The Cotswold Way. Kev Reynolds

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      The Cotswold Way enters Stanway through Stanway Park

      This is a fine, easy stretch of the walk, the path leading alongside meadows and finally bringing you to the parkland of Stanway House, where long avenues of stately oaks and chestnut trees throw welcome shade on a hot summer’s day. Across the parkland, guided by oak marker posts, come to a country lane (note the thatched cricket pavilion perched on staddle stones opposite). Bear left and walk into the hamlet of Stanway, noting on the way the huge tithe barn in the ground of Stanway House behind the church.

      Stanway, or Church Stanway as it is also known, is even smaller than Stanton – a clutch of buildings in the shadow, so to speak, of the Jacobean manor, Stanway House. The village has an air of feudalism about it – the church, the houses, even the trees, appear to come under manorial patronage. In almost 1300 years’ ownership the manor has changed hands only once (except by inheritance), so perhaps it is not surprising that the community should appear so closely knit.

      As well as the manor and 12th-century Church of St Peter (with much Victorian reconstruction), note the massive tithe barn, the three-storey Jacobean gatehouse with gables adorned with scallop-shell finials, and the 13th-century watermill that once belonged to the abbots of Tewkesbury.

      The lane winds in front of the church and past the fanciful south gatehouse of Stanway House (grid ref: 061 323). A few paces beyond this you leave the lane by a large yew tree and turn left. A narrow footpath takes you left of a blacksmith’s workshop and the remains of a watermill, crosses a small meadow and brings you onto the B4077. Go left for about 40 metres, then head to the right on a continuation of the Cotswold Way along a path enclosed by a hedge and a fence containing a plantation.

      This path soon entices across low-lying fields towards the hamlet of Wood Stanway. (Stanway, which you have just left, is sometimes known as Church Stanway to avoid confusion.) Behind and above the hamlet runs the Cotswold skyline on which you can see a line of individual trees. The route eventually angles up to the left-hand end of these.