Tixall Gatehouse stands across the water at Tixall Wide, rows of Doric and Corinthian pillars, oriel windows catching the light, seashells and knights and angels carved into the stone.
There's no pub in Tixall itself. The nearest is the Wolseley Arms at Wolseley Bridge, toward Rugeley — a coaching inn once known as The Roebuck, where more than a hundred horses were stabled for long-distance changes. Great Haywood, a short walk or drive the other way, has its own pubs and food, plus Canalside Farm, a family-run farm shop and café on the Trent and Mersey Canal with pick-your-own fruit in season and pumpkins in autumn.
Walking is the main occupation here. The Shugborough and Staffs and Worcs Canal Walk runs about 4.3 miles from Milford Common, along both canal towpaths, past Tixall Lock and out onto Tixall Wide itself, the gatehouse visible across the water the whole way. There's a longer circular route of around 7.5 miles over the Satnall Hills, and the Canal & River Trust's Great Haywood Circular "Wellbeing Walk" takes a gentler two and a quarter hours. Tixall and neighbouring Ingestre both sit inside the Cannock Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The Church of St John the Baptist, Grade II, was built in 1848–49 at the expense of the Hon. John Chetwynd Talbot, replacing a Georgian church on a site that had held a chapel since the 12th century. Built of local sandstone with a blue-tile roof and Minton floor tiles, it was originally meant to house Talbot's private mausoleum. The oldest grave in the churchyard is dated 1627 — older than the building it sits beside.
Tixall Wide exists because Thomas Clifford, who owned Tixall Hall when the canal was dug in 1771, agreed to let it cross his land only if it was widened "to look like a lake from the house." The Hall is long gone, demolished in 1927, but the lake his vanity requested is still there — one of the most distinctive spots on the whole canal, and a beloved boaters' landmark.
Tixall Hall was built around 1555 for Sir Edward Aston; the gatehouse followed around 1580. The Astons were Roman Catholics, and it was to Tixall that Mary, Queen of Scots was brought on 11 August 1586, held for two weeks while her rooms at Chartley were searched during the unravelling of the Babington Plot. Leaving, she is said to have told the poor gathered at the gate: "I have nothing for you, I am a beggar as well as you, all is taken from me." The Landmark Trust took the derelict gatehouse on in 1968 and has since restored it as a holiday let sleeping eight, across four en-suite bedrooms, including turret bedrooms.
The Domesday Book records the village as Ticheshale — "the hollow of the goats." Stafford, three or four miles off, has the nearest station, on the West Coast Main Line, and the Chaserider 828 bus runs through hourly, Monday to Saturday.
Two Bronze Age barrows survive nearby too — King's Low still stands nine feet high in Blackheath Covert, older than the Hall, the gatehouse, and the canal put together. The village hall, shared with Ingestre, runs to yoga, coffee mornings and produce sales, with a grassed area outside for afterwards.
