Canal town character
Stone
Follow the Trent & Mersey through Stone for waterside walking, singular pub stories, market-town history and an easy riverside pause.
- Best for
- Canal walks and characterful pubs
- Give it
- A relaxed half day
- Don’t miss
- The Star Inn’s thirteen floor levels
Photo: David Weston · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Stone is a canal town best explored at towpath pace
The waterway ties together a Gothic Revival church, distinctive pubs, a monthly market and Stone’s largest green space.
Come for an unhurried walk through the centre, then choose between the Star’s subsidence-shaped interior, the Swan’s free-house tradition and the Borehole’s link to the town’s brewing past.
Where to go
Places in Stone
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
The Star Inn
A canalside pub whose thirteen subsidence-shaped floor levels, flag-floored dog-friendly bars and Spitfire memorabilia make the building itself part of the visit.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Trent & Mersey Canal towpath, Stone
Westbridge Park
Stone’s largest green space combines riverside paths, picnic space, play equipment and a wheeled sports plaza.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Canal and riverside, Stone
Stone Farmers’ Market
A monthly Market Square and High Street gathering of around thirty stalls, begun as part of the Stone Food and Drink Festival.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Market Square and High Street, Stone
- Access
- Selected-day event; check the Official site before travel.
Food & drink
2 placesThe Swan Inn
A traditional free house in a listed former canal warehouse, with changing cask ales and bar snacks rather than a full meal.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Near the Trent & Mersey Canal, Stone
- Access
- Adults only; check the Official site before travel.
The Borehole
Lymestone Brewery’s tap occupies the former Bent’s Brewery site, where the old well explains the pub’s name.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Stone
Walks & outdoors
1 place
Trent & Mersey Canal Towpath
The central towpath can be followed towards Meaford Locks or used as the waterside spine of a river-and-park circuit.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Central Stone
History & heritage
1 place
St Michael and St Wulfad’s Church
The 18th-century church reuses stone from the collapsed medieval priory and retains historic fittings and Kempe glass.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 35 minutes
- Locality
- Stone
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Three ways to explore Stone
Signature outings
Count the Star’s shifting levels
Thirteen floor levels shaped by subsidence turn this 1568 canalside pub into Stone’s most singular interior.
Find the priory in the church
Stone salvaged from the collapsed medieval priory was reused in the 18th-century church.
Let the canal set the pace
The towpath runs through Stone’s centre and leads towards Meaford Locks or into a river-and-park circuit.
The village story
Stone, level by level and lock by lock
The unchanged Travel Fox story moves from a record-holding canalside pub through brewing, markets and priory stone to the town’s everyday sense of connection.
Thirteen Levels Beside the Towpath
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.
Free Houses and Brewery Echoes
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.
Market Stalls and Riverside Play
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.
Priory Stone and an Inland Port
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.
Arriving in Stone, Staying for the Everyday
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.
Stay around Staffordshire
Make a longer stay of it
Travel Fox holiday homes around Staffordshire, linked directly to their property pages.
Cheddleton
Greenways House - Parking, Pool Table and Garden!
- Sleeps 10
- 4 bedrooms
Cheddleton
Lee House Cottage + Annexe
- Sleeps 19
- 8 bedrooms
Leek
Silkwood House | Boutique 4 Bed nr. Peak District
- Sleeps 8
- 4 bedrooms
Stoke-on-Trent
Heather's House
- Sleeps 6
- 2 bedrooms
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:Star Inn, Stone - geograph.org.uk - 6882328.jpg — photograph by David Weston; Star Inn, Stone by David Weston. 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.
- File:The Church of St Michael and St Wulfad - Stone Parish Church - geograph.org.uk - 5055102.jpg — photograph by Peter Wood; The Church of St Michael and St Wulfad - Stone Parish Church by Peter Wood. 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.
- File:Trent ^ Mersey Canal and towpath in Stone - geograph.org.uk - 4566097.jpg — photograph by Mat Fascione; Trent & Mersey Canal and towpath in Stone by Mat Fascione. 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 Star Inn — thestaratstone.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Swan Inn — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority
- The Borehole — lymestonebrewery.net other published source
- St Michael and St Wulfad’s Church — achurchnearyou.com national body or asset manager
- Westbridge Park — staffordbc.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Trent & Mersey Canal Towpath — canalrivertrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Stone Farmers’ Market — staffordbc.gov.uk statutory register or public authority