Chalford

What to see

The canal first. The Thames and Severn opened through the valley in 1789 and was abandoned in 1933, and its towpath runs along the bottom of the village past Iles Mill lock, Clows Bridge and Belvedere Mill, all listed. The Round House on London Road, built in 1790 and 1791 for a lengthsman who kept a stretch of the canal, is a three-storey drum with pointed windows and a conical roof, listed Grade II. The Cotswold Canals Trust is restoring 36 miles of the Stroudwater Navigation and the Thames and Severn, with full navigation the aim; the stretch through Chalford has not yet been restored.

Chalford Place, off London Road, is listed Grade II*: a house of the mid-sixteenth century with a south front rebuilt around 1710 that the listing compares to Hawksmoor, and recorded as an inn by 1803, once the canal had brought trade; the listing once named it the Company Arms. Christ Church, above it, began as a chapel of ease in 1725 and was enlarged in 1841; inside are fittings by the Sapperton Arts and Crafts group, Norman Jewson's choir screen and font cover, Peter Waals's inlaid lectern and a font carved with fish by William Simmonds. After Ernest Gimson died in 1919, Waals moved the workshop he had managed for Gimson to Halliday's Mill at the foot of Cowcombe Hill in Chalford, where former Gimson craftsmen worked for him until his death in 1937; he is buried in Christ Church's churchyard.

The station is gone. The Great Western line through Chalford Bottom opened in 1845, the station in 1897, and both it and the St Mary's Mill halt closed in 1964; the trains still pass on their way between Stroud and Kemble. On the hill, the old name of Chalford Hill was Chalford Lynch, a lynch being a terrace along the contour.

An afternoon here

Start at the Lavender Bakehouse on London Road, which opens from 10am to 4pm daily with breakfast until midday, and book if you want a table. Walk the towpath past the Round House and Chalford Place, then take any of the paths that climb the hill: they are steep, stepped in places, and they bring you out among the weavers' cottages with the valley below. Come down a different way and finish on the towpath again.

The donkeys are part of the story. The Chalford Parish Local History Group records that donkeys with panniers carried wool and cloth, then bread, coal and groceries, up these paths, and that some people called the place Neddyshire; it says the donkeys could be seen on the paths until the 1930s, and Gloucestershire Archives says the same, though Country Life reported in 2008 that the deliveries stopped only in the 1950s. The group also records that a resident later bought a donkey that again carried goods round the village from the shop; Gloucestershire Archives dates that weekly delivery from Chalford Community Stores to 2008 to 2011. Treat the dates as the tellers' own, and the nickname as a tale told locally.

Walks

The towpath is the walk: east towards Sapperton, where the canal enters the Sapperton tunnel at Daneway, or west to Brimscombe and Stroud, where our walk from Stroud by Capel's Mill climbs from the canal to Rodborough Common. Our Eastcombe and Toadsmoor valley walk comes down the wooded side valley to Bourne, at the west end of Chalford, past Toadsmoor Mill. Across the valley lie Minchinhampton Common and the River Frome that powered the mills.

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Food and drink

The Lavender Bakehouse and Coffee Shop on London Road bakes its own cakes and patisserie, with gluten-free and vegan options, serves breakfast until midday and lunch, and does afternoon tea from 2pm on most days, made to order and booked and paid for in advance. It has a wine and local beer list and sells gifts. Seating is limited, so book for breakfast and lunch; walk-ins for tea and cake are not guaranteed a table. From 9 November to 23 December 2026 it adds a seasonal afternoon cream tea. We have not checked the valley's pubs for 2026; Stroud has the rest.

When to come

Spring, when the towpath is dry and the hillside gardens are out, or autumn for the beech on the valley sides. In the nineteenth century Chalford Feast was held in August and lasted into the middle of the twentieth century. After rain the paths up the hill are slippery and the towpath can be muddy.