statistic — it's what happens day to day.
