Stowe-by-Chartley

The Library, Inn and Pavilion

The old red telephone box in Stowe-by-Chartley isn't a telephone box any more. Somebody took the phone out, put in some shelves, and it's now the village library, a stop on the Stowe Walk and a local history point.

Across the road, opposite the church, is the Cock Inn: fifteenth century, its original crook frame and beams still holding the roof up. Round the back is the Pavilion, a wood-fired restaurant that used to be the village meeting room until the owner, Michael Beardmore, converted it in the late 1990s and put a cricketing mural on the wall.

The oven does pizzas, pies and beef brisket. On the bar there's St Austell Tribute as the regular, with two guest ales rotating through Three Tuns, Wye Valley, Timothy Taylor and the local Uttoxeter Brewery.

Village Hospitality and Amerton Produce

Dogs are welcome and there's a beer garden. For years the landlord was Jack Robinson, who ran the village bus service on the side. The pub sits on Station Road, and as the CAMRA description of the place puts it, "you will wait a long time for a train, the station closed in 1939."

Next door, where the Cross Keys used to stand at the crossroads, there's now just Meadow Farm. It closed as a pub in 1936 and nobody reopened it.

For groceries and a proper sit-down, Amerton Farm Shop is a short drive into the parish: jams and pickles, local wine and the farm's own beer, cheeses, meat, butter, cream, eggs, tubs of Amerton ice cream, and a traditional sweet shop.

Tearooms, Family Stops and Church Stone

The Belle À Pepe Tearoom next door does farmhouse roasts, a steak and kidney pie it's known for locally, and cream teas, licensed if you want a glass with lunch.

The wider Craft Centre around it, narrow-gauge railway, farm animals, a wildlife rescue centre, pulls in over 400,000 visitors a year.

St John the Baptist church dates to around 1150 at its core, with a three-stage west tower and six bells. Inside, under an alabaster tomb, lies Sir Walter Devereux, who died in 1588.

Memorials and Two Parish Walks

Two later memorial tablets, designed by Edwin Lutyens, commemorate General Sir Walter Congreve VC and his son Billy, also VC. They're one of only three father-and-son pairs to have both won the Victoria Cross, and the only pair to have done it in the same regiment.

The Stowe Walk, a gentle five kilometres from the village hall, takes in the old school (closed 1974, now a house), the church, the Cock Inn, four seventeenth-century cottages called the Old Thatch, and an oak planted for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

The longer Chartley Walk runs past the ruined castle where Mary, Queen of Scots spent almost a year under guard, her jailer choosing the place partly for its deep moat. Her coded letters to Anthony Babington were smuggled in and out inside beer barrels, the evidence that eventually convicted her.

Moss, Cattle and Connections

The walk also skirts Chartley Moss, a floating bog where the marked path is the only safe place to stand. Somewhere in those fields the white Chartley cattle still graze, black-eared and black-muzzled, descended from stock that's grazed this park since the thirteenth century.

Stafford is ten kilometres off, Uttoxeter a bit further, and Arriva's bus runs between the two, two-hourly Monday to Saturday. Most people just watch the cattle instead.