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Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Stratford-upon-Avon

Routes

Bike touring routes & trails

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Stratford-upon-Avon

Easy

4.6

(5)

156

riders

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Stratford-upon-Avon

01:22

22.1km

120m

Cycling

Easy bike ride. Great for any fitness level. Mostly paved surfaces. Suitable for all skill levels. The starting point of the route is accessible with public transport.

Last updated: July 15, 2026

Tips

Cycling is not permitted along parts of this route

After 1.36 km for 97 m

After 2.28 km for 108 m

Waypoints

Start point

Train Station

Get Directions

1.03 km

Stratford-upon-Avon High Street

Highlight • Historical Site

The Hall was built in the reign of Charles I and throughout its chequered history has seen calamitous events including being extensively damaged from a gunpowder explosion in 1643. Just over a century later the Hall was actually pulled down but re-built the following year.

In 1863 major alterations resulted in a Hall very much as you see it today. Ill fate dogged it again in 1946 when fire, started from a cigarette, completely gutted the beautifully proportioned Ballroom, when a valuable painting by Gainsborough of David Garrick was destroyed.

The Town Hall houses many interesting and historic paintings and treasures and it is unsurprising that today smoking is definitely not permitted.

(stratford-tc.gov.uk/town-hall/history--of-the-town-hall)

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1.39 km

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside

Highlight • Rest Area

Refreshing and plenty to see. Well worth the short walk

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1.46 km

Bancroft Basin

Highlight • River

2.49 km

Stratford-upon-Avon Butterfly Farm

Highlight • Structure

I've been to the Farm many times and it's amazing to see all the different types of butterfly the are beautiful

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10.5 km

Charlecote Park

Highlight • Historical Site

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result.

From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy.

In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.
The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850).

Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy.

From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.

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