Ebrington

What to see

St Eadburgha's Church, Grade I, is the thing to see, and it is mostly about two families. The nave is Norman, with its north and south doorways, the chancel and south aisle are thirteenth century, the west tower is Perpendicular, and Hunt restored the church and added a vestry in 1875 and 1876. In the chancel lies the painted stone effigy of Sir John Fortescue in his judge's robes, on a chest tomb, and beside it the Keyts: Sir William Keyt's altar tomb of about 1632 with Corinthian columns and heraldry, and the classical marble monument of about 1662 to Sir John Keyt and his wife, with their busts. The carved pulpit with its tester is dated 1679, the east window of the south aisle has seventeenth-century heraldic glass with the Keyt and Coventry arms, and the chancel's south window keeps fragments of sixteenth-century English and Flemish glass. Look for the sundial of 1625 over the chancel's south door.

Ebrington Manor, Grade II, has a fourteenth-century range with a cellar beneath and a seventeenth-century hall, and the arms over its door quarter Fortescue. It is private, as is its summer house, which is listed Grade II* in its own right. The war memorial of 1921 stands at the junction of three roads by the green, on land given by the fourth Earl Fortescue. The Second World War names added later include his grandson, Viscount Ebrington, who died in 1942.

Several cottages keep their thatch. Fernbank and Tythebarn Cottage on Main Street and Woodbine Cottages on Hidcote Road, of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century and listed Grade II, keep thatched roofs and thatched dormers, and the National Trust's estate cottages at Hidcote Bartrim are thatched too. Hidcote, the garden of rooms Lawrence Johnston began in 1907, is about 3 miles by lane. Kiftsgate Court Gardens are under half a mile beyond it.

A morning here

Start at the green and walk up to the church, which is open daily from 9am to 4pm, allowing half an hour for the monuments and the glass. Walk the lanes between the cottages, which are the point of the village, then drive or walk the 3 miles up to Hidcote for the rest of the morning and lunch at Winthrop's Café. Come back for dinner at the Ebrington Arms, which serves until 8.30pm on weekdays.

Walks

Ilmington, Ebrington Hill and Hidcote is the walk that carries the parish's name: 5.9 miles (9.5km) from Ilmington's church, up across the fields to Hidcote and back east along the ridge over Ebrington Hill, past the two masts, at about 260m the highest point of the route. It does not come down into Ebrington itself. From the far side, Mickleton, Hidcote and Kiftsgate passes through Hidcote Boyce, the parish's other hamlet, where Sam Keyte's Farmhouse of about 1700 is listed Grade II.

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Food and drink

The Ebrington Arms on May Lane has been a pub for more than two hundred years and has five rooms upstairs, a landscaped terrace and a garden. The kitchen serves pub classics alongside its own seasonal dishes, with lunch from noon to 2.30pm and dinner from 5.30pm to 8.30pm on weekdays, food all afternoon on Saturdays and until 5.45pm on Sundays, and breakfast for anyone from 8am to 10am. Sawday's, which lists the rooms, gives check-in from 3pm and parking behind the pub, and says dogs are welcome in the bar and beer garden. We found no shop or café in the village, so the pub is the place to eat.

When to come

Hidcote sets the calendar, best early in the day and in late spring and summer, with shorter hours as the year closes. The walk over Ebrington Hill is best from April to September, when the fields have dried out. Walkers report mud in the fields after rain and nettles on narrow stretches in high summer. The village itself is quiet all year, and the pub is the reason to come in January.