Upper and Lower Swell

What to see

St Mary's Church, Lower Swell, Grade II*, is two churches side by side. The nave and chancel of the twelfth century survive almost whole as the south aisle and chapel, because in 1852 the vicar David Royce had J C Buckler build a larger church against them rather than through them. The Norman doorway under the fifteenth-century porch has a tympanum of ten stones carved with a Tree of Life and a dove pecking at its fruit, and the old chancel arch is ringed with 26 small carvings of people and animals that the county history thought unique. The church publishes no opening hours and may be locked outside services, held at 9.30am on the first and third Sundays.

On the green is the Lower Swell war memorial, a flaming urn on a pedestal designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled on 31 July 1921, listed Grade II. On the road up to Stow, the Pineapple Spa is a row of cottages built as a spa house over a chalybeate spring found in 1807, with a front in the Indian style of Sezincote and a stone pineapple over the door, Grade II* and private.

Upper Swell's St Mary's is listed Grade I and smaller than its neighbour: a Norman doorway with chevron moulding and a defaced tympanum inside the early fifteenth-century porch, a Norman chancel arch, an early thirteenth-century chancel and a bellcote with two bells. Beside the road are the Manor House, early to mid seventeenth century and Grade II*, with a two-storey porch of Tuscan columns and a broken pediment, and the water mill, Grade II, whose wheel and large mill pool survive beside the Dikler. Both are private. Up the river at Donnington is the brewery whose beer the Golden Ball sells.

An afternoon here

Park in Stow and walk the loop the way it is written, so that the fields down to Hyde Mill come first and Lower Swell is the reward: the green, the memorial, the church and the cottages by the conduit head. Leave the route at the green for the Golden Ball, then walk the B4068 back to Stow past the Pineapple Spa, on the path beside the road. For Upper Swell, drive or walk the lane north from Lower Swell's green, about a mile, and look at the church, the porch of the manor and the mill from the road.

Walks

Stow and Lower Swell is a 3.6-mile (5.8km) loop from Back Walls in Stow, down the fields past Nether Swell Manor to the Dikler at Hyde Mill, up Mill Lane to the green and through the churchyard, and back beside the B4068. It climbs about 130m, most of it at the end, and about a third is on tarmac, which walkers call the price of the quiet middle. Stow and Maugersbury, the National Landscape's stile-free route, comes down to the same mill from the other side.

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Food and drink

The Golden Ball in Lower Swell is a farmhouse of about 1700, listed Grade II, that was already the Ball in 1786, and it is a Donnington Brewery pub with the brewery's ales from up the valley, run by a mother and daughter, Becky and Fiona. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and opens from noon, to 9pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 6pm on Sundays; food is served at lunch and from 6pm Wednesday to Saturday, and from noon to 3.30pm on Sundays, and hours change on bank holidays and in Cheltenham race week, so book or ring before you walk down for a meal. There is nothing in Upper Swell. The wider choice is in Stow: the Old Bakery Tearoom lets dogs in, the Porch House serves all day, and our guide to Cotswold pubs and their breweries has Donnington's other houses.

When to come

Spring and autumn suit the walk: the fields hold water through the winter and walkers report mud from November to March and overgrown paths in August. A bright afternoon is the time for the Norman carvings, which are hard to read in flat light. Stow fills on summer weekends, when its car parks are the problem rather than the Swells, which are never crowded.