Circular walks in Oxfordshire
More downloadable leaflets available for free from www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/walksandrides
Two walks around Faringdon, taking in:
Badbury Hill
The Folly Faringdon Getting to the start
All three walks start from Market Place in Faringdon, SN7 7HL. There are car parks off Gloucester Street and Southampton Street. Limited parking can also be found in Market Place and Church Street.
Public transport When out walking, it is always wise to let someone know where you are going For timetable enquiries, please call Traveline or, if possible, have someone with you. on 0871 200 22 33. Take your mobile with you, and make sure it is fully charged. If you use your You will also find information and Oxfordshire car to access the route, please park County Council public transport timetables in with care – do not block farm gateways most Oxfordshire libraries and Tourist or village facilities, and do not leave Information Centres. Alternatively, write valuables in view. enclosing an A5 stamped addressed envelope to: Oxfordshire County Council, Public Transport, Speedwell House, Please follow the Countryside Code: Speedwell Street, Oxford OX1 1NE. Be safe – plan ahead and follow any signs Easy-to-follow routes Leave gates and property as you find them Each walk is marked with metal signposts where the path leaves the Protect plants and animals, and road, and with waymarks on gates and stiles take your litter home at every change of direction. Keep dogs under close control The appropriate Ordnance Survey map to use on this route is OS Explorer 170. Consider other people
This map is reproduced from Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Licence: 100023343 (2008) Points of interest
A The name Faringdon means “fern- D Great Coxwell Barn is a 13th century covered hill”. The town nestles on the Cistercian monastic barn. It is stone slopes of a hill overlooking, to the north built with a stone tiled roof and an west, the valley of the Thames and the exceptionally interesting timber edge of the Cotswolds, and to the construction that can be seen from south east the valley of the Ock and inside. Nearly all the timber beams, the Vale of White Horse. Faringdon struts and posts are original. The barn has been a market town since King was acquired by the National Trust in John gave the town a royal charter in 1956 under the will of Ernest Cook.
1218 to hold a weekly market. The town became important because of its E At Little Coxwell, the church of position on the London-to-Cirencester St Mary has a Norman nave and road, and on the old wool merchants’ chancel with an interesting 13th route from the Cotswolds to the South century double bellcote. Arthur Mee East. During the Civil War, Faringdon asks us to note the 500-year-old man was one of the last places in England still smiling by one of the three to hold out for the King, although Oliver windows on the south side. Cromwell briefly occupied the town in 1645. Not long after this, the Town Hall in the Market Place was built. The F Folly Hill is perhaps the site of a upper chamber was used as a meeting short-lived castle during the reign of room and a Magistrates’ Court. On King Stephen and Cromwell’s Battery market days, butter, eggs and other during the Civil War. In around 1780, farm produce were sold on the steps. the summit was planted with Scotch firs At the start of the 20th century it was a and laid out with paths and seats by fire station, and was then used as the Poet Laureate, Henry Pye (described Faringdon Branch Library. by Walter Scott as “respectable in all except his poetry”). In 1935, Lord Berners, the composer, artist and B At the top of Market Place in writer, who lived in Faringdon House, Faringdon is All Saints Church. It is commissioned the building of the designed in the shape of a cross with observation tower. It has been a central tower. The church reflects described as the last folly to be built much of the town’s history. Faringdon’s in England. In digging the foundations three most notable families have their some skeletons were unearthed and tombs and monuments here. Outside, it has been suggested that they were the marks of cannon fire can still be victims of the storming of the castle seen on the church itself, a reminder of in 1145. the time when the Roundheads at- tacked the town in 1645 and 1646 and
the church spire was destroyed. A view If you would like to give us feedback about of Faringdon House can be seen these walks, you can email through a hole in the north wall of the [email protected] churchyard. You can also upload photos of your walk online at www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/ C Badbury Clump is an Iron Age fort, countrysidephotoupload strategically placed on the highest Alternatively, call 01865 810226 or write to: ground in the area. The banks of the Oxfordshire County Council, Countryside camp were levelled early in the 19th Service, Signal Court, Old Station Way, century, leaving little but vestiges of the Eynsham, Oxford OX29 4TL. fosse on the south side and a faint es-
carpment on the other sides.