Minchinhampton

What to see

The Market Square and the common are the two things to see, and they are a ten-minute walk apart. Philip Sheppard, the lord of the manor, built the Market House in 1698 to make the town a centre for wool and yarn, and by 1702 it counted as one of the four chief wool markets of Gloucestershire, enough at first to threaten the old market at Tetbury. It is listed Grade II*, was given to the town in 1919 and restored in 1944, and the country market fills its open arcade every Wednesday from 8.30am to midday with plants, cakes and crafts. Across Bell Lane, Holy Trinity church, listed Grade I, keeps a fourteenth-century tower and transepts; the top of its spire was taken down in 1563 and the stump finished with a battlemented coronet, which is how you pick the town out from the common. The rest was rebuilt in 1842, and the astronomer James Bradley is buried in the churchyard.

Minchinhampton Common begins at the end of Bell Lane. Its turf is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of the richest archaeological landscapes in the Cotswolds: the Bulwarks, a Late Iron Age bank 10m to 12m wide with its ditch, curves across it west of the town; Whitfield's Tump, a Neolithic long barrow on the north-west edge, takes its name, so tradition says, from George Whitefield preaching from it in 1743; and Historic England counts some 49 pillow mounds, 37 old quarries and 22 wartime anti-glider trenches in the grass. Tom Long's Post, the crossroads where the Tetbury road meets the roads across the common, is said to mark the burial of a suicide; the Victoria County History records it as a tradition, not a fact. Under a mile south-east of the town, beside the lane, stands the Long Stone, a pierced prehistoric standing stone up to 2.1m high; local tradition held that children passed through its holes would be cured of rickets.

A morning or a day here

A morning is enough for the town; the common is a day. Come on a Wednesday if you can, for the market under the Market House from 8.30am. Walk round the square and up the High Street, where the Crown Inn, the town's principal inn by 1718 and once the terminus for the London coaches, is now a Young's pub, listed by CAMRA as card only. Look into Holy Trinity, then follow Bell Lane past the toilets onto the common, where the Bulwarks is the first earthwork you reach.

With a day, carry on across the common to the Old Lodge, a lodge built by the lords of the manor that became an inn by the early eighteenth century and the golf clubhouse from about 1895, and on to Amberley on the western edge, where the cottages were built on the margin of the common in the late eighteenth century and the Amberley Inn looks down the Woodchester valley. Winstone's, at Bownham on the Rodborough side, has made ice cream on the same spot since 1925 and is where every walk on the commons seems to end. Below the common at Nympsfield, Woodchester Mansion, a Grade I house left unfinished, opens on Fridays, weekends and bank holidays from Good Friday to the start of November (the 2026 season ends on 1 November), with a minibus from the National Trust's Buckholt car park when volunteers are available.

Walks from Minchinhampton

The walk to do is Minchinhampton Common and Amberley, 5 miles (8km) from the Market House, about two and a half hours, moderate and without a stile: across the common beside the Bulwarks, past the Old Lodge to Amberley, down through Houndscroft to the Bear and Winstone's, and back by Burleigh. Rodborough Common and the fort, on the next common to the north, is an easy 2 miles (3.4km), nearly level, to the battlemented folly of Rodborough Fort and back past the Bear.

For woods rather than turf, Woodchester Park and the boathouse is a 3.75-mile (6km) circuit from the National Trust car park at Woodchester Park, down past the mansion and along the chain of lakes, and Eastcombe and the Toadsmoor valley, across the Golden Valley, is a 6.5-mile figure of eight through steep beech woods. On the common itself you can wander the open turf freely, and the cattle will ignore you if you give them room.

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

Food and drink

Minchinhampton's eating is pubs, and most of them stand on the common. The Old Lodge, in the middle of it, has six rooms and serves from breakfast at 8am until the evening every day. The Bear of Rodborough, a hotel whose oldest part is late seventeenth century, on Rodborough Common, welcomes dogs in the bar and garden. The Amberley Inn has 13 rooms over the Woodchester valley and serves dinner, with a dinner offer for guests who book direct. In the town, the Crown Inn on the High Street serves food from noon to 9pm (8pm on Sundays), with a quiz on the last Thursday of the month; the Ragged Cot on the Cirencester road at Burnt Ash, open as an inn by 1882, is close to the common and is listed by CAMRA as a free house with nine rooms. Ice cream is Winstone's. For a wider choice, Nailsworth, under 3 miles away, has the restaurants.

When to come

In summer, when the cattle are grazing and the common is in flower; in winter the plateau is bare and the wind comes straight across it. The National Trust manages the turf for its wild flowers and butterflies and has written about reintroducing the large blue, and asks for dogs on a short lead near the cattle and from March to August, when birds nest on the ground. Wednesday morning is market day. The town is rarely busy. Weekday evenings in late summer, when the light goes long across the Bulwarks, are the best time of all. For a view from above, the Cotswold Gliding Club at Aston Down airfield, between Stroud and Cirencester, offers air experience flights.