Ashbury

It's a genuinely lived-in village rather than somewhere geared toward tourism, with a church worth exploring and a couple of pubs where you'll find locals rather than tour groups.

The real draw here is Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic burial chamber that dates back to around 3430 BCE. It ranks among the finest examples of a Severn-Cotswold long barrow in the country. Reaching it means walking out across the fields, which is very much part of visiting this ancient place. The chamber itself sits beneath an earthen mound and remains remarkably intact, helped by restoration work carried out in the 1960s that revealed it had actually been constructed in two separate phases over time.

This landscape speaks to Neolithic communities who arrived with farming from Europe thousands of years ago. If prehistory interests you, you'll find something genuinely compelling here without the visitor numbers that crowd more famous sites. The Ridgeway, one of Britain's oldest paths, runs right through the area, making it ideal for combining a visit to Wayland's Smithy with longer walks. Wantage, a proper market town, lies nearby if you want to explore beyond the village itself.