Distance: just over 6 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. from Dropbox

Walk from Dorridge Railway Station to the 16th Century moated manor house Baddesley Clinton. Baddesley Clinton has a colourful history associated with upper crust Warwickshire’s 16th and 17th Century history of recusancy and resistance to the post-Reformation Church of England. Walk is primarily across countryside and ends at Lapworth Railway Station.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

The Many Hidden Friars of the Moated Grange

Situated just west of the historical centre of the county of Warwickshire, Baddesley Clinton is an unusual example of a moated manor house that is accessible to the public (albeit upon the presentation of a National Trust membership card or the payment of a small fee). 

In line with so much of the gentry of the relatively isolated counties that now comprises the West Midlands, in the 16th and 17th Centuries the Ferrers family, who owned the house between 1517 and 1940, did not conform to the imposition of Protestantism by England’s national government from the 1530s onwards.

Instead they appear to have become recusants, a term dating from the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, which describes those who held out dissenting against the established church’s adoption of the reformed faith. It was out of this comparatively elite midlands milieu that conspiracies like the Gunpowder Plot, associated with several other manor houses in the region, later emanated.

Of course, Baddesley Clinton and its inhabitants had been caught up in religious intrigue and politics prior to the Reformation. It was However, of a rather less ostensibly pious and conviction driven sort. Apparently Nicholas Broome – whose daughter married into the Ferrers family and inherited the house upon his death – killed the parish priest at some point during his tenure as lord of the manor in the late 15th and early 16th Century. This murder apparently took placce somehere in th house, and led Broome as atonement for this crime, to provide the funds for rebuilding the local church which stands a couple of hundred metres from the perimeter of the house’s grounds.

It was however, during the Reformation that Baddesley Clinton came to the forefront of religious politics. The house has several priest holes, reputedly constructed by the Jesuit leader St. Nicholas Owen. One is situated behind oak panelling, the other large enough to hold around six people, is behind a false ceiling. It is believed that in extremis, ropes were provided to allow those in hiding at the house to shimmy down the garderobe into the building’s sewers and hide down there. All three appear to have proven effective hiding places. In 1591 a Jesuit conference was abruptly disrupted by a search by local law enforcement officials, however, none of the priests in attendance were found, seemingly proving the priest holes effectiveness.

Like many comparable houses with a historical connection to the clandestine practice of Catholicism in Britain prior to the belated decriminalisation of the faith in 1832, Baddesley Clinton achieved a degree of status in the later 19th and 20th Centuries as the Catholic revival in Great Britain took place.

This included a refurbishment of the house’s Roman Catholic chapel which could now step out of the shadows, and noted converts to the faith, the novelists Georgiana Chatterton and Edward Heneage Dering renting it as their home.

Today, the house sits just inside Warwickshire, a short distance from the southern boundary of the West Midlands county Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. This makes it a popular daytripping destination for people from both counties. It is where a number of Warwickshire’s long distance walking paths converge, and is very close to the Chiltern Main Line.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the gpx. from Dropbox

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This walk to Baddesley Clinton begins at Dorridge Railway Station.

Dorridge is a small, almost entirely residential town, which is extremely affluent on the rural fringe of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull. The town is handily served by both West Midlands Railway and Chiltern trains.

On leaving the Station you are standing on the edge of the parade of shops and restaurants that comprises Dorridge town centre.

Walk a short way, turning left out of the main exit of the station towards the shops.

Immediately on your right on the other side of the road there is a road leading off past a hotel.

Cross over the road and turn right down this road.

Continue on this long, straight road – aptly called Avenue Way – for quite a distance walking past some seriously large houses, constructed during pretty much every era from the early 20th Century onwards.

Presently you come to a small roundabout.

Head across the road and take the second road on your right.

It leads through an estate of modern houses.

After a short while walking along this road the road leaves the town and the houses begin to thin-out.

Just as you are entering open countryside look out on your right for a footpath sign leading down a snicket.

Once sighted, cross over the road and head right down the snicket.

The snicket passes between the gardens of two houses.

Soon you come to a gate at the end of the snicket leading out onto a grassy open field.

Go through the gate and walk more or less straight across the field following the line of the hedgerow to your left.

Pass through the metal gate you come to into the next field.

Inside the next field follow the track curving slight to the right across the field in the direction of a gate leading out onto a lane.

Having passed through the gate, turn left and walk along the lane.

Head along the side of the lane for some distance.

Presently the lane curves quite sharply to the left.

Shortly after this point lookout on your right for a footpath sign just after a small cluster of houses amongst a stand of conifer trees.

Cross over the style by the footpath sign.

Then head down the track beyond.

After a short distance you come to a metal gate.

Head through the metal gate and cross the field beyond, keeping to the left.

The path leads through a small thicket.

On the other side of this thicket to your left there is a metal gate.

This leads into a field, apparently usually used for cattle though it was empty on the day I walked through, that was incredibly muddy.

Once through the gate and into the field, keep fairly close to the hedge on your right and walk across to the other side.

Here you will find a gate beside a tall old tree.

Having walked through the gate you find yourself at the top of an avenue of recently planted trees looking towards an old farmhouse.

Walk towards the old house.

Just before you reach the building there is a metal gate leading onto a footpath.

Once on the footpath turn left and walk along the line of a wooden fence and a hedgerow.

Very soon you emerge onto a driveway.

Turn left and walk along the driveway.

Presently the driveway merges with a road.

Turn right at this point you follow the road for a short distance. It is a fairly busy road so take care.

On the horizon a whitewashed building is visible on your right. This is the King’s Arms Inn, and beyond it stands the King’s Arms Bridge, which crosses the Grand Union Canal.

Once on the other side of the bridge, look out on your right for a set of relatively steep steps down onto the towpath.

At the bottom of the steps turn left and begin walking down the towpath.

Unusually for a British inland canal the Grand Union was extensively modernised in the 1930s so as to better enable canal freight to compete with rail and road transport. All in all, the modernisation scheme was not a great success. Despite significant investment into widening the canal for larger boats, straightening it to enable faster journey times and enhancing infrastructure such as locks, freight traffic continued to fall vertiginously and had essentially ceased by the start of the 1970s. The end of this era is depicted in the (fairly dreadful but fascinating) 1964 film The Bargee, which centres around a commercial barge on the Grand Union Canal.

The afterlife of this attempt to bring the canal into the 20th Century, does manifest itself however, in the fact that the Grand Union is far more like a water based motorway than the sleepier, more meandering narrow canals that make up the bulk of the navigable inland waterways in the UK.

A side effect of this is that it can be a tad monotonous, but it makes up for this in terms of speed.

All in all, you walk along the Grand Union Canal for more than a mile.

The first section is almost urban in terms of its feel, heading past the large Black Buoy Marina which is a hub for barge owners on this section, which is one foot in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, one foot in Warwickshire.

Presently it opens out, though still with a large number of barges tethered, some painted with traditional waterways art.

The feel of the canal gets steadily more rural as you move away from Dorridge and its conjoined partner in crime, the similar in spirit, large village of Knowle.

After walking for quite some way passing under several more imposing bridges, you come to the low red brick Turnover Bridge.

The Turnover Bridge carries a footpath over the canal.

Walk up the sloping towpath towards it, then turn left following the path into a thicket.

Inside the thicket walk a short way until you come to a gate.

The gate leads out onto a field with a fairly clear path. Follow this path across the field as it keeps fairly close to the hedgerow.

Presently you come to a gated wooden bridge across a stream.

Once on the other side follow the well worn path that runs between a wooden fence and the hedgerow. Presently it passes under a power transmission line near a metal pylon.

After some distance the footpath turns into an unmade track (which was very muddy when I walked the route on a sunny but cold day in early February).

Eventually the track emerges at a crossroads where it merges with tarmacked roads radiating in three directions.

On the far side of the crossroads a green road sign for Netherwood Lane.

Having walked straight across the crossroads and continue along the quiet Netherwood Lane.

Several hundred metres down the road you come to a footpath sign on the right.

This leads off the road – turn right and head through the gate down the path.

Once through the gate follow the well trodden path between a fence and a hedgerow.

Presently you reach another metal gate.

On the other side of the gate turn left and follow the path along the line of the hedgerow you have just crossed.

Soon you reach the corner of the field. At this point turn right and follow the boundary of the field in the direction of a small copse.

When you reach this small copse walk past it, over the line of the hedgerow located on your right.

Once past the hedge on your right, take a sharp left and follow the path into the copse.

Follow the path through the copse for some distance.

After some way you reach a metal gate.

On the other side of the metal gate you come to an unpaved track (again pretty muddy when I walked the route).

Follow this track heading left.

Soon you come to a gateway.

Having headed through this gateway turn to you right and follow a track in the direction of some farm type buildings.

Walk past some barn type structures lining the track.

And take a slight left onto a driveway.

The driveway soon leads out past a house onto a public road.

Once on the public road turn right and walk along the road for a short distance.

You come to a junction with a small roundabout type feature in the centre of it in front of some farm buildings which have been converted to residential properties.

At this junction turn left.

Walk along the fairly quiet lane for some distance.

Presently having walked past some tall hedgerows you come to a thicket.

There is a patch of grass on your right which leads to a metal gate.

Turn right and pass through the metal gate.

Follow the path between a patch of woodland and a fence blocking off a field.

Soon you pass through another gate.

Having passed through the gate continue along the path.

You come to a wooden bridge which leads the path into the woodland.

Once in the woodland follow the path for some distance.

Presently a field appears on your left hand side.

Then at the bottom of a gentle slope you come to a metal gate leading out onto a paved drive.

This driveway leads up to Baddesley Clinton.

Once through the gate turn left and head up the driveway.

The house and its gardens are visible over a fence through its trees on your right.

At the top of the driveway you approach a small red brick structure which is the ticket office for the house and garden.

It is well worth going to have a look at the house.

If you don’t wish to enter the grounds and visit Baddesley Clinton house and gardens, to the left there is a path leading a short distance, no more than a couple of hundred metres, up to the local church.

Having spent as long at Baddesley Clinton as you wish, head back down the driveway.

Presently on your left there is a wooden gate out onto a large grassy, parkland type expanse of field.

Head through this gate on your left.

Once through the gate turn right and walk across the field, past the edge of Baddesley Clinton’s formal grounds.

This section of the walk is along the Heart of England Way, one of the major long distance footpaths that criss-cross this part of Warwickshire.

In the corner of the parkland beside a thicket of trees on the edge of Baddesley Clinton’s gardens you walk down a slight slope towards a wooden gate.

Passing through the gate turn left and follow the path around the remainder of the perimeter of the gardens.

Having passed the gardens the path leads up to a metal gate set in a hedgerow.

Head through the gate. On the other side follow a wooden boardwalk.

This leads out into a field with a clear, very well trodden path to the left which leads along the line of the hedgerow.

After following this path for some way you come to a metal gate in a tangled hedgerow.

On the other side of the hedge you cross a horse’s paddock, where there are numerous horses separated out into pens by plastic tape.

The path across is very clear and easy to follow.

Once you have crossed the paddock you enter a stable yard.

Walking straight across it you come to a track which leads off through a gate slightly to your right.

Following the track you come to a main road.

Turn left here and walk a short distance down the road.

Presently you come to a bridge over the Grand Union Canal and enter the outskirts of the village of Lapworth.

Having crossed the bridge follow the road you are on through the centre of the quiet village for a short distance.

Soon you come to a residential road lined with several era of post-World War II houses.

Turn right and walk up this road.

After several minutes walking you come to the car park for Lapworth Station where this walk ends.

Getting Back

Lapworth Railway Station is relatively infrequently served by trains. However, those which do call (roughly one each way every two hours) run either towards Leamington Spa or Birmingham, where they run into Moor Street and sometimes Snow Hill.