Stuckton Iron Works Trail Swing riots and smallpox Criddlestyle 1 Stuckton Road 6 5 Cattle grid Broardhill lane F Blissford Newfoundland Hill 4 Rose Blissford B The Merrie Farm Thought 8 G C A k o ro 7 E d B chen Chilly Dit 9 Stuckton 2 Hill 10 3 D 11 Frogham H Hyde Common KEY Trail route Hyde Footpath Brook Roads 4.5 miles / 3 hours Woodland Trail route summary Buildings This trail takes in a tranquil New Forest valley, with views across 1 Stop spots the Avon Valley and Dorset. The area is a working landscape,Hungerford A Points of interest with a surprising history of heavy industry and riots. Parking Trail Stats: Trail route directions Trail length 4.5 miles (7.2km) There is no fixed Time to walk trail 3 hours direction to this route once in Stuckton. There Starting point of trail Opposite the Fordingbridge are several other Rights Bowling Club house or the Three of Way that join to and Lions (car park), Stuckton Rd. cross this trail. Car parking The public car park beside Try our Mobile Walking Fordingbridge Park on Ringwood App New Forest Road. The start of the walk National Park Walks is a short distance east along to help keep you to this Southampton Rd onto Stuckton Historic Routes trail. Rd. The Three Lions, Stuckton, SP6 Download for iPhone 2HF. The owners have granted permission for their carpark to be used by trail walkers. Bus Stop Stuckton, Three Lions, Hyde Lane; Check myjourneyhampshire.com. iPhone link here Terrain (hilliness) Mostly flat E-W, hilly N-S Download for Android Surface type/s Unsurfaced path with some muddy to very muddy patches when wet. Short section on road. Stiles / gates information There are stiles and gates. Notes Sections of this trail can get very Android link here muddy; wellies are definitely advisable. Do check for ticks when you get home. 1. Fordingbridge Cemetery, A. Possible smugglers route B. Old Police House Bronze Age Smuggling, the act of secretly As you approach the village The trail passes Fordingbridge (St bringing legal and illegal you may be able to see the Mary’s) Cemetery. People have been items into the country, was houses and buildings along the laying their dead to rest here for widespread in the Forest during east side of Stuckton Rd. A few thousands of years since the Bronze the 1800’s. There are several houses down, from the north, Age (2100 to 750BC). so-called smugglers routes that the setback house is the old Marks in the grass show the snake their way across the Forest police house and was occupied locations of ploughed out Bronze from the coast. It is said that into the 1990s by the local Age round barrows. Later in the this part of the trail is on one of beat officer. Bronze Age and into the Iron Age those smugglers’ routes, in this (750BC to AD43) it was common case, to Fordingbridge. C. The Three Lions practice to place additional burials in and around these barrows. Continuing south from the These later burials were in the form old police house is The Three of large upturned pottery urns Lions. First recorded in local containing cremated remains. estate records of 1832 as a house and barn, by 1875 it was listed as the ‘Three Lions’, tenanted by Henry Hockey as Inn Keeper and grocer. It is now a restaurant run by a former Michelin starred chef. Left: St Mary’s Cemetery Chapel. Example of a cremation urn burial, photo taken at a different site during excavation. © NFNPA 2. Iron Works The house opposite the exit of the By 1854 George Sheppard formed public footpath onto Stuckton Rd a partnership and products were was the home of Thomas Sheppard, marked SHEPPARD AND INGRAM, who started the Stuckton Iron including a decorative ‘gas pillar’ Works in 1790. From a family (lamppost) in Church Street, of flour millars, he invented Fordingbridge. and produced mill components, In 1872 the site was bought by expanding into agricultural Joseph Armfield who developed machinery. an award-winning business with The business was passed down the international reach. Sheppard family and a foundry was built in 1807 to supply castings for agricultural tools and grain milling equipment. A Cornish steam engine was installed for power and its 15m (50ft) tall brick chimney must have been a local landmark. In 1830 the foundry was targeted Above: Old Gas Lamp made by “SHEPPARD AND INGRAM” and badly damaged by agricultural Fordingbridge. workers rioting against the © NFNPA mechanisation of farming during Left: An original portrait of Captain the ‘Swing Riots’ named after Swing, print, satirical print, popular Captain Swing, a political agitator. print, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum Above: Armfield’s Foundary buildings in 1959 with chimney. Courtesy of Mary Baldwin Right: Rioters arrive at William Shepherd’s mill, in Stuckton. 23 November 1830. © Wessex Archaeology, by Jennie Anderson. The foundry in Stuckton closed The chimney collapsed in the 1960s, by agricultural workers has been in 1908, while the Cornish steam and its triangular bricks can be produced. You can download the engine was removed around 1920. found around the parish as garden written version or the audio book Business continued at the site features. The site finally closed in version to listen to whilst on your through the 1950s with Armfield the 1990s. walk. Agricultural Engineering Company A dramatized account of the 1830 Visit this trail’s webpage for more supplying agricultural tools and rioting at the Stuckton Iron Works details: newforestnpa.gov.uk/ equipment. historicroutes 3. Old Post Office & Stuckton was given land by the ‘Lord of Evangelical Church the Manor’ to establish a chapel. Some years later the son and Follow Stuckton Road south and inheritor to the estate ignored cross the bridge over Ditchend this gift and evicted Grant. After Brook. Look out for the Old Post a fundraising campaign in “every Office which was the local shop for county of England” and a large the hamlets of Blissford, Frogham, donation from India, Grant was Hyde and Stuckton. able to purchase this plot of land in Stuckton Evangelical Church Stuckton and build a new church. Stuckton Church. was built in 1856. Its story starts Reverend Thomas Grant is buried © NFNPA. in Hungerford in 1831, where in the graveyard to the left of the a ‘preacher’ Mr Thomas Grant entrance. to the New Forest as roads and D. Cattle grid, preambulation E. Views of Avon railways improved. In the road is a cattle grid which Village and Dorset A local resident recalls; “My father marks the perambulation (the Beyond the cattle grid is the told me that to have water for the legal boundary) of the New public footpath taking you house on the hill, a well was dug Forest and stops the livestock north, running along field down to the water table and he straying from the Commons. edges to the stream, Ditchend went to have a look, describing the The name perambulation comes Brook, where you cross and men digging were like ants at the from early boundaries not being go up the hill. At the top bottom of a hole.” defined by a map but by a walk are views of the Avon Valley with directions and description and across into Dorset. of the journey its landmarks. The earliest perambulation 4. The Merrie Thought of the New Forest dates from 1217–18, describing the area to After climbing the hill, the trail which Forest law applied. The continues north past Broadhill most recent perambulation was Woods. After the woods is a large defined by the New Forest Act house ‘The Merrie Thought’ built of 1964; this set out the area in the 1930s ‘Arts and Crafts’ style. View to west over the Avon Valley with within which the Verderers can It was built for Lady Hulse, one of “The Merrie Thought” to the south. exercise their bylaws. a wave of wealthier people retiring © NFNPA 5. Broadhill Lane 6. Cob cottage, encroachment Once through the field head east Continue along the lane to where it joins Blissford Road. On its northern along Broadhill Lane. This track side is a little cob cottage. Shown on an OS map of 1872 it is probably was a drove track for moving much older and is an example of many cottages around the New Forest animals from pastures by the that are encroachments. River Avon into the open Forest. It appears on Isaac Taylor’s one-inch map of Hampshire, from 1759. F. Cottages (site of), encroachment Local folklore suggests this track The trackway drops down and joins Blissford Road. Heading downhill is is an old smugglers’ path, used to another cattle grid, marking the edge of the New Forest preambulation. carry contraband across the Forest Past this we cross Ditchend Stream again via the ford or narrow to places like Fordingbridge. The footbridge. Just beyond this is the public footpath, heading southwest. town was a major hub of the free Beside the stream and just within the woods are the remains of more traders (smugglers) in the late cottage encroachments, marked on OS maps of 1872, but hard to spot 18th century and was the scene of on the ground today. battles between free traders and These encroachments were into a purlieu area before 1800’s. Purlieu’s customs men. were open forest land owned by the estates around the New Forest. Over the last 200 years they have been enclosed as farmland. 7. (Site of) Smallpox Hospital Despite its history, the area has G.