Walk 7: Grindley Brook Longer Route Description gateway, to a waymark post directing you across a culvert and through a and back in two ways Start at Grindley Brook 1. Go steel field gate. With the hedge to through the car park on to the Malpas Long route: 6.8 miles / 10.9km • Duration: about 4 hours your right, cross more pasture to a road (B5395 – narrow and quite busy). Short route: 3.5 miles / 5.6km • Duration: about 2 hours stile and then a steel kissing gate. Just past a house is a stile to the left. Starting point: The Horse & Jockey, Grindley Brook Turn right, and then left along a grass This path is well way marked – (Check with the pub, 01948 662723, if you wish to park there. bank. Below is Wolvesacre Mill, which continue across several fields, with Or use the No.41 bus service from Whitchurch) is now a cottage. the brook to your left, to reach a Mostly flat (only a few short, steep banks), with stiles, and gates. footbridge across the Red Brook. On Another kissing gate leads on to a There are places where it can be muddy. the other side you are in Wales. Cross track, turn left, and after passing a In summer there may be crops to walk through. a wet meadow, through an open cottage, Llethr Mill 2, go over the

Two wells and a church Where Canal crosses Brook St. Mary’s Church, Whitewell (also known as Iscoyd), The Llangollen Canal ascends from is a whitewashed brick church which was a former Hurlestone Junction in Cheshire to ‘chapel of ease’ (an alternative and more convenient Llangollen and is a branch of the Shropshire venue) for parishioners of Malpas in Cheshire. It Union Canal. It was to have been part of a remains the only Welsh church in the diocese of network linking Shropshire and Wales to Chester. The present 1830s structure replaced an the River Dee but was never completed. The earlier timber-framed building which collapsed Llangollen Canal was finished in 1806 and is during restoration work. very popular because of its spectacular aqueducts and splendid scenery.

The two wells from which the name Whitewell derived lie to the south of the At Grindley Brook, the most northerly settlement in Shropshire, there are church. Some parts of the old chapel were used in the construction of the new three locks rising in a staircase and then three further locks as the canal passes building, especially the roof timbers and various oak panelling. The spire and through the village. The village is the starting point for four long-distance clock were added in 1898. footpaths: the Maelor, Shropshire and South Cheshire Ways and the Sandstone Trail, and several others run through the village, including the Marches Way. Burial Ground and Mills at Iscoyd The tumulus known as Warren Tump to the west of Iscoyd Park was probably In the mood for Danson a Bronze Age burial mound. This belief was reinforced by the discovery of a Danson’s Bridge, more prosaically known as No. 30, was originally Dawson’s bronze axe in the grounds of Iscoyd Park in the mid-19th century. It is likely Farm Bridge. The change is probably explained by boatmen’s abbreviation, that the ‘missing’ Anglo-Saxon manor of Burwardestone, which is named in different accents or just poor hearing! the Domesday survey of 1086, fell within the area of Iscoyd. The Woodland Trust acquired and A series of corn watermills were constructed, planted Danson’s Wood in early 2001 possibly on earlier foundations, along the Wych with a mixture of native broadleaves Brook including Dymock’s Mill, Wych Mill, Llethr and created a small pond. There is a Mill and Wolvesacre Mill from the later 18th pleasant circular walk through the century onwards. The remains include leats and wood and several paths allow visitors to millponds as well as some surviving structures. explore the site. Walk 7: Grindley Brook and back in two ways Higher Wych stile to your right. Cross four fields to junction (amongst rhododendrons) B5395 Bishop Bennet Way Wolvesacre Mill Llwybr Maelor a stile by a gate which leads on to a is the Iscoyd War Memorial 8. Way lane. This is Maes-y-groes 3. Turn Kiln Green At the T-junction turn right, with Llethr Mill Grindley Maes-y-groes Grindley Brook right, then left down Kiln Green Lane Farm Brook Iscoyd Park on your left, and turn left Grindley Brook until the cattle grid and a sign for Locks at a signpost 9, along a track. At the Foxes Hole Farm 4. Bubney end of the track is a waymarked post, Bryn Owen A41 Iscoyd Shropshire Way The signpost will direct you through a turn left here down the footpath, Wood Gipsy Corner wooden gate, up a steep bank to a which passes through woodland, Iscoyd Brook Wolvesacre Sandstone Trail steel gate and along the edge of and may be muddy. When you meet Hall afield with a wood to the left. After a track, turn right. More mud! Ignore Tumulus the next gate, but just before the field the first footbridge to the right, as a Iscoyd Danson’s Parkley Bubney Farm boundary, there is a footbridge to short way on is a more substantial Farm Hall Green Park Moor Iscoyd War Memorial Danson’s Bridge your left; cross this and turn right footbridge !. Now you are back in Villa A41

PERMISSIVE PATH– along a grassy track, eventually England. Red Brook MORE ACCESSIBLE Tumulus leading to some houses on a lane – Bridge From here there is an alternative, House Mannings Iscoyd Villa 5. Turn right at the lane A495 easier and more attractive permissive Green Hadley Whitewell Wrexham and then left through a gateway Lodge Bridge route which crosses the rushes and Chapel Farm Broad towards the church. Nearby is a large A495 bears right following the Red Brook Oak 0 KILOMETRES ½ 1 bronze-age burial mound now Whitewell © Copyright OrdnanceA495 Survey Open Source data along a faint path before turning left Broad Oak covered in pine trees. Farm 0 MILES ¼ ½ on to the bridleway from Hadley to Go through the grounds of St. Mary’s rejoin the official right of way at $. Church 6 and turn left through an On the official right of way (from !) old iron gate then over a footbridge. Crossing two more fields will bring Wolvesacre Hall A. The stile is on you pick your way through rushes, Cross a field and, after a stile, bear you to the canal at Danson’s (No. 30) the left just before the farm bearing left to a field gate and turn left to an old iron kissing gate Bridge %. buildings. It is very muddy here, and right up a grassy bank to another gate. leading on to a lane and the hamlet you might prefer to turn left through After crossing the next two fields you Go through the steel kissing gate on of Whitewell. Turn left, and about 90 the gate before the stile (making come to a concrete track, negotiate the to the towpath of the canal, turn left, metres after a road junction 7 go sure to close it). The path crosses a electric fence, and find a steel gate. and continue to the locks at Grindley left through a field gate, across pasture passing by a pool with some This is Bubney Moor, now a modern Brook, and the café &. pasture and follow the waymarks trees, and down a bank to a little mega-dairy farm. To return to the Horse & Jockey, keep into a wooded dingle which is full of wooden gate into a wood. Again to the towpath (, going under the bluebells in the spring. The fields here are very large and it is more mud! Cross the footbridge B difficult to find the line of the path main road (A41) to Bridge No. 28. Go and it is a short way to a field gate, Go down into the dingle, across the which can be obstructed by crops such left here through a wooden wicket across a large grass field, a concrete footbridge and up the other side to a as maize. Bear left to two steel gates, gate where a short lane leads to the track, and another large field to the wooden wicket gate. Now cross two and go through the second one. Cross busy A41. Cross carefully to the pub. junction with the old Shropshire Way fields to a horse paddock and double another large field to reach the line of The Short Route #. wooden gates and a stile at a house. the old Shropshire Way# where a stile Having crossed, bear right and follow Follow the Longer Route to Llethr Now follow the directions for the crosses on to a concrete track, and a track leading on to a lane near a Mill 2, but instead of crossing the Longer Route from #. then over another stile $. T-junction. Just to the left of this stile, stay with the track to