Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Northleach
A small wool town in the Leach valley with one of the great Cotswold wool churches, its floor full of brasses to the merchants who paid for it, and a Georgian prison.
- Parking
- No public car park; on-street parking in the Market Place
- Best time
- Any day; the church is open from 9am to 5pm
- Toilets
- Market Place, free, 9am to 6pm in summer and 9am to 5pm in winter, with an accessible toilet but no baby change
About Northleach
Northleach is a small town in the valley of the River Leach, just east of the Fosse Way and about 6 miles south-west of Bourton-on-the-Water. In the late Middle Ages it was one of the places where Cotswold wool was bought and sold, and the merchants who made money from it rebuilt its church on a grand scale. Today it is quiet, with a market place, a church that is open every day and a prison turned into a café.
The church of St Peter and St Paul
The church is listed Grade I and is one of the great Cotswold wool churches. Its tower dates from about 1400, and John Fortey, a wool merchant, paid for the tall clerestory windows of the nave in the middle of the fifteenth century; the south aisle and the two-storey porch, with a carved Virgin above the door, followed by 1480.
The reason to come is on the floor. About ten brasses remember the woolmen of Northleach and their wives, from around 1400 to 1628, and on John Fortey's, who died in 1458, his feet rest on a woolpack. There is a fifteenth-century stone pulpit, and the east window, by Christopher Webb, was added in 1963. The church is open every day from 9am to 5pm. Our guide to the wool churches of the Cotswolds names the woolmen.
The Old Prison
On the Fosse Way at the edge of the town is the Old Prison, a house of correction built in 1792 to a design by William Blackburn, part of Sir George Onesiphorus Paul's reform of Gloucestershire's prisons. Most of the cell blocks were pulled down in the 1930s, but the courtroom and some cells survive, and you can see them for free. The building is listed Grade II*, and it opens every day from 9am to 4pm.
The Old Prison Café names Relish as its partner and serves brunch and lunch, and the Old Prison has a free car park, which nowhere else in the town has. Dogs on a lead are welcome in the café and the yard, but not in the cells or the courtroom.
The Market Place
The town grew around its market, which Gloucester Abbey founded around 1220, and the Market Place is still its centre, with the Market House on one side. The buses stop here, and so do the drivers: Northleach has no public car park, and in 2014 the town council called it the only town in the North Cotswolds without one. Our three-day itinerary is based here, at the Wheatsheaf, as a central point for all three days. On the Market Place, Lynwood & Co in the Island House opens from 8am every day, to 4pm Monday to Saturday and 3pm on Sunday. Five days in the Cotswolds by car spends its first three nights here.
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Walks from Northleach
On Tuesday 1 December 2026 the Cotswolds voluntary wardens lead a free 7-mile walk from the Market Place to Farmington and Hampnett and back, starting at 10am, about three and a half hours, with some steep slopes. Northleach also makes a good stop between Burford and Bourton-on-the-Water, each within 10 miles. Near the town, the National Trust's Lodge Park is John 'Crump' Dutton's seventeenth-century grandstand for deer coursing, open on a few days a year, and the Sherborne estate's walks and water meadows are open daily.
For something more energetic, Far Peak Climbing, off the Fosse Way about a mile south of the town, has a 12m climbing tower, indoor and outdoor bouldering and a low ropes course for children from 3, open until 5 November in 2026, weather permitting. It does not publish its hours, so ring first.
Last verified 1 November 2026 by our editors
Part of
The North Cotswolds
The high wolds between Chipping Campden and Bourton-on-the-Water: the Fosse Way towns, the Windrush villages, the Slaughters and the escarpment at Broadway.
Things to do in Northleach
Historic houses and heritage · Northleach
Lodge Park and Sherborne Estate
John 'Crump' Dutton's seventeenth-century grandstand for deer coursing near Northleach, which the National Trust calls the only one left in England, open on a few days a year, with the Sherborne estate's walks and water meadows open daily.
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Far Peak Climbing, near Northleach
Sport and activity · Northleach
An outdoor climbing centre off the Fosse Way south of Northleach, with a 15m tower, indoor and outdoor bouldering, a low ropes course and taster sessions from age 3.
Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
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Bibury Trout Farm
Family days out · Bibury
A working trout farm on the River Coln at Bibury, founded in 1902, with a café, a shop, catch-your-own fishing and its own pay car park.
Family-friendly · Dog-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Where to stay in Northleach
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Wheatsheaf Inn
Inn · Northleach
A seventeenth-century coaching inn on West End, Northleach, with 14 bedrooms, a garden and food all day, friendly to families and dogs.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
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Far Peak Camping
Camping · Northleach
A seasonal campsite with tent and hook-up pitches, tipis, bell tents, shepherd huts and glamping domes beside the Far Peak climbing centre, about a mile from Northleach.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Where to eat and drink in Northleach
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Lynwood & Co, Northleach
Cafes and tearooms · Northleach
An Australian-style café in the Island House on Northleach's Market Place, one of a small Cotswold group, open from 8am every day for breakfast, coffee and lunch.
Verified Oct 2026
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The Old Prison Café, Northleach
Cafes and tearooms · Northleach
A daytime café run by Relish in Northleach's Georgian house of correction on the Fosse Way, with free parking and free entry to the cells and courtroom.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
Walks in and around Northleach
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Bibury and the River Coln
Walk · Starts in Bibury · 2 hrs · Circular
A 4-mile (6.5km) circular walk from the bridge by the Swan in Bibury, about two hours with one climb and a muddy stretch. It crosses the Coln below Bibury Court, climbs through Oxhill Wood to the line of Akeman Street, passes a dewpond and returns by Arlington Row.
Sights in and around Northleach
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St Peter and St Paul, Northleach
Sight · Church · Northleach
St Peter and St Paul is Northleach's wool church, rebuilt in the fifteenth century with money from the town's woolmen: a tall tower, a vaulted two-storey porch and one of England's finest collections of brasses to wool merchants. Grade I; open daily.
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The Old Prison, Northleach
Sight · Historic building · Northleach
The Old Prison at Northleach is the house of correction William Blackburn designed in 1791 for Sir George Onesiphorus Paul's reform of Gloucestershire's prisons. A cell block and the Victorian courtroom survive, free to see, with a café. Grade II*.
Stories about Northleach
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The Cotswold wool trade
Story · History · 9 minute read
How the Cotswold sheep made the hills rich: the medieval export of raw wool through the Staple at Calais, the woolmen of Campden, Northleach and Fairford, the cloth mills of the Stroud valleys, the decline, and where to see it all today.
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The Cotswolds in November
Story · Guides · 8 minute read
The Cotswolds in November: the wettest month and one of the quietest, the last of the beech colour, the November Meeting at Cheltenham, the light trails and late-night shopping that start Christmas, what stays open in winter, firm walks for wet weather and inns with fires.
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The Fosse Way through the Cotswolds
Story · History · 8 minute read
The Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln through the Cotswolds: its line by Cirencester, Northleach, Stow, Moreton and Stretton-on-Fosse, where it is the A429 and where a green lane, the Saltway and the roads that cross it, the towns it made, and walks on it.
Getting to Northleach
- By bus
- The X52 (Oxford, Burford, Cheltenham) stops in the Market Place about every two hours Monday to Saturday, twice each way on Sundays; the 855 (Bourton to Cirencester) about hourly, Monday to Saturday.
- Parking
- There is no public car park. Park on-street in the Market Place.
| Bourton-on-the-Water | 5.6 mi |
|---|---|
| Cirencester | 11.2 mi |
| Cheltenham | 13.7 mi |
Places near Northleach
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BurfordA wool and coaching town whose High Street runs downhill to a medieval bridge over the Windrush, with a Grade I church where the Levellers were held in 1649.
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Bourton-on-the-WaterThe River Windrush runs shallow through the middle of the village under a run of low stone bridges. The county council puts visitors at around 10,000 a day at peak times, so arrive before ten.
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AblingtonA hamlet of Bibury parish a mile up the River Coln from Arlington Row, with the Elizabethan manor where J. Arthur Gibbs wrote A Cotswold Village, a small green and no shop, pub or coach. Walk here from Bibury.
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Cold AstonA village round a green on the high wold 3 miles west of Bourton-on-the-Water, also called Aston Blank, with a Grade I Norman church, a restored seventeenth-century inn with four rooms, and paths west to Notgrove and down to the Windrush.