Elmdon

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A WALK FROM ELMDON

4.5 miles

This is a good walk, across open countryside and beside quiet woods, taking you into three parishes – Elmdon, Duddenhoe End and Chrishall. This area of Uttlesford remains largely unspoilt, extremely peaceful and full of excellent paths. You could do it in a couple of hours, but allow longer as there is much to enjoy en route. Less able ramblers should know that there are quite a few stiles on this walk, but underfoot it is an easy ramble. There are various places to park round the village – please do so considerately. Remember to take the OS map with you – Explorer 194, which gives you all the names as mentioned below.

Start at a road called Essex Hill on the south-east side of Elmdon – grid reference approximately TL 461394 on the OS map. Look for a lovely house called ‘Wilkes Barn’ – opposite this house is a concrete footpath sign to a path beside the cricket pitch, all neatly fenced off with a beech hedge on the left side. Go through a kissing gate and the path continues between fence and hedge, then between fences. Lots of meadows, ponds and oak trees round here, and in the distance a patchwork of fields and woods. Away to the left can be seen the disused Lofts Church, next to Lofts Hall, the old manor house.

Follow waymarks ahead, then a stile at the bottom to wander through a woodland glade, which brings you to a footbridge over a ditch which is the boundary of an old wood. Turn left along the woodland edge, then cross a farm track to follow a waymark ahead between hedges, veering right downhill beside a large garden. Then cross a concrete bridge over a stream to the road, beside a concrete footpath sign.

Turn right, then immediately left following a black footpath sign, into a dark woody tunnel, an avenue of horse chestnuts, with their candled cones of flowers in May, and conkers in autumn. This is a lovely uphill walk, which emerges into the open along a grassy field edge. Looking back, you can see the way just travelled, winding among the fields, very quiet and peaceful.

Then comes a road (the B1039) - turn right along the road beside a floral verge of tall buttercups, white hedge bedstraw, blue knapweed, grasses, vetchling, meadowsweet, marjoram and purple vetch. The lane passes the ‘Hamlet Church’ with its little belfry and thatched cross on the roof - go in and see, it is often open. Inside is a quiet and holy space, furnished with scrubbed white benches. Originally it was an old glebe barn, converted into a church by the squire cum parson, Rev Robert Wilkes of Lofts Hall in 1859.

Opposite the church is a little graveyard, where by the gate we read of Lt Harry Winton who joined the Suffolk Regiment and was killed in action at Ypres on 5 May 1915 aged 24 - ‘He gave his life for his country’. Nearby lies a victim of the second conflict, Lance Corporal Eddy Harvey of the Royal Engineers, killed in action aged 22 in Singapore in 1941. Here they sleep in peace, far from the horrors of war.

Go on along School Lane - presumably there was once a school here. The lane goes over a stream, then opposite Upper Pond Street farm, turn right along a bridleway which becomes a grassy field-edge path. Turn right over a wooden footbridge into a field, past a mixed hedgerow on your right. This bring you to a woodland, where you turn left along the woodland edge – this is known as Mead Bushes Wood, and you can tell it is Ancient Woodland by the ditch and bank, and the flora of bluebells – see the many worn places where animals have made tracks. Keep following the path as it bends round corners. There are lots of flowers – germander speedwell, silverweed, cowslips in spring. Then cross a wooden bridge where a waymark points ahead uphill.

Turn right along the fence, then left, until you reach a tarmac drive. Turn right on this drive, heading for Chrishall Church on the hill ahead. Here is a lovely sight in spring, a long bank of cowslips or, to use the country name, pegles – and later in summer masses of meadowsweet and marjoram.

This brings you to the road, the B1039 - turn left a few metres, cross the road and turn right over a stream on a signposted footbridge, and ahead on a wide path between crops and so up to the church at the top of the hill.

There has been a church on this eminent spot for a thousand years, and you can rest in the porch – the church is probably locked, but there are addresses where a key can be obtained. Inside can be found a notable 14th century brass of the de la Pole family, rescued from its hiding place under the sanctuary floor. There is also a huge copy of Rubens’ ‘The Adoration of the Magi’. The war memorial carries the old village names, Brand, Cranwell, Green, Pitcher. It is surmised that the name Chrishall means ‘Christ’s hall’, signifying one of the earliest places converted to Christianity. Only a few faint traces remain of the original Norman church, and most of it was rebuilt from the late 14th century, but with other additions. Over the door a notice marks the date 1869 when the church was enlarged including ‘suitable provision for the poorer inhabitants’. In the Middle Ages this church sat among the huts and cottages of its worshippers, but is now isolated from most of the village which shifted half a mile away.

From the church door, turn right and over the grass to cross a stile into a paddock and downhill to a second stile and two footbridges leading to a road beside a concrete footpath sign. This is Bury Lane - turn right up here for a while, then right along a byway called Park House Lane. This can be very muddy but it is still a lovely walk beside Park Wood, a very ancient woodland abounding with wildlife - cuckoos, jays and woodpeckers, treecreepers, tits and warblers. In summer yellowhammers and whitethroats nest in the hedges, and in winter fieldfares and redwings feed on the berries. The prints of fallow deer and foxes betray their presence. In spring sheets of bluebells and patches of primroses glow and later can be found yellow archangel, water mint, St John's Wort, wild garlic and attendant butterflies. The byway becomes a part of the Icknield Way, a prehistoric routeway. The last part is known as Canes Walk.

This emerges on Heydon Lane (called Hertford Lane on the map), where you turn right – this passes by a deserted moated site and a mysterious earthwork. Follow the road back to Elmdon where, sadly, the village pub, the Elmdon Dial (formerly the Kings Head) is no more. The building dates back to 1450 and was enlarged in 1699. The village lost its pub in 1998, but after a long campaign it was reopened a few years ago but has now closed again. Its new name came from the sundial stained glass window in the church across the way – the building is usually open and there is much of interest within. After leaving the village centre, a final walk uphill will bring you back to your starting point.

© Jacqueline Cooper 2008 - updated by Ken McDonald 2015