Lepe to Fawley Trail A walk of wildlife and wartime Fawley Ashlett Kennels Row Stonehills 1 Fields Heath E 2 Ower Tom’s Black eld Down 7 Badminston 3 Calshot 8 Common D 6 Sprats Down A 4 West Common 5 C Lepe Road Stanswood B Stanswood Road KEY Trail route Footpath Brook Roads 3 miles circular or 8 miles total / 3.5 hours Woodland Trail route summary Buildings This trail has a central circular section with connective ‘branches’ to Langley, 1 Stop spots Blackfield, Fawley, Exbury and Lepe. Many of these routes (now Rights of A Points of interest Way) can be seen on maps dating from the mid to late 1700s. Parking Trail Stats: Try our Mobile Walking App New Forest Trail length 3 miles (5km) circular section. National Park Walks 8 miles (13km) total) to help keep you to this Historic Routes trail. Time to walk trail 3.5 hours Starting point of trail There is no singular starting Download for iPhone point. However, Fawley or Langley are good options. Car parking There is no formal car parking for this trail. There is very limited on-street parking. Our suggested iPhone link here locations are Fawley, Chapel Lane and in Walker’s Lane South. Download for Android Bus Stop Fawley Square. For more information please check myjourneyhampshire.com Terrain (hilliness) Fairly flat Surface type/s Gravel tracks and some muddy Android link here patches Stiles / gates information Some stiles, gates, wooden footbridge, and stepping stones across Dark Water stream. Short section on road Notes Do check yourself for ticks on your return to the car. Trail route summary Trail route directions This trail has a central circular This is one of our largest trails, section with connective the central circular section can ‘branches’ to Langley, Blackfield, be accessed from one of three Fawley, Exbury and Lepe. Many suggested parking spots. of these routes (now Rights From Chapel Lane, Fawley: walk of Way) can be seen on maps down Chapel Lane following the dating from the mid to late Bridleway fingerpost. Go past 1700s. They cross parts of the Waterside Methodist Church Cadland and Exbury Estates, and bend right past Blackbird revealing a historic and modern cottage and then left (passing working landscape. The rights the kissing gate) and onto the of way are mostly surfaced but Manor of Cadland track. muddy patches are likely. From Walker’s Lane South, During recent years efforts to Blackfield: at the end of Green regenerate dwindling, and rare, Lane by the recreation ground habitats have been successful go through the kissing gate and we are slowly beginning onto the Manor of Cadland to see threatened species like track on the left following the migratory Nightjar and resident backs of the houses. Dartford warblers return, as well as Grayling and Silver-studded From Fawley Bypass: take the blue butterflies. track towards Fields Heath. To help look after this rich but There are multiple delicate habitat and the species interconnected tracks in this that rely on it please keep to the area. Try our Mobile Walking rights of way particularly during App to help keep you to this the ground nesting bird season Historic Routes trail. 1st March and 31st July and please keep all dogs on a lead or under very close control. 1. Nr Fields Farm The Cadland Estate originally Cadland House was an elaborate served as chairman of the New consisted of monastic lands and Georgian beach-hut-style thatched Forest magistrates and was head of was bought by The Hon. Robert cottage, designed by Henry Holland, the New Forest Verderers for three Drummond in 1772. The original that burnt to the ground in 1785. years. The Verderers of the ancient Estate stretched from Hythe pier The current Cadland House which Verderers’ Court (dating back to southwards, but some land at Hythe overlooks the Solent was built in the 13th century) are the guardians was sold during the agricultural 1935 in the same position as the of Commoners, common rights, depression of 1895. In 1947 a original cottage. and the Forest landscape, they can third of the estate was subject to also make and amend byelaws. From 1954 to 2017 the Estate compulsory purchase for the oil Commoners of the New Forest are was owned and home to Maldwin refinery north of Fawley leading those who occupy land or property Drummond, a well-known New to the destruction of the mansion to which are attached one or more Forest figure, the estate is still house, Capability Brown park, rights over the Forest. owned by the family. Maldwin was model farm and 40 estate cottages. a former High Sheriff of Hampshire, 2. Badminston Common by PLUTO tank (site of) Evidence of Second World War high. They were located in open in position with wooden pegs and installations can be found at end of heathland so were covered over galvanised iron wire. The miniature, Badminston Lane in an area known with soil and sand and then grassed dead forest soon became a local as the Common. Large oil storage over to conceal their position and feature. tanks were installed here for the purpose. The removal of the sand Badminston Common was used for PLUTO project, an acronym for and gravel left a huge scar on the common grazing land in the 18th Pipe Line Under The Ocean, which landscape about a metre deep that century. Gravel has been extracted supplied Normandy with fuel for the also needed to be camouflaged. from this area for years. The now Allied armies. This was achieved by lopping off flooded Badminston gravel pit is a the top two metres of pine trees, The tanks measured about 180 haven for all sorts of wildlife. positioning them in the manner of metres by 100 metres and stood plantation trees and securing them about three or four metres 3. Badminston Plantation 4. Floating Island 5. Stanswood watermill Three centuries ago Fawley was The route runs over an earthwork The Domesday Book recorded a hotbed of smuggling. Sprat’s dam, south of here is Lower Stanswood as a manor with a mill Down Wood hid the ‘caves’ used Stanswood Mill (formerly Ower and population of 33 households, by smugglers, which probably Mill). The dam formed a millpond putting it in the largest 20% of consisted of pits with reinforced that held water for the mill settlements recorded in 1086. On sides, capped with timber and downstream but was drained in Milne’s map of Hampshire c1791, it earth. Folklore tells of a visit by 1866. Features of the pond (its bay is shown as Ower Mill but all other the local Revenue Officer to an and sluice) can still be seen today. records have it as Stanswood Mill old couple’s cottage, apparently within Stanswood Manor. on a social call to his friends. But on hearing his heels ring hollow Now a private home, the machinery on the flagstones of the floor, he in this small brick building was summoned aid and searched until removed, the mill leat filled in and he had found the entrance to the its pond drained in 1866. The site of cottagers’ contraband cellar. Friends the old millpond is now marshy land or no, he soon had them bundled known as ‘Floating Island’ off to Winchester Gaol as the secret room was stuffed full of recently smuggled goods. Sprat’s Down grew from housing for construction workers that built the Naval Air Station on Calshot Spit. Construction of the Calshot Airbase started in 1912 and was fully Bridge of Floating Island sluice. functioning by 1914 and remained © NFNPA as an RAF base until 1961. 6. Bog Cottage, Badminston and WWII air raid shelter South of Badminston Common, The other houses were gone by There is also a small Second World northeast of Dean’s Bridge, are 1939. Bog Cottage remained War brick air-raid shelter. The the visible remains of some old occupied by various members of reason for the shelter being here is cob cottages (farmsteads). Only the Saunders family until after 1939 unclear, as only Bog Cottage was one of the houses gained a name; with many of the women described still standing and occupied during Bog Cottage, which was the as laundresses and the men as WWII. Were there other temporary westernmost house listed in the labourers. It was later occupied by or secret WWII buildings nearby? 1901 census. the Corner family, renaming the cottage ‘Dingley Dell’, eventually being demolished in the early 1950’s after the family had left. A tale of relief that brings no relief This is a story about smuggling, and a place called Although they searched the house and garden Bog Cottage, which was a simple, thatched, cob thoroughly, the Whitecaps found nothing. It was house between Badminston Common and Spratt’s thirsty work, and they had refreshed themselves Down, on the left of the track going down to to the extent that one, at least, needed to relieve Dean’s Bridge. himself. As he did so, behind a tree, he heard water dripping into a cavity below ground which, The lower portions of the walls can still be seen, on investigation, proved to be stuffed with and a brick air raid shelter still stands there. contraband. The fates of the occupants of Bog The last people to live in Bog Cottage were the Cottage are not recorded. Corner family. They renamed the place Dingley Dell. Mr Corner earned a living by selling firewood, although this might have been a means of supplementing another income. Mrs Corner is probably the lady in the accompanying photograph (taken by a member of the Mudge family around 1949/1950 and displayed for sale in their shop window).