Distance: 8.5 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Rural walk through the gently hilly landscape of southern Leicestershire and northern Northamptonshire, between the towns of Market Harborough and Desborough, an area with a surprisingly radical and tumutlous past

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

The Protective Benefits of Green Cheese

In the late spring of 1607 unrest swept the southern midlands counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

For several decades large landowners had been encroaching upon the communally managed common land in the region, walling it and and closing it off, improving it through tearing up woods and scrubland to raise sheep and plant crops like wheat.

“Enclosure” was a lucrative practice for the landowners in this fertile, heavily wooded, gently hilly part of central England. For the peasants, small scale artisans and other everyday rural inhabitants, the loss of lucrative grazing, cropping and wood gathering land was a serious attack upon their way of life and standard of living.

Whilst some clung on, others were forced to claim grudgingly doled out poor relief, adopt the risky (and illegal) lifestyle of the beggar, or in some instance starve.

So in the face of general economic uncertainty and the intensification of the landowners’ attempts to strip the peasantry of their common rights in April 1607 Northamptonshire peasants began to make a stand saying: no more. Their struggle soon spread into neighbouring Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

The movement was spontaneous, inchoate yet steely in its determination to stop and reverse the process of enclosure. Aspects of the movement had a religious and millenarian character. One of the most prominent and charismatic leaders being “Captain Pouch” the nom de guerre of John Reynolds a tinker from Desborough in northern Northamptonshire. Captain Pouch claimed that he had been granted the authority from heaven to destroy all ditches, fences and enclosures erected in the Midlands counties and that the contents of a pouch upon his person would protect him and all his followers from harm.

The first riots and protests broke out at Haselbech, Pytchley and Rushton in Northamptonshire during late April. May saw mass gatherings across all three counties with 3,000 dissidents assembling at Hillmorton in Warwickshire and 5,000 at Cottesmore in Leicestershire.

Leicester itself was put under a curfew, as the city’s civil and ecclesiastical authorities, along with the major factors and magnets, worried that the mass of the population’s sympathies were with the rebellious rustics outside the walls. As a symbolic warning the city fathers erected a gallows in a prominent location. It was torn down under cover of night.

A heavily contested area in the struggle between commoners and aristocratic and genteel landowners was Rockingham Forest. An area in central Northamptonshire which had once been a royal hunting ground. Here the Tresham Family were attempting to enclose land near the village of Newton. As if to evidence the essentially material and economic roots of the crisis and the struggle over who controlled the land, the Tresham’s, or at least sections of the family, were staunch Roman Catholics. So staunch that Francis Tresham, one of the younger men in the family, had been involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot just under two years previously. They were related by blood to the Throckmortons of Coughton Court – across the border in Warwickshire – and Robert Catesby whose landholdings spanned both Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, who had led the Gunpowder Plot.

In early June 1607 thousands of protesting commoners arrived at the disputed land in Newton. They camped upon it and began tearing down all of the walls and fences. A detachment of Northamptonshire militia under the command of Edward Montague, a neighbouring Puritan landowner, who the Tresham’s had a long running boundary dispute with, was sent to protect the family from harm and restore order on their estate.

On the 8th June there was a confrontation between the unmounted, largely unarmed peasant protesters and the mounted militia troop. Between 40 and 50 protestors were killed and the rest scattered.

This proved the end of the protests across Northamptonshire. Leicestershire and Warwickshire. The spiritually divided, but materially united forces of the landholding establishment had prevailed. Today Edward Montagues descendants are the Dukes of Buccleuch, amongst the largest landowners in Britain.

John Reynolds was apprehended by the authorities. When he was searched they opened his famous pouch, the one which he claimed was a gift from god that would protect him and his followers. According to the Stowe Chronicle upon opening it, it was found to contain only a piece of a green cheese. Captain Pouch was hanged.

Despite the failure of John Reynolds and his followers this was far from the end of struggles over who controlled the economic levers in the rural south east Midlands. Worker activists established a co-op in Reynolds’ home town of Desborough in 1863. It soon became one of the strongest in the country, controlling much of the economic life of the town.

At the height of Desborough’s co-op in the late 19th and early 20th Century the town had a department store, bank, travel agents, a ladies’ shoe and clothing shop, a number of corner stores and after World War II a supermarket, all under mutual control. Local industrially was also collectively owned, with the Co-operative Wholesale Society opening a factory producing women’s corsets and other underwear for sale nationwide, on the edge of the town.

The factory still exists to this day, albeit no longer mutually owned, whilst the co-op remains unusually prominent amongst the retail outlets in the town, though no longer in any sense dominant. As of November 2022 the town’s representatives on West Northamptonshire Council and to Parliament were all members of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

The Walk

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

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk from Market Harborough to Desborough begins from Market Harborough Railway Station on the Midland Mainline.

Cross the forecourt heading for the road in front of the station.

On the other side turn left again, crossing a bridge running over a small stream. It is waymarked as leading to the Brampton Valley Way, a cycle path. You want to reach the Brampton Valley Way so keep an eye out for these signs.

Having crossed the bridge follow a walkway running alongside the stream heading to the right.

This runs around the edge of Market Harborough town centre.

Soon you come to the side of a branch of Lidl, keep on walking straight ahead along the walkway beyond it.

Very soon after Lidl you come to crossing lights opposite a branch of that other German discounter chain Aldi.

Cross over the road here and head down the walkway on the other side.

Soon emerging onto the edge of a retail park there is a walkway off to your left.

Turn left here and follow the walkway down to the side of a road.

Cross the road here and turn off to the right onto an estate of modern 1990s or early 2000s vintage houses.

Keep heading along the road running through the housing estate to the right.

Presently you reach a snicket. Head down this snicket.

This leads after a short distance to a park off to the left. Which you cross heading slightly to the right, walking along a footpath which runs across it.

On the far side next to allotments you come to the start of the Brampton Valley Way.

The Brampton Valley Way is the former railway line between Market Harborough and Northampton. Fourteen miles long it was converted after it closed to goods traffic in 1981 to a mixed use path for walkers, cyclists and horse riders, and a “linear park”, by the county councils of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. This walk between Market Harborough and Desborough uses several miles of the northern section, because it is quick, and fairly interesting walking.

Keep walking straight down the Brampton Way. The initial stretch is through the suburbs of Market Harborough, including having to cross a road.

Soon though you are out into open countryside, and after a mile or so pass a Sustrans National Cycle Route waymark indicating that you are passing from Leicestershire into Northamptonshire.

You continue for another mile or more along the Brampton Valley Way, passing through several shallow cuttings.

Presently you enter a deeper cutting near the edge of the village of Great Oxenden.

Here you encounter the Oxendon Tunnel.

See you on the other side.

The tunnel is almost half a kilometre long and unlit. So some walkers may prefer to take the slight detour through the village of Great Oxendon, over the top of the tunnel. It is well waymarked with several paths forming part of long distance walking routes. You also get to see an impressive dark brick tunnel ventilation shaft.

On the far side of the tunnel you continue a bit further along the Brampton Valley Way.

Soon you reach an open section, used as a car park for dog walkers and others using the Brampton Way as a leisure route, where once there must have been a level crossing across the railway.

Here on the left there is a gate leading out onto a farm track running across fields.

Turn off the Brampton Valley Way here and follow the farm track.

It runs through a couple of gateways and weaves through a farmyard before heading across open fields in the direction of Arthingworth, a little village arrayed on the slopes of a small, but prominent hill.

Upon reaching the edge of Arthingworth turn right and follow the road through the village.

Villages like Arthingworth are a reminder that Northamptonshire is geologically not dissimilar to the Coteswolds, slightly south and to the west.

At a junction with the village’s church to your left, turn left taking the narrower road where it forks.

Walk past the church along the lane for some distance, passing a vast house called the Old Rectory on your right.

Presently there is a waymark point off into a field onto your right. This is the start of the final section of the walk into Desborough which is mostly across fields.

Once in the field head to the left walking downhill towards the line of a fence at the bottom of the hill.

Here with a farmyard on your left there is a gateway leading into an adjacent field.

The farmer who works this bit of land has provided handy homemade footpath signs showing you where to go.

Follow them uphill walking straight ahead.

Keep walking straight ahead following these signs. Here and there, there are standard blue bridleway signs, affixed by the local council (including on a wooden pylon) which show that you are heading the right way.

Presently at the top of a pretty tall hill with impressive views either side, off to your left, there is a wooden gateway.

This marks the boundary between the two new eastern and western Northamptonshire unitary authorities which following the county council’s bankruptcy in 2018, replaced the former district and county councils.

Walk through this gate then follow the farm track on the far side, running around the edge of the field, part way up the ridge.

Keep following this track for a fair distance. Presently a line of tall metal electricity pylons are visible ahead of you crossing the valley.

Approaching them you see a bridleway sign affixed to a small wooden post pointing off to your right.

Approaching them you see a bridleway sign affixed to a small wooden post pointing off to your right.

Here turn off the farm track you have been following heading left.

This leads downhill diagonally across the field.

Having crossed the field you come to a bridge across a stream with a wooden gate on the other side leading onto the side of a country road.

Once through the gate on the side of the road turn right.

On the left beside a stream and a copse there is a farm track running off to the left.

Turn left and follow this farm track for a short distance.

Soon on the right there is a gap through a hedge marked with a footpath sign.

Head into this field.

Here Ordnance Survey indicates that the right of way runs straight across the field. However, I opted to follow a route which it looked like others had trod, to the right down to near the stream, then along a farm track of sorts at the bottom of the field.

Presently you reach the far side of the field.

Here you turn left and follow the track uphill a short distance.

On the right after a short distance is a footpath running up a bank past some sunflowers, or at the remains of sunflowers when I walked the route in early November.

This leads through a fence onto a field.

Once in the field take a path forking to the left straight up a hill, heading for a prominent tree at the top.

Approaching the tree turn and follow the path around to the right along the line of a hedgerow.

This peters out and you cross a short stretch of open field.

Ahead of you lies a fence and some hedges separating the field from a narrow cutting which the A6 running north from the A14 (a major artery between the east coast ports and the Midlands) towards Leicester and beyond passes through.

On reaching the hedgerow turn right and follow it downhill for a short distance.

Presently on the left there is a gateway through the fence and hedgerow.

This leads to a set of concrete steps running down to the A6.

When it’s safe to do so, cross over the road, and up the bank on the far side.

This leads through a thicket to a gate on the left into a field.

Once in the field the south western edge of Desborough is clearly visible.

Follow a path to the right running around the edge of the field.

On the far side of the field the path heads sharply left running up to a gate leading onto a suburban road.

Follow this road for a fair distance passing through the various eras of suburban housing from the 1970s through the interwar period.

Soon the chimney and roof tops of the old Co-operative Wholesale clothing factory become visible on the left.

Opposite the former factory runs a row of terraced houses with Desborough’s church in the distance. It’s a sight which recalls areas far to the north of Northamptonshire, and is a reminder that even the most rural parts of the Midlands have an industrial past (and in many cases – including Desborough – a present as well).

Once on the main road turn left.

Follow the main road uphill a short distance.

It’s worth glancing back for a frontal view of the old Co-operative Wholesale Factory.

Soon on the right there is a road running uphill into the older central part of the town.

Head up this road.

Soon you turn left, opposite the town’s parish church and war memorial.

This leads up the High Street past Desborough Library, towards The George Pub and a little square where a mile post, and a small shopping parade including a small Co-op stand.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Frustratingly whilst Desborough is bisected by the Midlands Mainline it has been many decades since it had a station. From the square on High Street where the walk ends buses run at two hourly intervals from the bus stop back towards Market Harborough, and rather more frequently south towards Kettering (times correct in November 2022). From both Market Harborough and Kettering it is possible to get trains north towards Leicester and south towards London as well as buses towards a range of other destinations such as Northampton and Corby.