Harford Bridge and Naunton

The Harford Bridge and Naunton walk is a 3-mile (4.8km) circular walk from Harford Bridge, a mile south-east of Naunton, on the Cotswolds National Landscape's Miles Without Stiles list. It has no stiles and about 65m of ups and downs, and takes about an hour and a quarter, past a lost village, Naunton's church and the Black Horse pub.

On the way it follows a stretch of the Windrush Way, passes a church with a sundial dated 1748 and crosses a bridge built by a rector. The leaflet was last checked by its authors in August 2025.

Lower Harford, the village that went

The walk begins with what is missing. In the field south of the river, the humps and hollows in the grass are the site of the deserted medieval village of Lower Harford. The farmhouse at Lower Harford Farm is listed, a square house of about 1700 with a freestone front, remodelled in the middle of the nineteenth century.

About 20m south-west of the farmhouse, a separate listing records a clapper bridge of squared limestone blocks laid over stone piers, eighteenth century or older, which it calls a rare survival for this region of a type more often found in upland country.

The Windrush Way and the golf course

For half a mile the walk follows the Windrush Way along the floor of the valley. The Way runs between Winchcombe and Bourton-on-the-Water, and with the Wardens' Way, which passes through Naunton too, it makes a loop. Here it keeps to the valley floor beside the stream, through field gates.

The climb from the stone bridge brings you to the edge of the old golf course, which is now part of Ben Pauling Racing. Racehorses are ridden here, so keep dogs close and give the horses room.

St Andrew's and its sundials

At the farm gate across the B4068, the leaflet suggests a pause for the view over the dovecote, the village and the church. St Andrew's has thirteenth-century origins and was largely rebuilt around 1500, with a fifteenth-century tower finished with pinnacles and gargoyles. Look for the two painted sundials at the south-west corner of the tower, one dated 1748 and the other inscribed Lux Umbra Dei.

Inside, the pulpit that the leaflet calls a wineglass pulpit is octagonal, of the fifteenth or early sixteenth century, its tracery matching the east window of the north aisle. A cross on the west wall of the nave is thought to be Anglo-Saxon, and there are three brasses, which the listing dates to the sixteenth century and the Victoria County History to the seventeenth, to the family of the rector Clement Barksdale. The church is listed Grade II*.

The rector's bridge, the dovecote and Cromwell House

The bridge the leaflet calls Vicar's Bridge is, on its listing, the work of John Hurd, the rector, around 1819: two low arches of squared rubble with a low parapet, over the Windrush beside the old cider mill.

The detour opposite the village hall is worth the few minutes. The dovecote south-west of the manor house is square, with a gable on each face and a small lantern on top, and its walls are lined inside with nesting boxes. Its listing dates it to the sixteenth century, perhaps earlier, and grades it II*; the Naunton Dovecote Trust, a charity set up in 1998, looks after it.

Back on the main street, Cromwell House stands about 40m past the pub. It is said to date from the sixteenth century, was probably extended in the seventeenth, and has two front gables with mullioned windows and a Tudor arched doorway; its listing records it as the former home of the Aylesworths, and it too is Grade II*.

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Food, parking and paths

The Black Horse in Naunton is the only pub on the walk, near the end, so it makes a natural stop. It is a Donnington Brewery pub serving food, with a garden, and dogs are welcome; our story on Cotswold pubs and their breweries has more on Donnington and its pubs.

Park on the roadside verge on the north side of the B4068, the Andoversford to Stow road, near Harford Bridge. The paths are unsurfaced, with field gates and a footbridge but no stiles, and the walk crosses the B4068 twice and finishes along a lane.

With no stiles the walk is easy going for dogs, but racehorses are ridden on the old golf course, so keep dogs close there. Our guide to the Cotswolds with a dog covers walking near horses and livestock.

Longer walks from Naunton

For a longer day, the National Landscape's circular walk from Guiting Power to Naunton is 6.3 miles with about 200m of climbing and some stiles, and the walk from Bourton by the Slaughters to Naunton is longer still. Naunton is one of the villages near famous ones that see far fewer visitors, as our guide to the Cotswolds without the crowds explains, and the longer loop starts in Guiting Power.