6 Kingswood Abbey as a Forest Gateway 21 K or 13 miles
If you live in Wotton Under Edge in Gloucestershire, Kingswood is not a suburb of Bristol with an independent spirit but a village barely a mile to the southwest. Until the Dissolution of the Monasteries (10 August 38 Hen. 8) the village and its surrounding parish or manor belonged to the “Abbey of Kingswood,” in the Hundred of Chippenham in the County of Wiltshire. Why it was in Wiltshire rather than Gloucestershire is obscure. It is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey for either county – perhaps it was wasteland.
The Forest of Horwood, of which Kingswood was a part, was a royal forest, which was disafforested in 1228, during the reign of Henry II’s grandson Henry III. The position of the Abbey on the northern boundary of the forest, and the survival of the Abbey Gateway, make it an ideal place for a gateway to the Forest of Horwood.
The beginning of this route is inspired by one of the walks on the Kingswood Parish Website.
To get to the start take the number 60 bus from Rock Street Thornbury to the Tennis Courts bus stop in Kingswood.
From the Tennis Court bus stop in Kingswood, continue down Charfield Road to the crossroads, cross Wotton Road into Abbey Street and follow it to another crossroads.
On your left is Kingswood Abbey Gatehouse.
Turn right and go up the High Street past St Mary’s Church into the old market place, known as the Chipping. Continue past the Village Inn and the Spar into Hillesley Road. Take care, there is no footway.
When the road bends sharply to the left into the countryside, look for a stile next to a gate, just past the last house on the right.
In the field, follow the left hand hedge to a pair of stiles into the next field. Continue to follow the left hand hedge until you come to a stile at the end of the field.
Over the stile, turnleft to a double stile and then turn right to follow the hedge on your right.
Go over a stile in a wire fence, then take the second field gate on the right,
In the next field, continue to follow the right hand hedge, which contains some impressive oak trees. Go through a gate and descend to a stile by a wooded stream.
The Old Abbey: There is a Dutch barn up to the right, where Old Abbey Cottage is shown on old maps.
This is the site of the original Abbey founded in 1139 by Roger de Berkeley, who ended up on the wrong side in the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, the daughter of Henry I. Roger lost his castle at Berkeley and his title to Robert Fitzharding, a Saxon financier, whose family have held Berkeley ever since.
The Abbey was refounded in 1170 in Merewood, which was where the village of Kingswood now stands. It is clear that the reason the Abbey was moved was to acquire a reliable water supply from the brook which runs at the back of the site,
The Abbey was occupied by Cistercian monks from Tintern on the River Wye. They were an austere order who preferred to live on wilderness sites, but their puritan values made them efficient farmers, and although the individual monks may have been poor, their monasteries became rich. Two farm names in the parish obviously commemorate ancient woodland, namely Neathwood Farm and Highwood Farm, the two farms closest to the site of the original Abbey.
The stile leads onto a small stone bridge.
Trench Lane: This bridge used to carry Trench Lane, which ran up past the site of the Old Abbey to Trench Farm and Merryford Farm, which stood near the northern boundary of the Forest of Horwood. A trench is a wide ride through a large area of Woodland. There are several in Lower Woods. Trench lane ran south to Chase Hill, Chase Lane, Chasehouse Farm and Chaselane Farm, which reflect a time when a large area of unfenced woodland or chase remained in the southwest of the parish.
Follow the course of Trench Lane for about a kilometre, keeping the hedge on your right. Go over a stile and two footbridges, the second of which is in a clump of trees. Continue to the next corner, where there is a stile on your right.
Over the stile, turn left and follow the driveway down past a wind turbine on the right to Chase lane.
Bear right to a gateway into a field next to some farm buildings.
Head diagonally right down the field. In the far right hand corner, there is a footbridge over the Saltmoors Ditch hidden among some scrubby trees. Head up the slope to a stile at the top of the slope.
Over the stile, bear right to find another stile. Turn right and follow the hedge to a farm track.
Cross the track and enter the wood by an impressive oak tree.
In the woods, you are on a track known as The Walk. It was created to align the hunting lodge in the middle of the wood with the tower of Wickwar Parish Church.
Head along The Walk and take the second major turning on the right. Cross over Plumber’s Trench.
Plumber’s Trench is “one of the oldest routes through Lower Woods connecting the Cotswold Edge with the Severn Vale in the west passes through… Plumber’s Trench. There is evidence to suggest it was used during Roman times and good reason to suppose it was an even earlier Prehistoric Way.” (From A History of Lower Woods by M.H. and J Martin.)
Continue along the track opposite, which descends increasingly steeply to the Little Avon River.
Horwood: You are now in the parish of Horton. This part of Lower Woods is marked as Horwood on eighteenth century maps.
There are nine named woods in the section of Lower Woods in Horton Parish. The Horton section is not Common Land like the Hawkesbury section, because it was owned by the Catholic Paston family, who had to make the most of their land to pay recusancy fines.
Cross the footbridge and keep straight ahead up the track until you reach a larger Trench called Horton Great Trench and turn right.
The road between Bristol and Wotton used to follow Horton Great Trench. It is very wide because of a law designed to protect travellers from being shot by arrows from the trees.
I always thought that these wide rides were designed to make it easier to shoot deer being driven by hounds from one side to the other. This was supposed to be the context in which William the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus was “accidentally” shot with an arrow in the New Forest in 1100. There are other theories. One was that his sexual proclivities made it unlikely that he would father an heir so he was murdered. Anthropologist Margaret Murray claimed that he was sacrificed to the old gods in a book called The God of the Witches. This is unlikely. But William Rufus was taken ill in Alveston near Thornbury, and was persuaded that that was a judgement from God because he preferred sex with men and also because he was reluctant to appoint Anselm as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Follow Horton Great Trench until the track bends to the right.
The wood on the left is called Stonybridge Wood.
Keep straight on alongside a conifer plantation on the right. Keep going until you come out through a gate onto a road or track.
If you want to know more about Lower Woods, I recommend the two volume History of Lower Woods Nature Reserve by MH and J Martin, supported by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and Hawkesbury Local History Society.
Turn right and follow the bridleway alongside Lady’s Wood on the left.
Lady’s Wood is the home of a shooting school. There is a wooden tower there for launching clay pigeons. If you have been hearing gunfire, this is probably where it comes from!
When the bridleway bends to the left, look for a bridle gate leading to a bridleway straight ahead. (There is a stile on the right just before it.) Follow this around the edge of a field to a farm drive. Go through a field gate or a bridle gate. Keep left as the bridleway joins Bird’s Bush Lane. Continue to the end of the lane at Wickwar Road.
Turn left and then right down a road to Oxwick Farm, an impressive old building on the right, which is a ”Natural Heritage Site” with glamping and rewilding attached.
Turn left at a footpath sign in front of the house. Go through two gaps in hedges and then bear right to a pair of field gates and a kissing gate into a road. (The kissing gate was overgrown.) Turn right.
Follow the lane past a warehouse for IRP (Industrial Roofing Products) and around a couple of bends to the left. Look for a kissing gate on the right. Follow the path down some steps, and straight on past a direction marker. Continue down some more steps to another kissing gate.
Yate Court Deer Park: Through the gate you enter the former deer park surrounding Yate Court. One of the terms of the Disafforestation of Horwood Forest in 1228 enabled local magnates to create their own deer parks. Sometimes the king would send live deer to favoured lords to stock their deer parks. Presumably the deer were captured and transported in some sort of cart.
Follow the path across the field to an orchard and continue to a footbridge into another field.
Here the route joins the Jubilee Way, which was set up to celebrate the Jubilee of the Ramblers Association.
The track across the field had been made obvious by the farmer and led to a metal footbridge over the Ladden Brook.
In the next field, turn right along the conservation headland alongside the hedge. In the corner of the field is a kissing gate leading through some scrub into another field. Follow the path across the field to a mini-gate into a paddock. (Mind your shins.) Keep going on the same line to a pair of kissing gates onto Yate Court Lane.
Yate Court up the drive to the right was built during the thirteenth century (licence to crenellate in 1299) and was refurbished by the Berkeleys in the sixteenth. It was occupied by Parliamentary forces in 1644 and its defences were destroyed when they left. There is not much left. The Berkeleys removed the gatehouse between the World Wars and had it erected as a new entrance to Berkeley Castle to avoid having to drive through the town.
(The following route has some issues, which can be overcome by following the lane to the left and turning right on the road at the end.)
Cross the lane to a wooden field gate and follow the edge of the wood on the left to the end of the field, where there is a kissing gate leading to an enclosed path.
Here you are leaving the former deer park.
(This path has some low branches and indeed trunks, and you have to go into and out of a ditch, which is probably muddy. Nettles are also occasionally a problem.)
At the end is a stile leading into a large field. The path goes past an isolated tree to a finger post at which you need to turn left to a steel stile, followed by a more conventional stile. Follow the right hand hedge to another steel stile onto the beginning of a drive.
Turn right and follow the road up to and over the railway bridge. Go straight on at the following crossroads and turn left after about 200m over a footbridge and through a kissing gate. Follow the hedge across the field to emerge on another lane and turn right.
Yate Common: The house on the”left incredible as it may appear” was the base for “numerous bandits with the necessary appurtenances of romance” who “for more than 7 years have been the terror of the Neighbourhood.” The original house was occupied by an elderly couple called Job and Unity Mills. Their kitchen concealed “a subterraneous cave, the entrance to which was behind the fireplace, where the soot and a large pot effectually prevented the slightest suspicion, and in the the officers found 20 sides of bacon, quantities of cloth, wheat, barley, oats, malt, cheese, two bedsteads and £50, chiefly in half crowns.”
The gang, which ran an effective protection racket, had around 40 members, 31 of which were apprehended when the Reverend Thomas Cook, Rector of St Mary’s Church in Wickwar and local magistrate was alerted by his verger, who was a gang member. And raised a posse.
Thomas Mills, one of the Old Mills’ sons, turned King’s Evidence and shopped the rest of the gang, He remained in the district and was widely mocked.
His brother, William Mills and one Thomas Gardiner were hanged at Gloucester Gaol and another brother John Mills was exiled to Australia, where he became a brewer. The Old Millses and a younger brother got off as part of the deal.
Subsequently, the Dyer brothers, Mark and John, fired shots at the Mills family home in revenge. They were arrested and hanged. The King’s evidence system was pretty much all the authorities had to deal with crimes of this kind and it needed to be defended with stern measures.
Go past some farm buildings through a gate into a field and follow the right hand hedge until you emerge into a green lane. Turn left.
Follow the green lane for about 600m until you come to a kissing gate on the left. In the field, bear right to another gate into the next field and bear right to another kissing gate. Go straight ahead through another two gates to enter a piece of millennium woodland.
Follow the left hand hedge to the end and turn left and then right down an enclosed path to emerge on the main road. Turn left to go to the Rose and Crown public house.
From the Rose and Crown, cross the main road and follow the right fork of Church Lane, which will take you past Rangeworthy Primary School, the entrance to Rangeworthy Court Country Hotel and a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity. There is a gate out of the small church car park, which leads into a field.
Follow the wall on your right through a gate into the next field. Continue past the business end of the farm buildings and follow the track. Which is just to the left of straight ahead, down the hill to a gate. In the next field, follow the right hand hedge to a gate into another field. Turn left and proceed with the hedge on your left to the far end, where there is a stile into another field. Continue with the hedge now on your right.
This leads to a gated footbridge over the Ladden Brook.
As the next three fields are usually down to arable, it is usually simplest to turn left and then right alongside the mineral railway. When you come to an underbridge beneath it, turn right on the track away from the railway until you come to a footpath sign on the left. The path across the field is usually hard to follow, but it goes quite close to the farm buildings and now comes out through a kissing gate onto a new road, called Walnut Field. Turn left and follow the road to a new path through to the Village Shop, the Village Hall and the Swan Inn.
Turn up West Street, which is opposite the entrance to the pub car park and is marked by a red telephone box.
The Midland Railway: On the way you pass under a railway bridge. This now carries a mineral railway that carries stone from the Grovesend Quarries. There used to be a branch line that served the quarries behind the church. There used to be a level crossing on the road to Thornbury. Originally the line carried passengers nearly as far as Daggs Allotments in Thornbury, but it is no longer possible to get a train under the A38.
Follow the road past the farm on the left to emerge through a gate into a field. Follow the hedge on your left up to the top and turn left through a kissing gate.
Continue through three field boundaries until you emerge on a lane..
When you come out onto Itchington Road, turn right and follow it under the motorway. Go past the first turning on the left then take the track straight ahead when the road bends to the right. Go straight ahead through three fields until you come out on a green lane. Continue on uphill until you come to the A38.
Cross the A38 carefully into the lane opposite. Continue across the A38 into Abbey Lane and keep going till you reach a right angle bend to the left.
Here the route leaves the Jubilee Way.
Go straight ahead to a kissing gate and head down the field to another on a hedge corner next to a field gate. Head down the field to a kissing gate in the diagonally opposite corner. Head past a field gate to another kissing gate at the top of some steps down to Midland Way.
Cross the road to an enclosed path. At the end follow a path up onto the Railway Path.
This is the former Midland Railway, which used to serve Thornbury. The nearby railway bridge was built wide enough to accommodate a two track railway, but the embankment was never made wide enough to take more than one track.
Turn left and follow it till you emerge on Midland Way. Cross at the pedestrian refuge and turn right.
Cross Cooper Road and take the path between the Essilor works and the bank. Turn right at the end through the old railway tunnel, which brings you out onto Streamleaze.
Turn right and then left into a cul-de-sac called Tyndale View. Take the path on the left at the end, which leads through to an area with some garages. Go across to the opposite corner, where the road leads past the Thornbury Community Garden. Turn right down the one way street, (You ought to be able to cut the corner through the garden, but they don’t always unlock both gates!)
At the other end of the road turn left into Bath Road. On your right is Rock Street long stay car park. On the left is a raised garden with an interpretation panel, which explains Tyndale View.
At the top of the road is Rock Street, where you caught the bus.
Thornbury Wayfinders 