Best UK Villages: Beyond the Cotswolds

The best UK villages rarely fit inside the same tired shortlist of golden Cotswold stone that dominates most search results. Bibury and Castle Combe are lovely, but they are also two of the most photographed, most crowded spots in the country, and they tell only a fraction of the story.

This guide looks at UK villages across four nations rather than one county. ConnollyCove, an Ireland-based travel and culture platform, has spent years covering the Celtic Fringe of Northern Ireland and Scotland alongside Wales and England, and this piece pulls those threads together with a focus on real history and practical travel advice rather than another repeat of the same Cotswold photographs.

The Celtic Fringe: Northern Ireland and Scotland

Northern Ireland and Scotland barely register on most best UK villages lists, yet their villages carry some of the richest, least-told stories in the country.

Cushendun, County Antrim, looks nothing like the rest of the Antrim coast. Its white-washed, Cornish-style cottages were designed in the 1920s by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, commissioned by a homesick Cornish wife married into the local landowning family. The National Trust now cares for much of the village. ConnollyCove’s guide to County Antrim covers the wider coastline this village sits on, and the nine Glens of Antrim reward a detour inland for anyone with an extra afternoon.

Cushendun Caves, just outside the village, gained international attention as a Game of Thrones filming location, and the red sandstone formations are worth the short walk from the car park regardless of the show’s fame. “What draws us back to Cushendun isn’t the architecture alone. It’s standing in the caves at low tide and realising the coastline told stories long before anyone filmed here,” says Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove.

Hillsborough, County Down, is a small Georgian village best known for Hillsborough Castle, the official royal residence in Northern Ireland. The Georgian square, historic fort and well-regarded food scene reward a slower visit than the castle alone, and it sits close enough to Belfast for a straightforward day trip without a car.

Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, is instantly recognisable even to people who have never set foot in Scotland. Its brightly painted harbour front was the visual basis for the children’s television series Balamory. Beyond the colour, Tobermory is a working fishing port and whisky town sitting inside a part of the Highlands and Islands where Gaelic culture is still spoken day to day rather than performed for visitors. Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic share a common root, which is part of why so much Hebridean folklore echoes stories found in Irish mythology; ConnollyCove’s guide to Celtic mythology creatures traces several of these shared figures.

Braemar, further into the Cairngorms, sits close to the River Dee near Balmoral Castle. Braemar Castle is normally open to visitors, though renovation schedules shift, so it’s worth checking ahead. Every September the Braemar Gathering, one of the best-known Highland Games, draws crowds well beyond Scotland’s usual tourist trail.

Wales’s Most Distinctive Villages

Wales rarely gets more than a passing mention on lists of the best villages in England and the wider UK, despite carrying a living linguistic identity that most other regions lost centuries ago.

Beddgelert sits at the meeting point of two rivers in Snowdonia and is best known for the legend of Gelert, a loyal dog said to have been killed by his own owner after wrongly saving the prince’s infant son from a wolf. Most historians believe the grave and the story were invented in the late eighteenth century by a local hotelier hoping to draw visitors, rather than being an ancient Welsh folk tale. That doesn’t make the walk to the grave any less worthwhile, but it’s a more honest way to frame it than most guides manage. The tale sits alongside a wider Celtic tradition of loyal-animal legends that ConnollyCove’s guide to Celtic mythology creatures traces through several Irish parallels.

Portmeirion, further along the coast, is one of the strangest villages in Britain: an entire Italianate settlement built between 1925 and 1975 by the same Clough Williams-Ellis who designed Cushendun in County Antrim. The village became internationally famous as the filming location for the 1960s series The Prisoner and remains a privately owned visitor attraction rather than a residential settlement in the ordinary sense. Travellers who visit both Portmeirion and Cushendun on the same trip get an unusual, little-known thread connecting Wales and Northern Ireland through one architect’s imagination.

Tenby, on the Pembrokeshire coast, has a written history stretching back to at least the ninth century. Its thirteenth-century defensive walls, built after repeated attacks, still largely stand, and Tenby Castle, St Mary’s Church and the Tudor Merchant’s House give the old town a full walking route without needing a car. Unlike Beddgelert or Portmeirion, Tenby sits on a direct rail line, which makes it one of the more straightforward Welsh villages to reach.

England Beyond the Cotswolds

England dominates almost every list of the best UK villages already published, which makes it worth looking past the Cotswolds toward villages that carry just as much history with a fraction of the crowds.

Helmsley, in North Yorkshire, sits on the banks of the River Rye with its medieval centre still largely intact. Rievaulx Abbey, a twelfth-century Cistercian ruin nearby, is one of the best-preserved medieval abbey sites in England, and Helmsley Castle overlooks the village in ruins of its own. The National Centre for Birds of Prey and the North York Moors National Park give the village a full day out beyond its historic core.

Robin Hood’s Bay, further along the Yorkshire coast, was first recorded in the mid-thirteenth century, when Flemish fishermen were reportedly captured here. Despite the name, the village likely has no genuine connection to the outlaw. Its smuggling history is well documented at the Old Coastguard Station, and the sand-and-rock beach below the village makes for a good dog-friendly coastal walk.

Haworth, also in Yorkshire, is best known as the home of the Brontë sisters. The Brontë Parsonage Museum covers their lives in detail, and the preserved Keighley and Worth Valley Railway adds an extra reason to visit beyond the literary connection alone.

How to Choose and Visit Well

Choosing between UK villages usually comes down to transport realism rather than aesthetics alone, since most guides quietly assume everyone has a car.

Northern Ireland’s villages are the easiest of the Celtic Fringe to reach without one. Translink buses connect most of County Antrim and County Down to Belfast, and ConnollyCove’s Belfast travel guide has practical notes on pairing a Cushendun day trip with an evening back in the city. Scotland’s Highland and island villages are considerably harder going; Tobermory needs a ferry crossing, and Braemar’s bus service thins out sharply outside summer. Wales’s rail network reaches Betws-y-Coed and Tenby directly, though Beddgelert and Portmeirion both need a local bus connection from the nearest station. England’s Cotswold villages have the best public transport coverage of any region covered here, which is part of why they’re also the most crowded.

Visiting outside July and August, arriving early or late in the day, and choosing a quieter alternative in the same region spreads visitor pressure without losing the experience. “The true character of a village rarely lives in its gift shop. It’s in the pub that’s barely changed in fifty years, and those pubs are usually a bus ride, not a motorway, from the famous stop next door,” says Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove.

There’s also a shared thread worth noticing across all of this. The architectural link between Cushendun and Portmeirion, the common root shared by Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and the loyal-dog legend at Beddgelert all point to a wider Celtic habit of explaining landscape and loss through story, one ConnollyCove’s guide to Irish proverbs and seanfhocail explores from the language side, and its piece on Ireland’s fairy tree traditions explores from the folklore side.

Whichever UK village ends up first on your list, the villages that reward a visit most are rarely the ones with the longest queue for a photograph. They’re the ones with a story attached, a Cornish architect’s cottages in County Antrim, a dog’s questionable grave in Snowdonia, a harbour that inspired a children’s show. Explore more of ConnollyCove’s Northern Ireland coverage, from the Dark Hedges to the wider Antrim coast road, or follow ConnollyCove’s YouTube channel for video guides to several of the villages covered here.

FAQs

A few quick answers to the questions people ask most often about visiting UK villages.