The Mainwaring Arms sits at the corner of Whitmore Road and Three Mile Lane, right beside the church, and the name is pronounced "Mannering," not as it's spelled. It closed in 2019 and came back in 2021 under Cheshire Cat Pubs & Inns, with the low beams and the real fire kept as they were. Head chef David Sanchas, from Lisbon, runs a menu that includes a king prawn starter with chilli butter, a seafood pot, steak and kidney pie, and a cheeseboard carrying Kidderton Ash goat's cheese and Harrogate Blue. Reviewers rate the roasts and mention "massive portions," with an occasional grumble about slow service on a busy night.
There are house ales too — Mainwaring Best Bitter and Admiral's IPA, both brewed by Weetwood specially for the pub, plus Whitmore Gold from Salopian and a rotating guest. Dogs are welcome, and there are horse tie-up points outside for anyone arriving on four legs rather than two.
A short walk down Three Mile Lane, Whitmore Tearooms occupies a coach house over 150 years old, later an art gallery, oak beams and lead-lined windows intact. Sherrie and Louise Fitzgerald, a mother-and-daughter team, do afternoon tea at £18.95, or £27.50 with champagne if you're calling it a Royal Tea. Scones come in fruit, cherry, plain, or raspberry and white chocolate. Open Tuesday to Saturday; book ahead for weekends.
St Mary and All Saints, next door to the pub, has a half-timbered bell-turret that's one of only two of its kind in the county — the style belongs properly to Cheshire. Inside, a Norman font was dug up in the churchyard after apparently having been buried there, and the west window carries the coats of arms of every lord of Whitmore back to the Conquest. The largest tomb belongs to the Twyford family, who made their fortune in Stoke-on-Trent sanitaryware and once rented the Hall.
The Domesday survey of 1086 recorded the place as Witemore: three villagers, two smallholders, half a league of woodland, and a value to the lord of ten shillings.
Whitmore Hall itself has belonged to one family — Mainwaring, later Cavenagh-Mainwaring — since 1519, making it one of the longest single-family estate tenures in England. The Elizabethan stable block behind it, Grade II* listed, still has its nine hand-carved oak stalls and a part-cobbled floor; the upper timbers carry old burn marks, once thought to ward off fire.
Rear-Admiral Rowland Mainwaring, who fought at the Battle of the Nile and inherited the Hall in 1837, is buried at St Mary's, and it's his rum selection and naval theme that the pub still trades on.
For walking, the Whitmore–Hanchurch Water Tower loop runs about 6.8 miles through Hanchurch Woods and the Maer Hills, or there's a shorter 3.8-mile version from Nursery Common. Each May a church-led bluebell walk passes a small stone building over the Meece Brook.
Bus route 64 stops at "Mainwaring Arms PH" on its way to Newcastle-under-Lyme, about nine minutes off. The village's own station, on what became the West Coast Main Line, closed in 1952 — though not before the Coronation Scot passed through it in 1937 at 114 mph, a world record for steam.
Whitmore Cricket Club's Junior Academy still fills the Gemini Cricket Ground on spring evenings, and the Hall has a Kitchen Garden restoration due to start this year — nine hundred years in, and there's still work to do.
