Distance: 5.2 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps
Walk from Wellesbourne due west of Stratford-upon-Avon through the Warwickshire countryside to Compton Verney art gallery and parkland.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Saved by the Pools
Sat amidst grounds landscaped by Capability Brown in the 1760s and 1770s Compton Verney due east of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire looks every inch the Midlands stately home.
Unlike many stately homes in the region which have gone to the national trust, been converted into hotels and private schools, or occasionally remain in private hands one way or another, Compton Verney has since 2004 been open as an art gallery.
Compton Verney’s origins story is typically of a stately home of its type. The property was preceded by the now vanished village of Compton Murdak, now remembered in the name of the park’s Old Town Meadow.
The first house was constructed in the 1440s and its medieval core was adapted constantly throughout the centuries up until the dawn of the Georgian era. In 1713 the house was still owned by the Verney family who had first constructed it more than two hundred and fifty years earlier. It was George Verney who had inherited Compton Verney as the 12th Baron Willoughby de Broke in 1711 and he decided to more or less completely replace the existing house.
He poured his wealth into reconstructing the house along the neo-classical lines of Blenheim Palace which was then being built not a million miles away near Oxford. Albeit on a much, much smaller scale. It was later generations of Verney’s who engaged Capability Brown to landscape the grounds and who tweaked the house into a shape akin to that which it takes today.
It was Richard Greville Verney the 19th Baron Willoughby de Broke who eventually sold the property due to mounting bills and falling agricultural profitability in the late 19th and early 20th Century. The house left the family’s possession in 1921.
Like many of the Midlands stately homes Compton Verney was bought by an industrialist. In Compton Verney’s case, Joseph Watson a Leeds businessman whose main home was near Wetherby.
After his death in 1922 not long after acquiring Compton Verney, the family sold the property on (having controversially disposed of the medieval stained glass in the house’s chapel separately).
It has not been used as a country house since, having stood empty for most of the inter-war period before being pressed into use as an army camouflage experimentation and training centre during the Second World War. After World War Two the property’s new owner continued to keep it empty but occasionally allowed film crews to use the house and parkland as a set. Films made there fittingly include Peter Hall’s 1968 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
By the 1980s the house and its surroundings were increasingly derelict. A situation which did not improve after an ill-fated project to build a large opera house in the park fell through.
Eventually in 1993 Compton Verney was bought by the Peter Moores Foundation. Peter Moores had made the money underpinning his eponymous foundation, dedicated to promoting the arts and music, through the Littlewoods Football Pools and catalogue mail order company. The Foundation existed from 1964 until 2014 when its funds were exhausted.
Transforming the house and parkland into an art gallery took around a decade and £45 million in funding. The project was designed and overseen by the Stanton Williams firm of architects. 1998 saw the first exhibition – featuring the Folk Art Collection bought from Andras Kalman – take place on the restored ground floor of the property. And following further works the gallery opened in full in 2004. Work to restore the parkland continues.
Today the gallery exhibits and produces artworks and events in the refurbished house and grounds. The permanent collection consists of the Folk Art Collection, as well as Neapolitan art from 1600 to 1800, Northern European medieval art from 1450–1650, British portraits including paintings of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Edward VI and works by Joshua Reynolds, Chinese bronzes including objects from the Neolithic and Shang periods, and the Enid Marx/Margaret Lambert Collection of folk art from around the world. As well as a wide array of new commissions and visiting exhibitions which changes several times a year.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps
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Wellesbourne is a large village (arguably a small town, complete with at least one large out of town supermarket) and the nearest substantial settlement to the fairly remote location of Compton Verney art gallery and parkland.
Its relatively small historic core is surrounded by several generations of post-war housing developments, the most recent of which completed this century, have swelled the settlement’s population to around 8,000.
Wellesbourne is served by several bus services including the pretty frequent 15 (at least in February 2023 when this walk was created) between Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick/Leamington Spa, all of which have railway stations.
The 15 sets down passengers near the centre of Wellesbourne close to a half timbered pub called The Stags Head. One of the villages pubs and the place where the National Agricultural Labourers Union established by Joseph Arch in Wellesbourne in 1872 first met. This is where the walk begins.
More or less immediately opposite The Stags Head there is a residential road running off to the left. Turn left and follow this road.
Remain on the road for some distance as it runs towards the edge of Wellesbourne through a residential area.
Presently you come to a junction. Here take the right hand fork.
Walking a little further towards a small 2000s or 2010s vintage housing estate you come to a footpath on your left.
Turn left and walk along this footpath.
Follow the clearly marked out footpath for quite some distance across a series of fields.
Eventually you come to a metal bridge on your left leading into the compound of a riding centre.
On the far side of the bridge turn left heading slightly uphill towards a fence.
At the top of the fence turn right, then right again to follow a track leading across the yard of the riding centre.
On the far side of the riding centre’s yard keep walking straight ahead down a bridleway sandwiched between a barn and the side of an isolated house’s back garden.
Heading out into open fields once more, you continue along the bridleway for some distance crossing between fields.
After a churned up patch of ground the bridleway peters out somewhat, but keep walking straight ahead towards an old tree in the corner of the field in front of you.
At the old tree keep heading right, walking across the field in front of you.
This leads out onto a farm track just down from farm buildings.
Once on the track turn right. There is a ford in front of you across the River Dene, with a metal footbridge off to the left.
Having crossed the river, continue walking out onto a public road in front of you.
On reaching the public road turn left and walk along the side of the road – which was moderately busy with cars when I walked the route – necessitating care, heading in the direction of the small village of Walton.
Keep walking through Walton, taking the right hand fork when you come to a junction.
Continue along the road heading out of the village. Ahead of you, you see the grand Victorian era Walton Hall ahead of you. Another of south Warwickshire’s historic stately homes, this one now a Mercure hotel.
When nearly level with Walton Hall you reach its driveway off to your left.
Turn left here and walk along the driveway as it curves round approaching the hotel complex.
After a short distance you cross a bridge over an ornamental lake created by damming the River Dene.
On the far side of the bridge continue a little further towards the hall, then take a left turn along a diagonal track across the hotel’s back lawn.
This leads to a road which doubles up as a car park, where you turn left again walking alongside a cluster of modern buildings adjacent to the main house which is now a hotel.
At the end of this road-cum-carpark there is a fence, to the right of which runs a bridleway track.
Turn right and follow this track through a gate and across the parkland.
After some distance you come to a fence where the track you have been walking along turns sharply to the right. Here in front of you there is a gate leading out into a ploughed field with a bridleway sign pointing into it.
Walk through this gate onto the track running along the edge of the field. Here turn immediately right, walking across the field (there was the faint outline of a track as if it is sometimes used by heavy machinery when I walked the route.
On the far side of the field you come to a bridleway sign pointing right, towards a path into woodland.
Head right here and follow the track through the woodland, it makes for a kind of green lane.
This leads out onto a grass strip along the side of a field which you follow heading for a gate on the far side.
Walk through the gate then walk straight up a paved road, up a fairly steep hill to the side of a main road at the top.
The name of this road is Fosse Way, a major road originally built by the Romans (though it may possibly have been a key thoroughfare even prior to that).
Once beside the Fosse Way, cross over the road to walk along the verge on the far side, then turn left.
A little way down you come to the country lane which runs off down to the village of Coombrook.
Turn left here and begin walking downhill.
Presently, after several minutes walking you see the village below you and you walk down a steep slope towards it.
Enter the outskirts of the village and walk a short distance into it until you reach a junction.
Here turn left, then left again walking along a residential road.
At the bottom of this road you come to a gate leading into the grounds of a large house. Head onto the house’s driveway, partway down just before you reach the house, turn left and walk up a track towards a farmyard.
On the edge of the farmyard there is a footpath sign pointing to the right.
Head down this footpath walking in the direction of a stand of trees with a lake beyond.
Just before you reach the side of the lake there is a gate. Head through the gate then turn left.
Walk along the path to the left through the woodland. You are now walking through the Compton Verney estate.
Presently the path leaves the woodland.
Here follow a line of wooden marker posts with footpath way markers on them across the field heading broadly in the direction of a cluster of farm buildings in the distance.
Presently ahead of you there is a metal gate leading out onto a track.
Head onto this track then turn right.
Keep walking down the track until you come to a main road.
Compton Verney is now just a couple of hundred metres in front of you, but to get to the entrance to the art gallery and park, turn right and begin walking along the verge beside the road.
Presently you cross a bridge over Compton Verney’s ornamental parkland lake.
After the bridge you continue a short distance along the road approaching the sign for the entrance to Compton Verney.
Upon reaching the driveway leading up to the entrance kiosk turn right.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
Compton Verney is served directly from the main entrance to the grounds by the 77 bus which runs half a dozen or so times a day back and forth between Banbury and Stratford-upon-Avon (in February 2023 when this route was compiled at least). Be sure to check online for the latest times, the best returns to Stratford (again in February 2023) were 14:28 and 16:54, with a final bus at 18:40, but this is over an hour after Compton Verney usually closes. Other public transport options, including more services to Banbury as well as Leamington Spa, are available from Kineton, a large village several miles east of Compton Verney.