ROUTE DESCRIPTION - Walk 15, Hambleden and Ibstone
OS Explorer Maps required: 171
Approximate distance: 12.9 miles
Start at car park in Hambleden (SU 785866).
ANTI-CLOCKWISE
This walk follows the Chiltern Way initially (as far as Fingest). From the car park in Hambleden, turn left into the village. Pass Hambleden church on your right, and take the narrow street ahead that soon turns sharp right, passing west of the church. Take the footpath on the right that goes almost diagonally across a large cattle pasture. Continue following the path northwards through the charming Hambleden valley – it runs between garden boundaries in Pheasant’s Hill and crosses a lane or drive. It then follows a hedgerow north, switching to the left of the hedge after two fields, to reach the hamlet of Colstrope. Carry on northwards along the lane for a short distance – when it turns right, take the footpath ahead along the valley. It crosses a lane – in the next field, the map shows the right of way following the boundary to the left and going halfway round the field, but there is a clear path straight across the field. The path continues along the broad valley, with views ahead to Cobstone Mill, to reach a lane on the edge of Skirmett (SU 776898).
Turn right along the lane for a few hundred yards and then take the first footpath on the left. Follow the boundary on your left, which soon turns half-left. Just past a white bungalow on the left, turn sharp right across the field (there used to be a fence on the left here). At the next corner, leave the field and follow the path across the corner of another field to a bend in a lane, and take the track heading uphill. This becomes a path through Adam’s Wood, which you follow all the way to its termination at a T-junction of paths, where you go left. This path leaves the wood and crosses a meadow to Fingest Wood. The path goes downhill through this wood, exiting it by means of Fairfield’s Style. The path then turns left alongside the wood and then a hedge to reach a road on the edge of Fingest (SU 778912).
Turn left into the village, then turn right at a junction, passing the ancient church on your left. Follow the lane northwards for about half a mile, and then take the bridleway on the left. Follow the bridleway for about a mile, until you reach a junction (waymark post) where the bridleway goes left while a footpath continues ahead. Stay on the bridleway, almost immediately going over a crossing track, and continue through a wood to a track where you again turn left. The track soon becomes a cement drive, and leads steeply uphill to reach a road in Ibstone (SU 757928).
Turn left along the road, soon passing a turning on the right to the church. Take the footpath on the right entering a wood (opposite a gravel drive). The path bears left, descending slightly over a long distance, and then runs through an area of young trees (currently protected by plastic tubes). Continue to the left when it joins a path coming in sharply from the right. At the next path junction, take the right fork – this goes to a gate and turns left in front of it, following the edge of a wood with a wire fence on the right. On reaching a stile, the path then goes half-right across the corner of a pasture. The path continues downhill through a small wood, crosses a corner of another field, then crosses a larger field to reach Turville (SU 767912).
Turn left, then turn right in the centre of the village (immediately after passing the church). The village street soon ends, but continue ahead on the footpath. This runs between hedges then enters a pasture. Go ahead alongside the hedge on your right, then (about halfway along the hedge) take the path going downhill half-left to reach Dolesden Lane. Turn right, and at the next bend take the bridleway going left. Follow it through the woods for about a mile. Immediately before the bridleway leaves the woods, take the path going uphill to the left. When this leaves the wood, continue straight ahead across a field to reach a lane junction, where you take the lane ahead of you. After quarter of a mile or so, take the bridleway left, passing Upper Woodend Farm. Follow the bridleway between fields and on into a wood. Follow it through the wood (it can be very muddy in places) until it reaches the bottom of a valley, where you turn right at a major path junction. Follow the good track and continue on it when it leaves the wood for about another half mile. Just past a cottage on the right, turn left at a bridleway junction. Follow this bridleway eastwards, between hedges and then just inside the edge of a wood. At a fork, keep right. There are now in fact two parallel paths here – follow either until you reach a road south of Hambleden. Go a short distance to the right, then take the path on the left. Ignore the footpath going left, by Hambleden brook. At a track junction, turn left. Take the second path on the left (just past the end of a flint wall on the right) to return to the car park at Hambleden.
Hambleden, set in its valley rimmed by woods, has remained an unspoilt village due to the benevolence of the Hambleden estate that owns much of it, and the National Trust to which most of it is covenanted. It has therefore avoided the ravages of modern development. Its characteristic Chiltern brick-and-flint houses have made it an ideal setting for films and TV. There is an old pump by a tree in the village square, and several old-fashioned shops. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it is recorded that the manor of Hambleden was given to Queen Matilda. A mill at Mill End a mile south of the village then paid an annual rent of £1, and there is still a mill on that site today (the weir is said to have been built in the reign of Henry V, 1413-1422). In 1215 the manor was held by King John, through his subsidiary title as Earl of Gloucester. It then passed to Richard de Clare and then his son Gilbert de Clare – these two were the next two signatories of the Magna Carta after King John himself. 1215 is also the first year that mention is made of a Rector of Hambleden, Ralph Neville. He was a prominent statesman, holding five other livings and holding the very important role of Chancellor of England. He became Bishop of Chichester in 1224 and seven years later was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury – however the Pope refused to ratify this latter appointment. St Thomas de Cantilupe, the last pre-Reformation English saint, was born in Hambleden. He too was a Chancellor of England (1265) and became Bishop of Hereford in 1275. He died in 1282, being canonised in 1320.
Hambleden church is originally Norman, but built on the site of an earlier Saxon church. It has been much changed over the centuries. There is an ancient font that may be early 12th century or even a relic of the Saxon church – it is certainly where the previously mentioned St Thomas de Cantilupe was baptised. In the North Transept is a monument to Sir Cope D’Oyley, his wife and ten children, consisting of alabaster figures in front of a plaque. A few of the figures of the children carry skulls, a sign that they predeceased their parents. In the graveyard is the tomb of W. H. Smith – for many years a church warden here, he was the founder of the stationers that bears his name, an MP and a statesmen, and later the first Viscount Hambleden. His descendants still live in the village.
Cobstone Mill stands on top of a hillside between Turville and Fingest. It overlooks a point where four smaller valleys meet and the Hambleden Valley starts southwards to the Thames. The white-painted, eighteenth-century smock mill is thus visible for some distance in several directions. Like the village of Turville below it, it is a popular setting for films and TV, and is probably best known as the windmill in the film ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’.
Like nearby Fingest, Skirmett has always been a hamlet within the parish of Hambleden. Unusually for this part of the country, its name is of Norse origin, meaning ‘Shire meeting place’. The popular village pub is called The Frog. It was originally the King’s Head but after it went through a spell when it had a bad reputation (for some reason) it was decided to rechristen it, to mark a break with the past. Apparently the new name was chosen because Skirmett rhymes with Kermit!
Like Hambleden and Cobstone Mill, Turville is often used as a setting for films and TV. In recent years it has acquired a certain fame as the setting for ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ (a pleasant enough comedy that has its moments, and written by Richard Curtis whom I greatly admire, but how on earth was it recently voted third best British sitcom ever?). When I walked through here in 2005, the signpost for the Chiltern Way was pointing completely the wrong way – I heard later that it had been put back incorrectly by a film crew. There is an interesting story relating to the church in Turville. In 1900, an ancient stone coffin was discovered buried under the floor – when opened up, it was found to contain not only the body of a thirteenth-century priest, but also that of a seventeenth-century woman with a bullet hole in her skull! (Perhaps an earlier attempt to install a female vicar in ‘Dibley’ hadn’t been quite so successful!).
In my opinion, the Hambleden valley is one of the best areas for seeing Red Kites in the Chilterns. These magnificent reddish-brown and grey birds, with their five-foot wingspan and distinctive forked tail, became extinct in England and Scotland at the end of the 19th century, due to persecution and egg-collecting. Only a few pairs remained in remote mid-Wales. In 1989 a project was launched to re-introduce the Kites in the Chilterns and elsewhere. Over the next five years around 90 birds from Spain were released in the Chilterns, and the first successful breeding took place in 1992. There are now thought to be over 300 pairs of Red Kites in the Chilterns – the reintroduction here has been so successful, that between 2004 and 2006 94 birds were taken from here to start a new population in the North East of England. Don’t assume all large birds of prey you see here are Red Kites, though, as Buzzards are also doing well in the Chilterns as elsewhere in the country. At a distance they are most easily distinguished from Red Kites by their fan-shaped tail – they also have slightly shorter and broader wings. It is not uncommon to see both birds together.
Ibstone is in Buckinghamshire but borders Oxfordshire – at one time the county boundary passed through the parlour of the village’s manor house. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon “Hibba’s boundary stone”. At the time of Edward the Confessor the village was known as “Hibestanes”. The 900 year old parish church of St Nicholas stands separate from the rest of the village.