Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Things to do · Stanway
Stanway House and Fountain
A Jacobean manor below the Cotswold edge near Winchcombe, home of the Earls of Wemyss, with a 1720s water garden and a single-jet fountain about 92m high, open on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in summer.
Dog-friendly
A house still lived in by its family, with what it calls the tallest fountain in Britain playing in an eighteenth-century water garden. Open only six hours a week in summer, so plan round it; dogs on leads are welcome.
- Good: Dogs on leads welcome
- Good: Historic Houses members free to house, garden and watermill
- Good: Tea room with cream teas and homemade cakes
- Worth knowing: Open only on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in June, July and August
- Worth knowing: Disabled visitors see only part of the house: ring ahead
- Worth knowing: Prices on the house's site carry no year
About
Stanway House is a Jacobean manor at the foot of the Cotswold edge in Stanway, between Winchcombe and Broadway. Tewkesbury Abbey held Stanway at the Domesday survey and kept it until 1533; since then the house has been lived in by the Tracy family and their descendants, the Earls of Wemyss. Beside the house stand the Gatehouse, the church and a fourteenth-century tithe barn.
Behind the house the hill climbs in a water garden of the 1720s, made for John Tracy and probably laid out by Charles Bridgeman: a canal on a terrace about 8m above the house, and a cascade, partly restored, fed from the Pyramid Pond. In 2004 the family added a single-jet fountain in the canal, fed by gravity from a reservoir about 177m higher up. It reaches about 92m, which the house says makes it the tallest fountain in Britain and the tallest gravity fountain in the world, and since 2022 the water has risen as a ring.
The house and garden open only in June, July and August, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2pm to 5pm. A house and fountain ticket is £12 for an adult and £30 for a family, or £9 for the fountain alone, as the house's site gave them in October 2026 with no year attached; Historic Houses members go free to the house, garden and watermill. The restored watermill, a few steps from the Cotswold Way, opens on the same afternoons (£3 an adult) and on Thursday mornings from 10am to noon the rest of the year; it has three floors linked by stairs and no lift, so it is not suitable for wheelchairs. The house publishes no booking system for individual visitors; groups and private tours book through it. Allow two to three hours with tea, and come at 2pm, before the afternoon fills.
Dogs on leads are welcome, and the tea room serves cream teas and cakes. Our Cotswold Way walk from Broadway to Wood Stanway ends at Wood Stanway, a short way south along the Cotswold Way, and Stanton is under 2 miles along the foot of the hill.
Opening hours and season
June, July and August only: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2pm to 5pm; 2027 dates not yet published. Groups and private tours by arrangement with the house.
Facilities
- Tea roomCream teas, homemade cakes and local ice cream
- Car and coach parkingAmple, at the house
- Dogs on leads
- Disabled visitorsRing for access details; Fountain Only rates
The details
- Time to allow
- Two to three hours
- Features
- Café · Parking
- History
- Jacobean manor; water garden of the 1720s; fountain opened 5 June 2004
- Parking
- Ample parking for cars and coaches at the house.
- Without a car
- The house names no bus. The bookable Robin minibus (0345 263 8139) stops at Stanway tithe barn, Monday to Saturday. Winchcombe, 4 miles (6km) off, has buses from Cheltenham.
Photos
The gatehouse Photo: Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons 
The fountain Photo: mattbuck, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 
The tithe barn Photo: Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons 
Stanway House from the churchyard Photo: Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Location
Places to stay nearby
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North Farmcote
B&B · Winchcombe
Bed and breakfast in a farmhouse above Winchcombe, built around 1840, its owners say, as a dower house for Lord Sudeley's mother.
Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
-
Brookside Lodge
Self-catering · Laverton and Buckland
A Victorian hunting lodge for groups of up to 14 in Laverton, near Broadway, with a two-bedroom cottage, a heated pool, a gym in the old stables and dogs welcome.
Dog-friendly · Family-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Oct 2026
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Diston's Cottage
Self-catering · Snowshill
A National Trust cottage for two on the street in Snowshill, opposite the manor, with a multi-fuel stove, a terraced garden and dogs welcome.
Dog-friendly · Walker-friendly
Verified Nov 2026
Nearby walks, places and things to do
- The Pheasant Inn 1.2 km away
- Hailes Abbey 2.6 km away
- Hayles Fruit Farm 2.7 km away
- North Farmcote 3.3 km away
Sights nearby
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Stanton village cross
Sight · Monument · Stanton
Stanton's village cross stands where the High Street meets Church Lane: medieval steps and socket stone carrying a later shaft topped by a sundial, a ball and a cross. Listed Grade II and a scheduled monument, it is on the Cotswold Way, open at all times.
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St Michael and All Angels, Stanton
Sight · Church · Stanton
St Michael and All Angels is Stanton's Grade I church, of the twelfth to seventeenth century, with a spired west tower, medieval wall paintings and a rood loft and east window by Sir Ninian Comper. It stands on Church Lane, by the cross and the Cotswold Way.
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Shenberrow Camp
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · Stanton
Shenberrow Camp is a small Iron Age hill fort on the Cotswold Edge above Stanton, a D-shaped enclosure of about 1.9 hectares inside two banks and ditches, nearly 300m up beside Shenberrow Buildings farm. The Cotswold Way runs through it. A scheduled monument.
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Beckbury Camp, Hailes
Sight · Hill fort or barrow · Winchcombe
An Iron Age hillfort on the Cotswold edge above Hailes, near Winchcombe, its bank still up to 4m high, with the nineteenth-century monument called Cromwell's Seat, where the story goes that Thomas Cromwell watched Hailes Abbey burn. On the Cotswold Way.