Get some fresh air and exercise, and see a selection of Stroud’s heritage mills.
From Stroud to Stonehouse, from Stroud to Chalford, and from Stroud to Nailsworth.
Mill walk from Stroud to Stonehouse (2 miles)
Mill walk from Stroud to Nailsworth (3 miles)
Mill walk from Stroud to Chalford (3 miles)
We have produced a series of beautiful Walks maps that can take you on self-guided explorations of the area providing interesting routes and historical information.
Our Maps
Stroud Town 1
Step into the Picture
Invites you to cover the ground depicted in a painting c.1790 of the hamlet of Wallbridge, its mills and the fields behind. It is a beautiful landscape much changed by industrial development but footpaths take you through fields and beside the river in peaceful countryside. The painting, along with others, can be seen in the Museum in the Park, Stroud.
Stroud Town 2
The Upp End of Stroud
This walk uses another Museum painting to evoke the artisan suburb at the top of the town, which developed in the late 1600s. This will be a gentle walk round historic but unpretentious streets.
Stroud Town 3
Royal Stroud
Published in the Jubilee Year there is admittedly not much that can be recorded about royal activities in a country town. However Frederick Prince of Wales made his mark; Queen Mary visited a factory; Prince Philip had his wedding uniform made here; Queen Victoria passed by and Queen Elizabeth II passed through…. And this is an easy walk from the centre of town to the attractive museum along the newly restored canal – an interesting walk full of History.
Nailsworth Mills 1:
Streams of Cloth
A walk round the town and up the Horsley brook. Pinpointing a successi on of mills it provides a background to the growth of the local woollen cloth industry and the town. It is supported by history boards at each of the mill sites.
Nailsworth Mills 2:
Weavers’s yarns
This a walk out of the town into the delightful and sunny Shortwood Valley, over the hill and down into the Horsley Valley. It uses mainly well trodden footpaths and passes sites of mills, chapels and quarries that provided stone for Charles Barry’s rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament.