Stays near Berkswell

Berkswell is a village and civil parish in the rural east of the borough of Solihull, about two miles west of Coventry's boundary at Eastern Green and six and a half miles from the city centre. Meriden is two and a half miles to the north and Balsall Common two miles to the south. The parish had 3,139 residents at the 2011 census.

The parish also takes in Beechwood, Carol Green, Four Oaks and the eastern part of Balsall Common. Berkswell station serves the village in name, though it actually stands much closer to Balsall Common.

The parish church of St John Baptist is a late twelfth-century Norman building known for its unusual two-part crypt: a rectangular space under the chancel and an octagonal one under the nave. Its Perpendicular windows and two-storey wooden porch came later.

The village takes its name from the Berks Well, a stone-walled well about sixteen feet square just outside the churchyard, said to have been used for baptism by immersion. Several sixteenth and seventeenth-century houses survive, including the Bear Inn and the local history society runs a small museum in a seventeenth-century cottage near the church. Ram Hall dates from about 1600.

Stoke Lodge and Stoke House are about 8 miles by road from Berkswell, Humber Hub about 8 miles and Sullivan Heights about 10 miles. For a group visiting the village or working on the HS2 sites nearby, a whole house in Coventry gives each person a bed and the kitchen to themselves.