Avening

What to see

The church of the Holy Cross is listed Grade I, and parts of its nave and chancel arch may be late eleventh century. The tower, the north aisle and the north doorway were added in the twelfth century, the transepts in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth, and John Micklethwaite restored the church in 1902. A leaflet in the church explains its features; look too for the banner of Viscount Lee of Fareham, who lived at Old Quarries, the Victorian rectory near the church, and whose banner from the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey now hangs here.

The parish story is that William the Conqueror's queen, Matilda, built the church in penance after the Saxon lord of Avening, Brictric, refused her love and died in her prison. The Victoria County History finds a Saxon thegn called Brictric holding Avening, the Crown holding it by 1086 and Matilda's own convent at Caen holding it by 1135, but no romance and no queen as founder. Our story of Pig Face Day sets the legend and the record side by side.

Round the village, the parish council's points of interest guide picks out the cast-iron pumps from which villagers drew water from 1900 until 1946, one on Woodstock Lane, which is part of an old packhorse road towards Bristol, and others outside the Bell and on Point Road. Avening Court, the seventeenth-century manor house half a mile east, is private.

Gatcombe Park, the home of the Princess Royal, lies on the hill north of the village and is private. The house, listed Grade II*, was built in 1771 to 1774 for Edward Sheppard and remodelled about 1820 by George Basevi for the economist David Ricardo, and its park is on Historic England's register. From the lane at Greenway Head, signed for Tetbury, you look back across the village to the park, and the public footpaths of the parish's Walk 8 give a view of the house; keep to them. The horse trials once held in the park did not run in 2024, and we have found no date since.

A morning in Avening

Start at Holy Cross and give it half an hour with the leaflet. Walk down the High Street past the village hall, then up Woodstock Lane to the pump at its fork. Come back by the Poolhay, where two streams meet below the church, and climb Pound Hill, one of the oldest corners of the village, for the view down the valley towards Nailsworth. Finish at Greenway Head for the view of the village and of Gatcombe's woods.

Walks

Avening Parish Council publishes eight village walks, from 45 minutes to three hours, with a map and a guide to what you pass; the Avening Society first compiled them in 1980 for the 900th anniversary of the church. Walk 7, about an hour and a half, goes by Steps Lane and Hampton Fields to the lake below Cherington, where the woods are full of snowdrops in late January and February. Walk 8, about 5 miles and two to three hours from the Bell, with stiles and a stream crossed on stepping stones, climbs past Gatcombe Park to Minchinhampton, drops to Longfords Mill and its lake, and comes home over the hill. The Macmillan Way from Tetbury joins the old Nailsworth road at West End.

Food and drink

The Bell Inn on the High Street is the village pub, and it serves Indian food in its restaurant and as a takeaway. It does not open at lunchtime: it opens at 5pm Tuesday to Thursday, 4pm on Friday and 3pm at the weekend, and it is closed on Monday. Nailsworth and Tetbury, each a few miles away by road, have the cafés and restaurants.

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When to come

Plan around Pig Face Day, held every other year, usually on the first Sunday after 14 September; the last was on 14 September 2025, so the next is expected in September 2027, on a date still to be confirmed. In 2025 a service in Holy Cross was followed by a procession from the church to the Memorial Hall, a play about Queen Matilda by the village school, the Avening Silver Band and pulled pork rolls; the Bell opened from midday. In other years, come in autumn for the colour in Gatcombe's woods on Walk 8, or in February for the snowdrops at Cherington. The Cotswolds in September has the rest of that month.