Cirencester Park, Pope's Seat and Stratton

The Cirencester Park and Pope's Seat walk is a 5-mile (8km) circular walk from the parish church in Cirencester, easy going on tracks and grassy paths, and takes one and a half to two hours. Its highlight is a mile on the Broad Ride to Pope's Seat, and it finishes on the Market Place, by the King's Head.

It is number 5 in Cirencester Ramblers' Walks Around Cirencester. The first half is in Earl Bathurst's park, where there is a charge to walk, and the second comes home through Stratton and along the streams into the town.

Black Jack Street and Cecily Hill

The walk starts at the west door of St John the Baptist, in its early fifteenth-century tower. The church is Grade I; its nave was rebuilt between 1515 and 1530. Black Jack Street takes you past the Corinium Museum, open every day from 10am to 4pm, whose collection tells the story of the more than 90 Roman mosaics known from the town and the country round it. Corinium's walls, over two miles long, enclosed 240 acres.

Cecily Hill leads to the park. On its north side stands the Old Barracks, built in 1857 as an armoury in the form of a mock castle with square and round towers. The gates at the top are eighteenth-century ironwork attributed to Warren of Cambridge, brought from Carshalton and set up with a new screen of railings in about 1856, with the Bathurst monogram and coronet above them.

The Broad Ride and Pope's Seat

The walk spends a mile on the Broad Ride, the long avenue through Cirencester Park, and ends it at Pope's Seat. The park is a Grade I registered landscape of 1,053 hectares, laid out from about 1714 by the first Earl Bathurst with the poet Alexander Pope. Historic England's register has the Broad Ride running 8km west from the church towards Sapperton; the walk follows it first on tarmac and then on grass.

Pope's Seat is a small early eighteenth-century pavilion of limestone, Grade II*, with a Doric porch and rusticated stonework, and the words POPE'S SEAT cut into the pediment over the opening. The leaflet says Pope designed it.

The park belongs to the Bathurst family. The leaflet gives its hours as 8am to 5pm, and the Bathurst Estate now sells a Day Pass to walk in it (adults £4, children £2, a family £10 on its website), with Day Pass entry from 10am and last entry at 4.30pm; check before you go. The 2022 leaflet sends walkers with dogs on a signed diversion to the Ewe Pens Cottages. The estate asks dog walkers to keep to its marked routes, with dogs on a lead where shown; dogs are not usually allowed on the grass of the Seven Rides by Pope's Seat or on the central Broad Ride, and may run off the lead on the grass by the Queen Anne Monument.

The polo grounds to Stratton

From Pope's Seat the walk turns past the polo grounds and crosses about a mile of fields to Stratton. The leaflet recalls, at the polo scoreboard, that polo was first played in Persia at least 2,000 years ago to train cavalry, and Cirencester Park Polo Club plays at summer weekends, with finals on Sunday afternoons. At Stratton the path follows a stream past the allotments to Donside.

The Cotswolds Info newsletter

Events, new places and the best of the season, about once a month. Unsubscribe at any time.

Leave this field blank

Your name

Your email address

Yes, send me the Cotswolds Info newsletter

Sign me up

The Churn, the pool and Woolgatherers

Behind the petrol station you see the River Churn. The leaflet says that here, in the second century, the river's course was changed to flow round the rampart and walls of the newly built Roman town. The path back follows a water course and passes the open-air swimming pool.

On Coxwell Street, Woolgatherers is a seventeenth and early eighteenth-century house with a warehouse fronting Thomas Street, listed Grade II*. The leaflet says the wool merchant John Coxwell may have lived there and is believed to have died after falling from his horse at the age of 101, and that the house is said to be haunted. Dollar Street brings you back to the church.

Paths and gates

The leaflet describes tracks and grassy paths on gentle slopes, though the route page grades it as possibly having steep slopes, for moderate fitness. There are metal gates, a narrow gate and, at Donside, a gap or squeeze stile in a wall; the route page lists the walk as stile free. Short stretches follow the pavement through Stratton and the town.

Food, drink and parking

The route page says there are cafés and restaurants all over Cirencester and gives a Market Place car park, which the council does not list; its own car parks nearest the church, such as the Brewery and the Forum, take no cash and cost £1 for 30 minutes or £2 an hour. On the way out, Gilbertine Deli on Black Jack Street, a sandwich shop from the team behind the Gilbertine Kitchen in Tetbury, is closed on Mondays. Back in the Market Place, the King's Head, which Brakspear describes as a fourteenth-century former coaching inn, opens from 7am every day and has dog-friendly dining, and the Fleece is an inn with rooms run by Thwaites. Sam & Jak on Cricklade Street is a restaurant, café and wine bar that opens from 8.30am Tuesday to Saturday and 9am on Sundays. The Cirencester Ramblers leaflet (opens in a new tab) has the maps.

For a night in the town, our page on places to stay in Cirencester has the inns and hotels within a few minutes of the Market Place.

More Roman Cirencester

Our story on the Roman Cotswolds covers Corinium and its roads, and the Roman amphitheatre on the edge of the town is free to visit in daylight. For a longer day out in the Coln valley, the loop from Bibury is 4 miles, and the walk from Coln St Aldwyns to Bibury is 6.5 miles up the river and back over the wold.