Printed June 2004
Always wear appropriate footwear and take
care when walking in the town or countryside.
No responsibility is accepted by the authors of
this leaflet for the state or condition from time
to time of the paths comprised in these walks.
NORTH WALTHAM
Parish Council
© Hampshire County Council 2004
This leaflet was produced with the support of
Protect wildlife, plants and trees
Hampshire County Council
information line 0800 028 0888
www.hants.gov.uk/countryside
National travel line 0870 608 2608
Help keep all water clean
Take your litter home
To WINCHESTER
A303
Axford
Popham
8
North
Waltham
Keep to public paths across farmland
Dummer
B3 0 4 6
Leave livestock, and machinery alone
3
Use gates and stiles to cross fences,
hedges and walls
7
Keep your dogs under close control
Steventon
Fasten all gates
Overton
Guard against all risk of fire
Deane
B3051
Enjoy the countryside and
respect its life and work
00
B34
M3
Oakley
3
A3
JUBILEE HERITAGE TRAIL
BASINGSTOKE
North
Oakley
Wootton
St Lawrence
NORTH
WALTHAM
The Heritage Trail leads you on the lanes
around the conservation area of North
Waltham. Starting from the Jubilee Display
Board in the Village Trust car park, it’s about
a mile and takes 1-2 hours to complete.
It commemorates 50 years of village effort
to convert Cuckoo Meadow, the field
generously given to the village by William
Rathbone Senior in September 1953, into
our recreation centre. The sports field,
children’s play area, tennis courts and
pavilion have all been developed by villagers,
with help from Hampshire County Council
and Basingstoke and Deane Borough
Corough Council.The Trail was designed by
children from North Waltham CP School,
led by local archivist and teacher, Richard
Tanner, and published by Hampshire County
Council through grants from Awards for All
and Local Heritage Initiative.
Cuckoo Meadow is our recreation ground,
given to North Waltham when William Rathbone
sold up his estate in 1953. All the facilities –
sports field, pavilion, play area and tennis courts
– have been created over these 50 years, so this
is a memorial to their efforts.
FOLLOW THE COUNTRY CODE
The Old Post House across the Pond
Photography by Richard Tanner
Cartography by Vic Bates
Take special care on country roads
A3
Starting at Cuckoo Meadow
walk anti - clockwise
St Michael’s Church
Make no unnecessary noise
M3
JUBILEE HERITAGE TRAIL
St Michael’s Church was rebuilt in the 1860s
and features all elements of the Gothic transition.
The northern arcade (1200) survived the church’s
mid 19c collapse, and the windows show the
transition from lancet through decorated to
perpendicular styple. A splendid 14c piscina is
matched by a 15c font, often used in this reviving
village.
North Waltham School 1905
The old yew trees are all we have left of the
manor that stood here, its farm buildings replaced
by the school in 1873. This early Board School,
established by the Blackleys, a far-sighted rector
and his German wife, was an all-age school for
80 years. Now a primary school 150 strong, it
serves the neighbouring villages too in its modern
classrooms behind the Decorated Gothic Revival
hall with the attached headteacher’s house
converted to offices.
The whole school 1894
St Michael’s Church
The church choir 1906
Printed June 2004
Always wear appropriate footwear and take
care when walking in the town or countryside.
No responsibility is accepted by the authors of
this leaflet for the state or condition from time
to time of the paths comprised in these walks.
NORTH WALTHAM
Parish Council
© Hampshire County Council 2004
Protect wildlife, plants and trees
Hampshire County Council
information line 0800 028 0888
www.hants.gov.uk/countryside
National travel line 0870 608 2608
Take special care on country roads
Photography by Richard Tanner
Cartography by Vic Bates
Make no unnecessary noise
This leaflet was produced with the support of
The Old Post House across the Pond
To WINCHESTER
M3
A3
Axford
Popham
3
A303
8
Dummer
B3046
Overton
M3
3
A3
Oakley
JUBILEE HERITAGE TRAIL
B3051
BASINGSTOKE
NORTH
WALTHAM
Cuckoo Meadow is our recreation ground,
given to North Waltham when William Rathbone
sold up his estate in 1953. All the facilities –
sports field, pavilion, play area and tennis courts
– have been created over these 50 years, so this
is a memorial to their efforts.
The Heritage Trail leads you on the lanes
around the conservation area of North
Waltham. Starting from the Jubilee Display
Board in the Village Trust car park, it’s about
a mile and takes 1-2 hours to complete.
It commemorates 50 years of village effort
to convert Cuckoo Meadow, the field
generously given to the village by William
Rathbone Senior in September 1953, into
our recreation centre. The sports field,
children’s play area, tennis courts and
pavilion have all been developed by villagers,
with help from Hampshire County Council
and Basingstoke and Deane Borough
Corough Council.The Trail was designed by
children from North Waltham CP School,
led by local archivist and teacher, Richard
Tanner, and published by Hampshire County
Council through grants from Awards for All
and Local Heritage Initiative.
Starting at Cuckoo Meadow
walk anti - clockwise
JUBILEE HERITAGE TRAIL
St Michael’s Church
Help keep all water clean
Take your litter home
Leave livestock, and machinery alone
Use gates and stiles to cross fences,
hedges and walls
North
Waltham
Keep to public paths across farmland
7
Keep your dogs under close control
Steventon
Fasten all gates
Guard against all risk of fire
00
B34
Deane
Enjoy the countryside and
respect its life and work
FOLLOW THE COUNTRY CODE
Wootton
St Lawrence
North
Oakley
St Michael’s Church was rebuilt in the 1860s
and features all elements of the Gothic transition.
The northern arcade (1200) survived the church’s
mid 19c collapse, and the windows show the
transition from lancet through decorated to
perpendicular styple. A splendid 14c piscina is
matched by a 15c font, often used in this reviving
village.
North Waltham School 1905
The old yew trees are all we have left of the
manor that stood here, its farm buildings replaced
by the school in 1873. This early Board School,
established by the Blackleys, a far-sighted rector
and his German wife, was an all-age school for
80 years. Now a primary school 150 strong, it
serves the neighbouring villages too in its modern
classrooms behind the Decorated Gothic Revival
hall with the attached headteacher’s house
converted to offices.
St Michael’s Church
The church choir 1906
The whole school 1894
Maidenthorne Lane continues onto the A30,
the Roman road to Exeter, where a small
Romano-British town has been located near
the Wheatsheaf Hotel. But we’re returning to
Chapel Street, where the 1822 brick-and-flint
Hook and Hatchet stands on the corner.
Once a village alehouse, its brewery lay further
along on the Chapel site. One of the village’s
3 public wells stands here, opposite Chalk
Cottage, a cob house thatched with longstraw. New houses line the lane where rows
of poor thatched terraces stood, housing
labourer supporters of the Chapel, erected
in 1864 but now closed. The minister’s house
behind survived, together with Holly and Mary
Lane Cottages, higher and drier perhaps, and
the Old School House beyond the top
entrance to Cuckoo Meadow.
Coldharbour was built in the 1930s to rehouse
labourers from their condemned cottages. Those
that survived this mid 20c attack have been
restored, and range from the bijou – 1 Yew Tree
Cottages was once a pair, each housing a family
– through the modest two-bay 16c Camellia
Cottage to the grand Walnut Cottage. This
17c lobby house demonstrates the change from
communal living in hall houses to the privacy
made possible by chimneys. Both floors are
wonderfully timbered, the brick extension added
in the 18c.
St Michael’s Close (1970s) stands on glebe
land, the pre-Victorian farm’s foundations lying
under Nos 1&3. The rectory, now Boundary
House, moved uphill to house the rector in a
style to match the other two wealthy landowners
of North Waltham in 1841.
Blake Cottage
Around the Green can be seen the houses of
villagers from medieval times. The humbler
Thatchings looks up to the 1750s brick-andflint Grayshott set in its attractive garden, flanked
by little Dove Cottage and much older Blake
Cottage. Older still than its 1695 date, which
tells us when the chimney was inserted and the
fancy brickwork added, this is a three-bay timberframed farmhouse from the early 17c.
It faced a forge for a hundred years until tractors
and trucks replaced horses, and the bus shelter
was built to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s
coronation in 1953. Mid 19c terraced cottages
look across the Pond to the picturesque Old
Post House, derelict in 1839 but repaired to
serve as the village shop for most of last century.
Yew Tree Cottages
Opposite is Yew Tree House, surely older than
its 1854 date, and next door, Rose Cottage,
North Waltham’s oldest. A rare cruck-built, twobay hall house, this must have been a fine yeoman’s
house to have survived from 1460, unlike the
hovels of ordinary villagers in medieval times.
Chapel Street 1905
As it’s hard to imagine large families living in
tiny cottages, so it’s hard to see how 70 children
piled into this unlit barn in the 1830s. Moved
from the rectory barn, the school on Corndell
lasted 40 years until the new one was opened
in 1873.
Returning there, past Church Farm, enlarged
around its Regency style centre, gives views
across the valley draining down through
Steventon, Deane and Ashe to the source of
the River Test. Jane Austen’s Walk leads west
across this valley and up through the trees on
the horizon to Steventon Church, where Jane’s
father was rector, a walk she would have used
regularly to collect the family’s mail from the
Wheatsheaf.
Rose Cottage
There’s the centre bay of another 16c farmhouse
further on – Up Street – which was superseded
by the brick-and-flint one higher up, itself
downgraded to a barn when replaced after 1840
with a brick mansion – North Waltham Farm
– now sadly abandoned in the trees.
Cows in the Pond with the old barn behind 1929
The Spar shop fulfils this role now, occuping
the site of an old barn burnt down 40 years ago.
Cows used to wander out to drink from the
Pond, more ephemeral then before road drainage
and the plastic liner kept it full, the water table
being 10 metres down. A second barn stood in
the grounds of Batchelors, our most complete
medieval farmhouse.
North Waltham 1906
North Waltham Farm
To The Sun PH A30
Welcome to
North
Waltham Farm
NORTH WALTHAM
Jubilee Heritage Trail
Chapel
STREET
ET
Chalk
Cottage
Rose
Cottage
Yew Tree
House
S
CL O
E
Cuckoo
Yew Tree
Cottages
Meadow
T
E
V
N
T
OO
CK
CU
E
Pavilion
O
N
E
OS
START
Jubilee Heritage Trail
Old Post
House
Shop
R
CL
Tennis
Courts
Camellia
Cottage
OU
COLDHARB
Play
Area
Church
Farm
Walnut
Cottage
TREE
Well
L
Holly
Cottage
OO
CK
CU
Corndell
E
STR
LANE
E
CHAP
LANE
MARY
UP
Well
Mary Lane
Cottage
Old School
House
S
Erected in 1500, this splendidly beamed hall
house is crowned with a sooted roof, soot
predating the chimney inserted in 1708. The
stairway rising from the jettied hall gives insight
into communal living in medieval times. Records
of business at the farm exist from 1781 to 1824,
when the Batchelor family owned North Waltham
Manor.
Up Street
Hook and
Hatchet
Chapel
Cottage
YEW
The Pond 1906
To Oakley & Steventon
The Heritage Trail leads you on a circuit around the conservation area of North Waltham.
Starting from the Jubilee Display Board in the Village Trust car park, it’s about a mile and takes
1-2 hours to complete. It commemorates 50 years of village effort to convert Cuckoo Meadow,
the field generously given to the village by William Rathbone Senior in September 1953, into
our recreation centre. The sports field, children’s play area, tennis courts and pavilion have all
been developed by villagers, with help from Borough and County.
O
D
Blake
Cottage
us
Well
Ja
ne
A
Dove
Cottage
To Steventon
Church
School
CH
C
UR
H
RO
AD
Pond View
Thatchings
Jubilee Heritage Trail
CO
UN
T RYS
CE
UNCIL
HAM
PSH
COUN TY
CO
IIRE
VI
IDE SER
Church
Cottage
Footpath
Permissive Path
Grade II Listed Buildings
St Michael’s
Church
Buildings of Visual Interest
Parking / Telephone
P
CH
MI
ST
© Crown Copyright 2004 HCC 100019180
Reproduced from the Ordnance Survey
map with the permission of the controller
of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office
Batchelors today
CL
To Overton
E
OS
S
L’
AE
Boundary House
(Former Rectory)
Batchelors
To The Wheatsheaf & Fox PH A30 / A33
A
ten
’s W
alk
R
Grayshott
P