The Falcon and the Fetterlocks

   It was a middling sort of Sunday, as the weather goes. Not too warm, not too cold, the sky a grubby white with ominous swirls of grey, but not yet goading me with rain. I was midway through a cross-country journey, a trip from Essex where I had been visiting relatives and friends, heading back to Lancashire. From the Southeast to the Northwest, under a chequered sky of restless clouds and wandering breezes, I made a diversion from the motorway in Northamptonshire to visit a village of which I had read much, yet never visited.

 It is an old settlement, listed in the Domesday book as 'Fodringeia', a linear village with buildings of warm limestone, looking as though it were transplanted in its entirety from the rolling hills of the Cotswolds to this quiet spot near the banks of the River Nene. John Leland, the Tudor antiquary, described it as being '...of one street, all of stone building' and, with the exception of the modern cars parked along its length, that description is still accurate today. The name has changed, unsurprisingly, since the compilation of Domesday and it is now known as Fotheringhay. 'Of one street', with an extremely historic church at one end, and an equally historic castle site at the other.

Fotheringhay

  A brace of red kites are mewng to each other as they glide smoothly over the dark thatch of the village roofs, briefly arresting my attention as I step out of my car* and amble toward the gateway to the village churchyard. These magnificent birds, thanks to centuries of persecution, became very scarce in England before a series of relatively recent conservation efforts saw their numbers increasing in areas like the Chilterns, Central Wales, Yorkshire and Eastern Scotland. From these hotspots they have spread out, and can be seen in many areas of the country. These two are probably descendants of the colony set up in the Chilterns in 1990.

  The decline of the kites in medieval times matches the decline of Fotheringhay. Today a small, attractive riverside village with a church at one end and some earthworks - a Norman motte-and-bailey - at the other, this place was once a centre of royalty and nobility, being no less than the capital of the Yorkist dynasty, that branch of the Plantagenets that ferociously fought their Lancaster cousins for three decades during the fifteenth century... the Cousins' War, better known as the Wars Of The Roses.

The White Rose of York, the Red Rose of Lancaster

  Parking close to the church was quite handy, as it is the first historic spot that I intend to visit. It is a striking building in Perpendicular Gothic, all flying buttresses and a proud lantern astride its tower. Its proportions seem odd, the tower seeming too large or the church building too short. This is because the church was once both longer and wider, its current size the result of post-Reformation demolitions, and its vissicitudes over the centuries are matched by the decline in the national importance of the village itself. The best view is from the banks of the Nene.

Fotheringhay Church. The area that once contained the College buildings is the field in the foreground.

  Before the depredations of the Reformation, however, the church looked like this:

Plan of Fotheringhay Church, pre-Reformation

Model of old church, housed within modern church, displaying the now-vanished Collegiate extensions.

  At the time of the Norman Conquest, the manor of 'Fodringeia' was owned by Waltheof, the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Huntingdon, who initially rebelled against William the Conqueror but went on to marry William's niece, Judith of Lens, in 1070. This familial proximity to William did not prevent Waltheof from participating in the Revolt Of The Earls in 1075, and despite the intervention of Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, Waltheof became the only member of the nobility to be executed by the Conqueror. His beheading took place at St. Giles Hill outside Winchester, and he was buried in Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire, where miracles were reported to have taken place at his tomb.

Statue of Waltheof at Crowland Abbey

  Having lopped off her husband's head, King William decided to marry his widowed niece Judith to one of his Norman noblemen, Simon de St. Liz (pronounced and often spelled as Senlis), the Earl of Northampton. Now it was Judith's turn to rebel, as she refused the match and fled the country.

  The situation was resolved when Simon married Judith and Waltheof's daughter Maud around the year 1090, possibly after her mother's death. It was Simon who built the motte-and-bailey castle at the other end of the village before his own death around the year 1111.

   Maud then married Prince David of Scotland, who became King of that nation in 1124. For decades, the manor of Fotheringhay belonged to the Scottish Crown before being confiscated by King John, bringing it into the hands of the English Crown. It went through a series of short-lived custodians before, in 1377, Edward III granted it to one of his sons: Edmund of Langley, who subsequently became the 1st Duke of York. Edmund made the manor his principal seat, and thus began the historic connection between Fotheringhay and the Yorkist line. 

Edmund of Langley

  Edmund was more interested in restoring the old Norman castle than rebuilding the village church, which at that time would have been a humbler edifice than the one that now stands. He did, however, lay the groundwork for establishing a college of priests, probably based at the castle's chapel, and it was his son and heir, Edward, who took up this challenge after Edmund died in 1402. He was buried not at Fotheringhay but at his birthplace, Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, where his tomb in the parish church - moved from a nearby Priory after the Dissolution of the Monasteries - was visited by Eldest and I a few years ago.

Edward, 2nd Duke of York

  The 2nd Duke, Edward, decided to continue with his father's plans to create a college of priests but, instead of basing it at the castle, he felt that the new college would serve better if it were part of the parish church. Under his orders, the church was extended and the college, directly adjacent, began to take shape. These works were not entirely finished when the fateful year of 1415 occurred.

  This was the year that Henry V decided to invade France. Edward and his younger brother, Richard Earl of Cambridge, were both high-ranking noblemen in the King's army, but they only got as far as Southampton before a plot against the King was uncovered.

  The Southampton Plot, as it became known, was intended to depose King Henry in favour of the Earl of March, from the Mortimer family of Wigmore in the Welsh Marches. The key conspirators were Earl Richard, Baron Scrope and a knight named Thomas Grey. In Shakespeare's 'Henry V', the disgusted King commands, "Get you therefore hence, poor miserable wretches, to your death", and the conspirators did just that.  All three were beheaded.

  Despite his brother's treachery, the Duke of York was not implicated in the plot and remained a leading member of King Henry's retinue as it romped around France, besieging Harfleur and the like. When battle was met with the French near the village of Azincourt (known in English as Agincourt), the Duke dashed in to protect the King from an attack by the Duke of Alençon, and unfortunately managed to get himself killed. Some accounts have him falling, unable to rise again due to the weight of his armour, and being suffocated. He was the highest ranking English nobleman to perish in the battle, which ended in a resounding and famous victory for England.

  The Duke's body was returned to England, where he became the first of his family to be buried in the newly restored church.

  His heir was his nephew Richard (the son of the disgraced Earl of Cambridge), three years old and now the third Duke of York. Not only was he descended from royalty through his father, but his mother, Anne Mortimer, was descended from Lionel of Clarence, yet another son of Edward III, which gave him a powerful claim to the throne that rivalled - if not surpassed - the ruling Lancastrian line. At this early point, however, it was not yet an issue.

The interior of Fotheringhay Church

  Richard was made the ward of the Earl of Westmorland and went on to marry the Earl's daughter, Cecily Neville. Married and in control of his estates, Richard continued the building work at Fotheringhay's church that had been started by his illustrious uncle, the contract of which has survived and dates to 1434. This work, when completed, doubled the size of the church and added the collegiate buildings. Four of Richard and Cecily's children, dying young, were buried at Fotheringhay, although the gravesites of Henry, Thomas, William and Ursula are no longer known.

  The Duke 'rose' high in royal service under Henry VI, becoming Lieutenant of Ireland, but trouble was looming. Henry VI's Queen, Margaret of Anjou, had a powerful circle of supporters that did not include Richard of York, and power struggles emerged, not helped when the King began to fail mentally and suffer from prolonged catatonic states. The hostility between these York and Lancaster factions eventually boiled over into an aristocratic war, during which Richard unexpectedly declared his intention to wear the Crown in place of his enfeebled cousin.

 

Richard of York, window in Ludlow Church

  The Yorkists suffered a major setback at the end of 1460 when the Duke and his second son, Edmund Earl of Rutland, were killed at the Battle of Wakefield. The vengeful Queen had their heads removed and perched on Micklegate Bar in York, the Duke's head wearing a paper crown to mock his regal ambitions.

  Unfortunately for the gloating Queen, the late Duke had other sons, of whom the eldest, Edward Earl of March, was to prove a formidable warrior. With assistance from his Neville cousin, who has come down to us through history with the title 'Warwick The Kingmaker', the Yorkists struck back a few months later at the Battle of Towton, where the Lancastrians were crushed. Henry VI and his family fled into Scottish exile, and the young Earl of March was crowned Edward IV, first of the Yorkist kings. The heads of his father and brother were removed from Micklegate Bar, to be replaced by those of some unfortunate Lancastrian nobles.

Micklegate Bar, York

  For the first time in several generations, Fotheringhay was in royal hands. In 1476, the church hosted one of its most historic ceremonies when King Edward had the bodies of his father and brother moved from their modest graves in Pontefract and reburied in the church quire, near their ancestor the 2nd Duke. The fifteen years it took for this elaborate re-burial to take place may represent the time it took to complete the building of the collegiate church. A herald named Thomas Whiting recorded the event:

The bodies of York and Rutland begin their journey to Fotheringhay.

  'On the 24th July, the bodies were exhumed, that of the Duke garbed in an ermine furred mantle and cap of maintenance, covered with a cloth of gold lay in state on a hearse blazing with candles, guarded by an angel of silver, bearing a crown of gold as a reminder that by right the Duke had been King. On the journey, Richard Duke of Gloucester  [the late Duke's youngest son] with other Lords and officers at arms, all dressed in mourning, followed the funeral chariot, drawn by six horses, with trappings of black, charged with the arms of France and England and preceded by a knight bearing the banner of the ducal arms. Each night they rested - Doncaster, Blyth, Tuxford le Clay, Newark, Grantham, Stamford and finally Fotheringhay Church was reached on 29 July, where members of the college and other ecclesiastics went forth to meet the cortege. At the entrance to the churchyard, King Edward IV waited, together with the Duke of Clarence, the Marquis of Dorset, Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings and other noblemen**. Upon the arrival the King made obeisance to the body right humbly and put his hand on the body and kissed it, crying all the time.

  The procession moved into the church where two hearses were waiting, one in the choir for the body of the Duke and the other in the Lady Chapel for that of the Earl, and after the King had retired to his closet and the princes and officers of arms had stationed themselves around the hearse, masses were sung and the King's chamberlain offered for him seven pieces of cloth of gold which were laid in a cross on the body. The next day three masses were sung, the Bishop of Lincoln preached a very noble sermon and offerings were made by the Duke of Gloucester and the other lords. There were presented the Duke of York's coat of arms, his shield, his sword, his helmet and his courser on which rode Lord Ferrers in full armour, holding in his hand an axe reversed. When the funeral was over, the people were admitted into the church and it is said that before the coffins were placed in the vault which had been built under the Chancel,  five thousand people came to receive the alms, while four times that number partook of the dinner, served partly in the castle and partly in the King's tents and pavilions. The menu included capons, cygnets, herons, rabbits and so many good things that the bills for it amounted to more than three hundred pounds.'

  This cost of this elaborate funeral was actually higher than the cost of building the collegiate church in the first place!

  It is a curious irony of history that the late Duke's youngest son, Richard of Gloucester, played such a prominent role in the procession, as it foreshadowed his own destiny. The father had died in a battle, his body mutilated, his remains buried in a modest grave. He was later exhumed and reburied with much ceremony. The son, as Richard III, in a series of events occurring over 530 years, had the same happen to him***.

Window in the church's Richard III chapel, displaying Yorkist symbols

  Fotheringhay was more meaningful to Richard of Gloucester than simply the burial place of his father, brother and great-uncle. A short distance from the church, the castle  where the post-funeral gathering had taken place, was the spot where he had been born twenty-four years previously. Also born here were three of his siblings - William of York, who died young, Anne Duchess of Exeter and Margaret Duchess of Burgundy.

  The final member of the York dynasty to be buried at the church was the so-called 'Rose of Raby', Cecily Neville, Dowager Duchess of York and the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. She outlived all her sons and was buried at Fotheringhay, alongside her husband and her five infant children, in 1495. In her will she bequeathed to the College: a square canopy, crymson cloth of gold, a chasuble, and two tunicles, and three copes of blue velvet, bordered, with three albs, three mass books, three grails and seven processioners.****

Cecily, Duchess of York, last of the family to be interred at Fotheringhay.

  When I step into the church, I find that I have it to myself. The interior of the building is bright, airy and spacious, despite being reduced to its pre-Yorkist size following the destruction of the collegiate additions during the Reformation, over half a century after Cecily's internment. The first thing I notice is the lion. It sits on the wall to the right as one enters the church, and apparently originated at the castle. At some time it was used as a decoration at a pub called The Lamb in the town of Oundle, a few miles to the south, but was donated to the church in 1976, where it was placed in the porch in 1995.

The lion, originally from the castle, now resides in the church porch.

The interior of the church today has many interesting features, such as a pulpit donated by Edward IV, a window in a chapel displaying an array of Yorkist symbols, and some impressive fan vaulting on the ceiling below the octagonal tower. There is a fifteenth century font, its cover created from two carved misericord seats. The organ is modern, dating from the year 2000.

  These features frequently display one of the enduring symbols of the York dynasty, the 'Falcon and Fetterlock'. It had originated as a badge of Edmund, the 1st Duke of York, and had been adopted by his descendants.

  Symbolically, the Falcon represents the single-minded pursuit of a goal, drawn from the bird's hunting prowess. The Fetterlock - a form of shackle -  is a little more vague, and might denote duty. It is notable that while Edmund the 1st Duke had his fetterlock closed, his grandson Richard the 3rd Duke had his open.

The Falcon and (open) Fetterlock in the church's fan vaulting.

The pulpit was gifted by Edward IV

The Tudor period saw major changes occuring at the church. The Reformation which took place in the late 1540's saw the church's extension and the collegiate buildings to the south fall into disuse. Elizabeth I visited in 1566 and was dismayed to observe the ruination of the collegiate choir, in which the tombs of her Yorkist ancestors were standing neglected and decaying. She ordered new tombs to be constructed, and they stand today in the remaining, western part of the church. The four young York children were not moved; presumably they rest under the churchyard, where the collegiate choir once stood. 

 Elizabeth also had a new bridge built over the Nene, using masonry from the destroyed collegiate buildings.

The Elizabethan bridge, replacing an earlier crossing, built with church masonry

The tomb of the 2nd Duke of York, hero of Agincourt

The tomb of the second Duke, his Duchess and his son Edmund.

  The York tombs are very similar in design, a central coat of arms embraced above and below by the Falcon and Fetterlock symbol. Architecturally, the York tombs are a fine example of changing aesthetic trends. Being Elizabethan structures, they are constructed in the neo-Classical style that was ushered in with the Renaissance, while the Church around them corresponds to the Gothic Perpendicular style that was prevalent in the medieval period.

The exterior of the church shows the scars of the Reformation. The length of the building was halved when the eastern collegiate end was dismantled, hence the disproportion between the building and its tower. The eastern wall displays the scars where the adjoining collegiate church was removed.   

The eastern exterior, showing where the collegiate church was once attached.

  Above the flying buttresses of the north wall can be spotted a collection of gargoyles. Contemporary with the medieval building, they represent the architect William Horwood, his dog Blaster, a Green Man (popular pagan motif found on many ecclesiastical buildings), Cecily Duchess of York and her husband, Richard the 3rd Duke.

A not particularly flattering gargoyle of Cecily Duchess of York

  In the field to the south, forming a barrier between the church and the River Nene, can be seen the earthworks that conceal the foundations of the collegiate buildings that disappeared after the Protestant Reformation. One speculates that they may have been prone to flooding.

Discoloration of grass in the south field, on the site of the collegiate buildings' quadrangle.
(c) petbells.org.uk

  Time to move on, to the eastern part of the village, where the remains of Fotheringhay Castle rest concealed behind a cluster of old buildings, now with an agricultural purpose but once a couple of hostelries, (the Old Inn and the New Inn) that catered for visitors to the castle.

New Inn, dating to the 1460's, now Garden Farm. The arch is known as the Queen Of Scots archway. The photo dates from 1889.

  Stripped of all its medieval additions, the castle has reverted to its basic motte-and-bailey layout as created by Simon de Senlis in Norman times. Approaching from the farm track, the visitor sees a relatively small mound, pitted on its crown and benettled on its northern incline. It overlooks the small and now austere bailey. LIDAR images have revealed earthworks to the east, showing the extent of the castle before its downfall.

The motte at Fotheringhay, now a grassy mound...

...and an artists impression of the good old days

  I clamber up the side of the mound to stand on a piece of ground, pitted with rabbit scrapes and strewn with patchy, wiry grass. Nothing remains of the small Keep which once stood on this spot, and I turn to survey the meadow that is the bailey. Once upon a time this empty space was busy with buildings, including the Great Hall.

  Such an innocuous patch of grass, its very ordinariness concealing the historic events that took place here. This is where Richard III, one of our most notorious monarchs was born...

  ...and where another notorious monarch, Mary Queen Of Scots, was separated from her head.

The bailey as seen from the motte. The space where Richard III was born in 1452, and where Mary Queen Of Scots died in 1587.

   We know that William Shakespeare's reading of Richard III was Elizabethan propaganda, a way of villainizing the King in order to justify his overthrow and death due to the usurping actions of Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry VII, first of the Tudor monarchs. He was not born "cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time into this breathing world". He had scoliosis, a curve on his spine, which would have been apparent, but this does not seem to have been much of a disability - contrarily, Richard grew to be a seasoned soldier and a courageous warrior who fought victoriously alongside his brother Edward IV at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. Richard's birth, as the umpteenth son of Richard Duke of York, was relatively unremarkable and he spent much of his youth fostered out to his cousin Warwick The Kingmaker at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire.

  The death of Mary Queen Of Scots, however, was not only notable but monumental.

Mary Queen Of Scots at Fotheringhay, by John Duncan
(C) Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery

  Mary had fled Scotland in 1568 after being forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son James. Arriving in England as a fugitive, the help she desired from her cousin Elizabeth I, whom she had never and would never meet, was not forthcoming. She spent the next two decades under house arrest, being moved between various castles and noble houses. As a Catholic and Elizabeth's heir, she posed a threat to her English cousin's throne and, eventually, was implicated in the Babington Plot - the last of various failed plots to replace the Protestant Elizabeth with her Catholic cousin.

  Mary was arrested for treason  and escorted to Fotheringhay Castle, where her trial was to take place. 

Plan of the castle at the time of Mary

A LIDAR map of the castle, 

 

  Mary arrived at the castle in September 1586, and was put on trial the following month. The legal proceedings took place in the Great Hall, her jury a team of 36 noblemen. A floor plan for the trial survives:

Floor plan of Mary's trial. Note Mary's chair facing 'ye cloth of state with a chayr for ye Q of England', representing the absent Elizabeth.

  Mary was sentenced to death on the 25th October, which was already a date connected with the manor - the 2nd Duke of York, the Agincourt martyr who became the first of his line to be buried at Fotheringhay, had died on that date a hundred and seventyone years previously.

A map of the village from 1640, with the castle in its final years and the church, for some reason, facing the wrong direction. The map does, however, display how those two buildings dominated the settlement.

  Mary's sentence was not carried out immediately, as Elizabeth was loathe to execute a fellow Queen and was understandably concerned about the reaction from the Scots and the Catholic powers of Europe. However, Elizabeth finally relented to the pressure from her advisors and signed her cousin's death warrant on 3rd February 1587, five days before it was carried out.

The death warrant of Mary Queen Of Scots

  Mary met her end with dignified resolution,  and the scene of her notorious execution is replete in all media with potent images of her wig coming away from her severed head, three strokes of the axe, a small dog hiding in her skirts, and the possible Catholic symbolism of her attire. Her body was kept at Fotheringhay for several months (presumably buried in the Castle chapel) before, in the dead of night and with no ceremony, she was transported down to River Nene to Peterborough, where she was quietly buried in the Cathedral.

  Her son, James VI of Scotland, eventually became James I of England. He had his mother moved from Peterborough to Westminster Abbey, where he interred her close to her cousin and nemesis Elizabeth. He provided impressive tombs for both, but Mary's effigy is the larger.

A plaque remembers the York children born at Fotheringhay

 From the motte, I can see a curiosity on the edge of the bailey, close to the river: a solid lump of old masonry, surrounded by a protective fence, and I descend from the mound and cross the grass for a closer look. It is the only surviving remnant of the Keep, having tumbled down to its present position centuries ago, although it was only turned the right way up in 1911.

The surviving section of masonry.

  It survives today as a forlorn remnant, and the railings around it seem symbolic: erected to protect, they also keep it prisoner within its small enclosure, reflecting the invisible political railings that imprisoned the Queen Of Scots. 

  The end of the Tudor period meant the end of Fotheringhay Castle. Clearly, the new Stuart monarch, James I of England and VI of Scotland, had no inclination to use or maintain the building in which his mother had ended her days. James came to the throne in 1603, and by the end of his reign the Castle buildings had been almost completely broken up, their materials and contents dispersed, the motte-and-bailey remaining as ancient reminders of the fleeting vanity of man. As the guide book in the church states, 'after some 450 years of national importance, Fotheringhay was reduced to the status of a small village.'

  I return to the mound for one last overview before I depart, striding it not like a colossus but like a slightly gawky tourist, hunching slightly as he scrambles to the small circular plateau.

  The breeze, humming as it arrives across farmed fields that were once marshland and the dark recesses of Rockingham Forest, traces the contours of my face and draws a tear from my eye. Can one strain to hear the voices in this embracing zephyr, the angry shrieks of newborn royal children, the gasp from noble onlookers as an axe falls upon a regal neck, the chanting of collegiate priests, 'the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt'? 

  Or are my ears playing up again?

  Across rooftops and through arboreal canopies, I see the lantern on the church tower. The red kites have gone, and the only predator bird now visible in the landscape is adorned in gilded paint, dancing to the direction of the wind, the vane atop the lantern.

  The falcon and its fetterlock, defiant guardian of  history, surviving the rise and the fall, a reminder of the impermanence of nobility and the destructive power of vanity. What has passed, is yet recalled.

The vane during regilding.

*  a black Ford Fiesta called Amy.

** it struck me as rather indicative of those violent times that only one of the four noblemen in this sentence died of natural causes - the Marquess of Dorset, stepson of Edward IV. Of the others, Clarence was executed by being drowned in wine, while Rivers and Hastings were summarily beheaded by Richard III (who died violently in battle, the last English king to do so).

***the last journey of Richard III, eyewitnessed by Team Vulpine in 2015, was the subject of my article 'The Return Of The King'.

****chasuble, tunicle, alb... all vestments worn by the clergy. Cecily's will seems to have used the college as a clothes bank.

  

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

 All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

- Tolkein

Prince Vulpine and Loki, Walking the Tolkein Trail  (c)Emily Traill

In the years surrounding the turn of the Millenium, when most of Team Vulpine were still children, we spent quite a lot of time exploring the area between the North and South Downs known as The Weald. There was plenty for us to explore in this region of Sussex (and a bit of Kent), with castles, abbeys, Roman remains, stately homes and hillfigures around every corner. 

   One of the main routes through the area is the A21, heading south from London and terminating at Hastings. At one point it passes through the village of Hurst Green, where one can turn west and make for Rudyard Kipling's home at Batemans, now run by the National Trust.  Other NT sites not too far away are the picturesque Scotney Castle and the strikingly photogenic Bodiam Castle, and the remains of Bayham Old Abbey lie to the Northwest. The village lies at the heart of the High Weald NL (National Landscape).

   But that was yesteryear. Now, I find myself residing close to another NL, the Forest of Bowland, and in the emerald scenery of the Ribble Valley, and starting an exploration from a village called... Hurst Green.

Hurst Green

   My previous article also covered some of the Ribble Valley, as well as parts of Ribblesdale, farther north in the magnificent Yorkshire Dales. It was written almost five years ago, while Eldest and I were engaged upon a short visit to Middle, who had recently moved to the area. Shortly after this visit, the first of the Coronavirus lockdowns kicked in and I took a sabbatical from writing. It lasted longer than I expected, and much has changed in that time. Team Vulpine split apart geographically, only to converge again in the Northwest of England, and we all now live in the County Palatine of Lancashire.

   There is much to see in this magnificent part of the world, and when it came to break my writing hiatus it was difficult to know where to start. The Peaks, the Dales and the Lakes can all be reached within an hour of my new home, and I am gradually becoming familiar with them... but the Ribble Valley is the closest, so it makes sense to start there.

   Hurst Green, the Lancashire version, was a hamlet back in medieval times. It owes its growth to the Shireburn family, local Catholic gentry, and more specifically to the manor house built outside the settlement by Richard Shireburn in 1537, replacing earlier buildings on the site. Stonyhurst Hall, as it was called, was further enlarged in the early 1700's by Richard's descendant Nicholas Shireburn. The main branch of the family died out toward the end of that century, and the property was inherited by a relative through marriage, Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle in Dorset. As avowedly Catholic as his predecessors, Weld donated the Hall to the English Academy in France, which had moved from St Omer through Bruges and finally to Liege before the hostile fervour of the French Revolution made their presence in France unviable. A contingent of Jesuit priests and displaced pupils arrived here in 1794, and the Hall became Stonyhurst College. Its success through to the present day guaranteed the growth of the nearby hamlet into a thriving village.

 Perhaps the College's most notable alumnus is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (below), who boarded here between 1868 (when he was nine years old) to 1875. His fellow pupils included Patrick Sherlock and the Moriarty brothers, John and Michael.

Other notable alumni include Vyvyan Holland, son of Oscar Wilde, the Poet Laureate Alfred Austin and the actor Colin Clive, famous for his declaration "It's alive!" in his role of Dr Frankenstein in the classic 1931 movie. A teacher at the College was the Irish poet Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Hurst Green is also known for the circular footpath that starts and terminates in the village, the 6.7 mile country trek called the Tolkein Trail. To be fair, it's not the only one. Another exists in Birmingham, where the future author spent his childhood, but as I have never managed to visit Birmingham, there is nothing more I can say about it. The more rural version, however, is a short drive away from my current residence. What, one might ask, does this attractive area of the Ribble Valley have to do with the Oxford professor and renowned fantasy author, J R R Tolkein? Read on...

The Trail begins at the village's prominent war memorial, and I stroll along a quiet street called Warren Fold before entering a field with the turrets of the College visible ahead. Across a couple of fields, the edge of the College itself is reached, and the Trail passes an Observatory and a couple of pavilions. The former was completed in 1868 and the latter in the late 17th century, when they were part of a walled garden.

The Observatory

Pavilions

Swinging left, I now go through Hall Barn Farm, passing its medieval barn and down its driveway to the hamlet of Woodfields, admiring a broad view that culminates with the ever impressive Pendle Hill.

Woodfields is where the shade of Tolkein looms the most. He was a visitor to Stonyhurst in the 1940's when his son John trained here to be a priest, and again in the 60's when another son, Michael, was a teacher here. On the later occasion Tolkein stayed at Michael's home at Woodfields. It is said that Tolkein drew inspiration from the area when he was writing about 'The Shire' in his Middle-Earth novels and it is certainly easy to believe, with the Shireburn Arms pub highly visible in Hurst Green and a road called Shire Lane in the vicinity. The connections are probably exaggerated, not least because he does not appear to have visited the area prior to writing 'The Hobbit',  but it's a nice story and did, after all, inspire the bracing country walk which I am enjoying.

Medieval barn

View of Pendle Hill from Hall Barn Farm

Strolling through Woodfields and leaving the hamlet behind, I cross a field, keeping Over Hacking Wood on my left and then descending a set of steps through the woods, ambling across a small and rustic bridge, and finding myself staring down a wooded slope at the River Hodder. This waterway, rising several miles away in the Forest of Bowland, was once a border between Lancashire and Yorkshire, before the big re-ordering of the counties in 1974.

River Hodder

        

The path climbs a steep and murky incline, the river dropping below me through a steep thicket on the left as a high, ancient wall rises to my right, protecting the property called Hodder Place. The path now falls towards flat, open fields used as livestock pasture, bordering the watercourse as it swings right. At this point there are remnants in the undergrowth, the remains of structures calling back to a time when the Stonyhurst pupils rowed boats along this rapid stretch of water. The wall and a proliferation of garden trees conceal Hodder Place from view until the curvature of the river is reached, when one can look back at the isolated building squatting on its prominent point.

Features near Hodder Place

 Although now converted into flats, Hodder Place was originally constructed late in the 18th century as a preparatory school for Stonyhurst, and was extended in the 19th century. The site originally held a factory. It was the first home for Conan Doyle when he arrived on September 15th, 1868, at the age of nine.

Hodder Place

ACD third from left, top row, shortly after starting at Stonyhurst

The trail now follows a level track between the verdant floodplain and the relentless flow of the Hodder. A bridge is reached, the New Lower Hodder Bridge, carrying the country road B6243 between the villages of Great Mitton and Hurst Green. The ungainly name of the bridge is to differentiate it from its close neighbour Old Lower Hodder Bridge, which thankfully is better known by the name Cromwell's Bridge.

Cromwell's Bridge

New Lower Hodder Bridge

 

The cobbled surface of Cromwell's Bridge

The younger bridge was constructed in the early 1800's, but the older was built in 1562, commissioned by Richard Shireburn and neighbouring landowners, and constructed by stonemason Richard Crossley for £70 (about £27,780 in today's money). It is a packhorse bridge, its parapets kept low so as not to snag the packs of the beasts of burden using it.

The connection with Oliver Cromwell lies with the events leading up to the Battle of Preston in August 1648. On the 16th, the future Lord Protector and his 8-9,000-strong New Model Army arrived at the river crossing after marching from Skipton via Gisburn, aiming to cut off the Royalist army at Preston. In a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Lenthall, Cromwell scribbled: "...it was resolved that we should march over the bridge; which accordingly we did; and that night quartered the whole Army in the field by Stonyhurst Hall being Mr Sherburn's house...".

Cromwell went on to win the Battle of Preston, and five months later his nemesis Charles the First was beheaded for treason. One can only wonder at how long it took to get thousands of men and beasts across the Hodder, and considering that the bridge stood on a natural fording point, presumably most just waded through.

The trail continues, along the road to Hurst Green for a while before diverting across fields to Winkley Hall Farm, which has buildings dating back to the C17th, and centuries before that was part of an estate owned by the Knights Hospitaller. In the late 1310's, it was in the possession of John de Winkley, who backed the wrong horse when he supported the rebellion of Thomas Earl of Lancaster against his cousin Edward II. The Earl was captured following the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, and subsequently beheaded at Pontefract. John de Winkley, presumably to his great relief, was pardoned.

The Winkley Oak

Winkley Hall Farm

Beyond the Farm, we encounter the Winkley Oak which, according to experts from Kew, is at least 300 years old and boasts an impressive bole at its base. At this point the trail becomes riverside again, and also at this point we say goodbye to the Hodder as it crashes into its mother watercourse, the river after which the whole Valley is named, the irrepressible Ribble. Here, herons stalk the confluence, kingfishers dart through the foliage on the far bank, and a cheeky weasel wriggles across the path in front of me. I stroll past the eye-catching Winkley Oak and continue along the riverbank, open fields now to my right.

Confluence of the Hodder (right) and the Ribble (centre)

Structure in the river. Fish trap?

After a few minutes, a second aquatic junction is encountered, and this time it is the Lancashire Calder joining its waters to the Ribble. Sand martins swoop and soar, their nests visible in the raised riverbank near the confluence.

Sand martin nests near the Ribble/Calder confluence.

In the fields to the right are a couple of low mounds, only fairly recently identified as man-made, and while they are yet to be archaeologically investigated they appear to be Bronze Age barrows, making them the oldest visible relics in a landscape already steeped in antiquity.  Beyond them, on a rising and partially wooded slope close to farm buikdings, can be seen an old stone Cross (known as the Cross Gill Cross, named after Cross Gill Farm, which was named after the Cross Gill, which was named after the Cross), the base of which dates to early Christian times. 

Beyond the confluence, on the opposite bank, stands Hacking Hall. It was the ancestral home of the de Hacking family from about the year 1200, passing in later years, through marriage, to the Shuttleworth family and later the Walmsleys. A ferry used to operate here, joining the communities of Dinckley and Hurst Green, but was discontinued in the early C20th. It seems to have been set up by the Shireburns in the C16th to get their parishioners to Great Mitton church on the other side of the river. After a period of decline, the ferry service was discontinued in 1955. One of the ferries survived, and is kept in storage at Clitheroe Castle Museum a few miles away. Naturally, it has been suggested that this crossing - which, to be fair, would have been known to Tolkein - provided the inspiration for the Buckleberry Ferry in his Middle-Earth classics.

The confluence of Calder and Ribble

Hacking Hall

The Hacking Ferry in action

Past the confluence, the river kinks right and, after about half a mile, it resumes a western course and passes what appears from a distance to be a bridge, but is in fact a craftily disguised aqueduct. What looks like a structure for pedestrians turns out to be a rather splendid conduit for a water pipe.

Aqueduct

The trail veers away from the Ribble soon after we pass the aqueduct, and after a steep but short climb through a watery thicket, it's just a matter of strolling across a couple of sheep-riddled fields before once more we are in Hurst Green, and the circular Tolkein Trail is complete.

No hobbits, just Stonyhurst schoolkids. No Ringwraiths, just roe deer if you're lucky, and you'd be hard-pressed to compare sand martins with fell beasts. Perhaps the weasel that slunk across my path has a parallel in Gollum.

Even without the Tolkein connection, the countryside around Hurst Green, on the border of the Ribble Valley with the Forest of Bowland, has a scrappy historic energy and a broad variety of countryside to wander, from the wild garlic undergrowth approaching the Hodder, to farms with the shades of medieval traitors haunting the bowers, and the constant gurgling of running water in a land where the New Model Army once noisily traversed.

It's good for both legs and imagination to be wandering again.