Walking in Somerset
Walking in Somerset
Price
£10.99
34) Langford Budville and Kittisford
Distance: 5 miles
Start: The Martlet Inn, Langford Budville
Map: Sheet 181 (GR111227)
Whilst this walk is worth travelling some distance to enjoy, it will certainly appeal to the inhabitants of Wellington; an extended version of it can be walked from the town itself. Starting and ending at The Martlet Inn, it passes no other pub or shop on the way; Langford Budville no longer has a village shop. Of all the walks in this book this is the one that (at the time of walking) has the least waymarking - in fact almost none. Nevertheless it presents - in marked contrast to the preceding walk - no real difficulty in navigation. If you do not want to visit the pub there is alternative parking by the church.
Turn right out of the pub car park and walk along the main street, past the parish notice board on the left. Turn left before the church by the telephone box. The street turns sharp left by the school; turn right at the corner, initially walking along a drive towards a white-painted cottage; it swings left and then becomes a narrow path, taking you down into a gully and up out of it to reach a tarred road where you turn left along a village street with modern houses. After 200 yards you turn right off the street at a left hand bend (by No 1 Shattock’s Cottages) and walk north-west, along a grassy track. After 300 yards this ends at a fork where you go left at a stile beneath elder trees, exiting from among the trees to head north-west along the edge of a field with a hedge on your right. At the end of the field you follow the hedge round, come to a stepless stile and find yourself looking up a small grassy gully to your left with a clump of trees on the slope.
Bear left up the gully and go through the second gate on your right, leading you into a farm track taking you uphill to the farm buildings at Middle Hill Farm; follow the track through the buildings and turn left along the concrete lane to the road running north across the common, which you meet at a fine stand of oak. You are now on Langford Common, shown as Langford Heathfield.
The next stretch of walking should - and indeed once did - offer an alternative to walking on the verge of the road. The common land here - its use regulated by bylaws - is rapidly returning to forest as the patches of tussocks, bracken and gorse, ungrazed, are taken over by oak and ash trees. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, most villages in England had some common land - generally rather poor land which was used by any in the village as rough grazing. In the parish where I grew up, large areas of Milborne Down disappeared behind hedges within living memory. Until the middle of the century the term “the common” conjured up an image of a very well defined habitat to the majority of dwellers in rural England. It was an unfenced area of rough grazing, generally with some scrub of bramble or gorse and scattered trees. It was an excellent wildlife habitat, much favoured by whitethroat, nightjar, yellowhammer, any of our three species of snakes and much besides. Few commons remain; even if they are still common land - as Langford Common is - the end of grazing by villagers’ stock means that they rapidly return to woodland. True common land, in its Medieval sense, still grazed by peasant herdsmen, can be found in the hill areas of Romania.
Turn right on the public road (GR102236) and head north-west along the road for a quarter of a mile, past the entrance to Bindon Home Farm to the turning to Leigh Farm (GR100239); turn left here, heading north-west along the lane to the farm, delightfully situated in its little valley. Keep on the lane past the farmhouse on the left, keeping left as you pass the fuel tanks on the right
You leave Leigh Farm on a tarred lane heading west with hedge on the right and a large dutch barn on the left; it takes you uphill towards a small slate-roofed brick cottage with two chimneys. The lane forks in the middle of the field; go left, making for the clump of trees that surround the pond. Keeping the pond to your left, make for a gate just beyond, leading into a field with a pylon. Turn right, and leave the field by a second gate in the corner (often muddy here), taking you towards the front of the cottage with a small cowshed on the right. Turn left through the second gate, hung on built stone pillars and rather hidden among the vegetation. You are now heading gently uphill with a hedge on the left, the path marked by gateways through the hedge.
Crossing the brow of the hill with a view across to your right, you start to descend towards the wood; you reach the wood by a telegraph pole marked “J33”. Eighty yards beyond the telegraph pole bear left, into the wood at a wooden gate. Here you find an earth track; turn left, heading downhill, more steeply as you leave the wood. This is a delightful woodland byway. Descending between banks you reach Greenways Farm. Cross straight over the road, past the ornamented entrance to Combe Place on the right. Past the entrance to Fox Hollow on the left the track now becomes muddy through the trees, past a garden on the left. Henceforward your route is marked on the map as a black pecked line. It is a right of way. Exiting from the woods it takes you on a sunken track through largely arable fields, gently uphill towards Kittisford Barton, where you turn left on the road.
Turn right immediately off it, on a farm track taking you down to the pond on your right, the wall that retains it topped with fine solid slates. You see the path onward through a stile leading to a sunken lane going up the right hand side of a sheep-grazed field. Bear diagonally left across this field, making for the left hand end of the wood where you find a stile. A permissive path has been created by the very walker-friendly landowner here, heading right, up the hill towards Stawley Wood Farm. At the stile at the corner of the wood (GR078227) you go into the wood, following a wide path south along the eastern side of the wood. Leaving the wood at a stile you follow the overgrown thorn hedge along on your left, reaching a hunting gate and a stile at the top of the hill, where you turn left, following a copse along on your right, above the tiny hamlet of Kittisford.
The first record of this is in Domesday, where it is spelt Chedesford, probably referring to a ford belonging to a certain Cyddi. An alternative, less plausible theory holds that it refers to the bird, the kite, formerly as common or even commoner than buzzards in Britain. Black kites were as familiar over the streets of London in Shakespeare’s day as they are today over the teeming cities of the Indian subcontinent.
At the end of the wood you turn right at a spreading oak tree, the soil around its roots quite worn away by sheep seeking shelter there. Go into the copse over a stile and head down a concrete farm lane now becoming overgrown. As you approach the back of Rectory Farm you find that the path has become slightly diverted from what the map shows. You go over a stile and keep the farm buildings to your right, rather than following the farm track through them. Turn left on the public road.
In fact St Nicholas’s Church is well worth a slight detour, as is the Tudor manor at Cothay. The church was much restored in the nineteenth century; its setting is delightful, hidden in a steep-sided tributary valley of the Tone. It has a pulpit dating from 1610.
Follow the road north-east from Kittisford to the t-junction with the drive turning right down to Kittisford Mill (GR082224); head straight on here, over a stile and downhill towards the left hand corner of the field to a second stile. Here you join the road by the fine brick arch over the River Tone, with the post-box dating from the reign of Edward VII set in the masonry. Cross the river on the footbridge, not the road bridge, and follow the path above the course of the stream down to your left. Initially it seems as though the map is in error, for there seems to be no sign of the farm lane. The farm lane here is the stream; the path rejoins it where it climbs out of the stream-bed at a fine old ramp of stone sets.
This is certainly a “long ford” - one of the longest I know and competing with the one at Rickford on the northern flank of the Mendips. It is tempting to wonder if this is the “long ford” that gave rise to the name of the village of Langford Budville, first mentioned in Domesday as “Langeford”. Before the Conquest it was owned by Earl Godwin of Wessex; after the Conquest it was given to William de Budvelle, who took his name from a village near St Mere Eglise on the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy.
Follow the farm lane, sunken between banks, to Poleshill. The path turning right before the farm buildings is now disused, so follow the lane to the right, between the barns, descending at the back of the farm. What is shown on the map as a footpath is a fenced in lane heading east across the fields with the wood on your right. It ends at a gate over a tiny stream (GR095227). Turn right here and follow the stream, flowing beneath an alder thicket, downstream on your right, the path marked by gateways. As the stream swings right to head south, you continue with a thick hedge on your right, bringing you to a section of post and rails in the hedge in front of you. Turn right here, towards the left hand corner of the copse and head east, now with the hedge on your left towards the lane to Stancombe Farm which you reach at the farm gate, between a holly and an ash tree. You are now in the flat alluvial floor of the River Tone.
Follow the tarred lane towards Stancombe Farm and then bear right as you reach the farm. Looking south-west, you can see the chimneys of Wellisford Manor. The path south to the river turns right, doubling back on yourself as you reach the farm. From Stancombe Farm the path east up the slope to the woods follows the line of an ancient grassy track with a thick hedge on the right. Go through the gate beyond the farm and head uphill, with fine views behind you. As you near the wood you go through a gateless gap in the hedge to approach the wood with the hedge on your left and enter it at a gateway. Once inside the wood the path turns left (not marked on the map). Testament to its origins as common grazing, the wood is crisscrossed with various paths. Nevertheless the one to Langford is easily followed, taking you across one of the few remaining clearings, gently uphill among the oak trees. This is a fine wood, alive in summer with the song of willow warbler and blackcap.
The path brings you to the public road (GR107225); ahead is a well-trodden path where the children from Langford play among the trees and ride their bikes up and down the banks. Turn left on the road and follow it to the t-junction with the road across the common. Turn left with the noticeboard of the bylaws on your left. At the end of the stand of elm on your right, turn right, following a well-used path north-east, suddenly giving you a fine view of the village with the church tower rising behind. Follow the path with the hedge on your right to the far right corner of the field. It dives into the hedge and brings you down a narrow “snicket” to a grassy track between gardens. Turn left on the road and return to your car.
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