Dursley

The Market House

The Market House, which the listing calls the Town Hall, closes the view down Parsonage Street. It was built in 1738 as a combined market and town hall: an open arcade at street level for the market, a hall above, and an octagonal cupola on the hipped roof. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1831 says the lord of the manor paid for it, and the arms of the Estcourt family, who held the manor, are on the south side, and a painted statue of Queen Anne stands in a niche at the east end. It is listed Grade II*. The market still happens under the arches: a farmers' market on the second Saturday of each month and an artisan market on the first.

The heritage centre and Listers

Dursley Heritage Centre is opposite the Market House and St James's church, next to the restored Jacob's House, where the town council has its office. Volunteers have run it since 2005, and it opens from 10am to midday on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from February to the third Saturday of December, and on Saturdays only in January. Hours depend on who is free, so email ahead for a special trip. It shows machinery and objects made in Dursley, among them a restored early Pedersen bicycle, the odd triangulated machine Mikael Pedersen designed while working for Listers.

Listers is the reason the town is the size it is. R A Lister and Company was formed in 1867 and made agricultural machinery and then engines here for more than a century, employed about 5,000 people at its peak, and became Lister Petter. The firm went into administration in 2014, the new owners closed the Dursley works, and the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology rescued the archive, which is now at Gloucestershire Archives. The Lister D stationary engine, of which the firm counts more than 250,000 made up to 1964, is still the one you hear chugging at steam fairs.

Stinchcombe Hill

Stinchcombe Hill is the flat-topped promontory above the town to the west, and the Cotswold Way takes the long way round its rim for the views. Sir Stanley Tubbs, a local benefactor, gave the hill in trust to the people of the district for recreation, and a stone seat on its spine remembers him. Much of the top is leased to the golf club, so keep to the paths. The Cotswolds National Landscape's Sir Stanley Tubbs walk is a stile-free 3.25-mile (5.2km) circuit of about an hour and a half from the public car park on the hill, not the golf club's, out to Drakestone Point, where a wooden seat looks along the escarpment to the Tyndale Monument and across to the Severn bridges. Trees now hide Berkeley Castle below.

A day here

Park at May Lane, which is free and has the toilets. Walk up Parsonage Street to the Market House, and if it is a Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday morning, into the heritage centre opposite. Have coffee in the town, then either drive up to the Stinchcombe Hill car park for the stile-free loop or, if you want the climb, follow the Cotswold Way signs up out of the town onto the hill and round the rim. Come back down for a late lunch at the Old Spot, which our guide to the best pubs in the Cotswolds covers. If there is time, Uley is 2.5 miles up the valley, with Hetty Pegler's Tump on the hill beyond. With children, Cattle Country Farm Park is down in the Severn Vale at Berkeley Heath, with two indoor play barns, outdoor play and farm animals.

Walks from Dursley

Dursley is a Walkers are Welcome town, the base of an annual walking festival and the end of the Cotswold Way's tenth section, 7.2 miles (11.6km) from King's Stanley over Coaley Peak and Cam Long Down. The eleventh section climbs Stinchcombe Hill and goes on by North Nibley and the Tyndale Monument to Wotton-under-Edge, 7.3 miles, or 4.8 miles by the shortcut across the neck of the hill from the golf club, which misses the best of the views. Our Wotton, Tyndale Monument and Coombe Hill loop climbs to the edge below Stinchcombe Hill from the other side. The Dursley Dozen, an all-terrain race, runs over these hills each year.

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Food and drink

The Old Spot, opposite the May Lane car park, is the pub people come to Dursley for, named after the Gloucester Old Spot pig. The town council calls it award-winning, and the pub says it was in the Good Beer Guide from 1994 to 2023. It opens from noon every day and serves lunch from noon to 3pm, to 4pm on Sundays; its site lists no evening food. We have not drunk there yet. The town has cafés, pubs and restaurants along Parsonage Street and Long Street, from coffee to curry. We have not eaten our way round them yet. Uley Brewery, 2.5 miles away, opens its taproom, the Forge, on Fridays from 4pm to 8pm, and the Old Crown at Uley is the nearest village pub of note.

For an evening meal in the middle of the town, India Zones at 18 to 20 Long Street is an Indian restaurant with a licensed bar and a separate vegan menu, open from 5pm every day. Out on Dursley Road, Leaf & Ground is a café, deli and ice cream hut in about 20 acres of woods and fields, open every day, with dinner from 5pm on Friday and Saturday evenings, free parking, a playground and room for dogs.

When to come

A market Saturday puts life under the arches. The walking festival, run by Dursley Welcomes Walkers, is the town's event for visitors. It is held in early October (7 to 11 October in 2026); the 2027 dates have not been announced, so check them with the organisers. The town council also lists a summer town festival, the Tyndale arts trail and the Christmas lights switch-on. Winter is fine here: the hill walk is short, and the heritage centre keeps going until mid-December. Spring and autumn are best on the escarpment, which is muddy after rain.