Eastleach and Southrop

What to see

The two churches are the reason to come. St Andrew's on the Turville bank was here by 1114 and has a carved Christ in Majesty over its south door, a fourteenth-century saddleback tower and an interior re-roofed in local elm in 1906. St Michael and St Martin across the water was granted to Great Malvern Priory in about 1120, keeps its twelfth-century nave and original doorways, and is cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust, which keeps it open every day; it has no electricity, so go in daylight. Both are Grade I. Between them, Keble's Bridge is a clapper bridge of limestone slabs on rubble piers, medieval in origin, named for the Keble family who held the manor from 1598 and remembered for John Keble, the poet of the Oxford Movement, who was curate of both churches from 1815 to 1825.

At Southrop, St Peter's (opens in a new tab) is early twelfth century with herringbone masonry in its walls and a round Norman north door. Its font of about 1180, carved with arcading and figures in relief, is the famous thing: Keble found it while he was curate here from 1823 to 1825, and his brother Thomas followed him in the post. Southrop Manor next door, a house the Hibbert family has made into the Thyme estate of rooms, restaurant and cookery school, was Wadham College's from 1612 to 1926.

A morning in Eastleach, an afternoon in Southrop

Park on the Turville side near the Victoria Inn and walk down the hill to St Andrew's, ten minutes with the carvings. Cross Keble's Bridge, slab by slab, to St Michael and St Martin, which is the quieter and the emptier of the two, then come back by the early nineteenth-century road bridge of two round arches just north-west of the church. That is Eastleach: an hour, and in March an hour among daffodils.

Drive or walk the lane to Southrop for lunch at the Swan, see the font in St Peter's, and if the afternoon is yours, carry on about 6 miles by road to Lechlade for the Thames and a walk to St John's Lock. Southrop's raised pavements on both sides of the street by the church are listed in their own right, which tells you how little has changed.

Walks

Eastleach and the River Leach is our 4.4-mile (7.1km) circuit from the village: over the Leach past both churches, up the valley to the line of the Roman Akeman Street and back down the far side to the Victoria Inn, an hour and a half to two hours with about 70m of climbing and, after rain, a good deal of mud: walkers on AllTrails reported wet, muddy paths in March 2025 and again in February 2026. The quiet lane between Eastleach and Southrop makes a flat there-and-back of 3 miles. For a second day, Quenington to Fairford on the Coln is 5 miles west.

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Food and drink

The Victoria Inn (opens in a new tab) on the green at Eastleach Turville, an inn since 1856, looks down over the village and the river. It is closed on Tuesdays, serves food from midday until 4pm on Sundays and Mondays and until 9pm from Wednesday to Saturday, and is a pub first: bar snacks, a dining room, no fuss. In Southrop the Swan, open by 1843, is now part of Thyme (opens in a new tab), the Hibberts' estate round Southrop Manor, which also has the Ox Barn restaurant, a cookery school, the Meadow Spa and 31 bedrooms spread through its houses and cottages. Thyme is the expensive option and the Victoria the local one; we found no shop in either village, so Lechlade and Fairford are the places for supplies.

When to come

March is the month: the Churches Conservation Trust itself says that the daffodils along the river banks and the approaches to the bridge make spring the time. Any other month you will have the bridge to yourself. The field paths are wet from November to March, and St Michael and St Martin has no light, so winter visits are for the early afternoon. The two villages are on our list in the Cotswolds without the crowds, and the reason is that there is nowhere to park a coach.