Farmington

Farmington has been inhabited since well before the Norman Conquest—it's recorded in the Domesday Book as Tormentone, a reminder that people have been living and working here for over a thousand years.

With just over a hundred residents, the village is genuinely modest in scale. You won't find the usual visitor infrastructure of shops or cafes, but that's precisely what makes it valuable if you want to see how Cotswold communities actually operate beyond the main tourist circuits. The stone buildings carry that distinctive local character, and there's nothing about walking here that feels prescribed or manufactured.

Most visitors come for St Mary's Church, which has stood here for centuries and serves as a tangible connection to the village's long past. It's somewhere to pause and absorb what rural England looks and feels like when you're not experiencing it through a curated lens.

If you're based in larger nearby towns such as Northleach or Bourton-on-the-Water, Farmington works well as a straightforward side trip. It's worth visiting if you prefer quieter spaces compared to the more famous villages, or if you're genuinely curious about how smaller settlements have managed to persist and evolve across the centuries.