West Kington is not the easiest of villages to find. A few miles from the nearest main road, it lies along a network of narrow and winding country lanes to the north of Marshfield.

The village is well-worth seeking out, however, with its fine setting in a diminutive valley watered by the little-known Broadmead Brook. Even the hard-to-please Nikolaus Pevsner was taken with the place. He wrote of a 'pretty group of cottages by the bridge in the combe'. This is the Southern Cotswolds and West Kington has all the characteristics of this AONB – stone cottages, a handsome church, a sheltered valley and a sparkling watercourse.

I sometimes worry about Arthur Mee's state of mind when he wrote the King's England county guidebooks – maybe he was experiencing those senior moments we increasingly suffer from. A few weeks back, I commented on how he had renamed the village of Wingfield near Trowbridge as Winkfield. This time, he describes West Kington as being a tiny village near the River Box. Even the most cursory use of Google will reveal no such river this side of East Anglia. My other trusty guide to Wiltshire – Brian Woodruffe in his excellent Wiltshire Villages – is spot on. He writes of an 'enchanting little place with the air of a bygone age that feels remote and by-passed'.

Woodruffe – writing in 1982 – talked of West Kington as being one of the few villages in Wiltshire to show signs of abandonment and decay. He related how the inn and smithy, post office and school no longer supply their services, with the church being grouped in a large pastorate run from Yatton Keynell.

He did talk the place up, however, by explaining how the visitor could not fail to be charmed by lovely stone and thatched cottages, the bridges over the brook and walled lanes lined with banks of cow parsley. The intervening 25 years have seen the influx of much new money, however, with the village now very much a rural idyll for the harassed city commuter.

The church stands somewhat aloof from the village on a nearby hilltop. It has a fine 15th-century tower, with its belfry windows being filled with tracery while the centre panels act as what are called 'sound holes' for the bells. It was here that the Reformer Hugh Latimer was rector in the 1520s. On the accession of Mary Tudor in 1553, he was committed to the Tower after his refusal to recant his Protestant faith. For his misdemeanours, he was burnt – together with Nicholas Ridley the Bishop of London – at Oxford on October 16 1555.

An archetypal English country lane is followed across country to somewhere called Shire Hill, before the Broadmead Brook is followed through a charming and remote valley back into West Kington. This was a real find, an unexpected gem, for the Chronicle's walking correspondent who thought he knew every nook and cranny in this neck of the woods. Hillsides replete with traditional grassland and flora line each side of the river, with the isolated location of this landscape making it a haven for wildlife. Expect to disturb the timorous heron as you walk through the valley, while you might just espy a goshawk or buzzard high overhead.

The butcher and baker and candlestick maker may well have vacated West Kington, but one fascinating new arrival is the Classic Gardener. To quote from the website "For the past 25 years our dedicated team of topiary specialists have consistently grown and sculpted topiary to the utmost quality in classic and unusual shapes. We have become established as the foremost topiary suppliers in the south west".

It's open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.