Distance: 4.5 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from central Wolverhampton to the National Trust’s Moseley Old Hall, passing through Wolverhampton’s northeastern suburbs, crossing Bushbury Hill, and heading out into the countryside.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
My Kingdom for a Bed?
Constructed in around 1600 under the orders of the wealthy mercantile Pitt family, Moseley Old Hall sits a stone’s throw from Staffordshire’s county boundary with Wolverhampton and West Midlands county.
This property, which looks like a substantial farmhouse, having been re-fronted with brick in the 1870s, though the higgledy-piggled wooden interior dates back the the early 17th Century is primarily notable for one forty eight hour period in 1651.
It was in the September of that year when, like nearby Boscobel House with its infamous oak tree, the future Charles II hid out there escaping Parliamentary forces after his unsuccessful attempt to take back the English throne from the post civil wars English Commonwealth at the Battle of Worcester.
The wonderfully bonkers, six hundred and twenty five mile long, Monarch’s Way long distance footpath which charts the route Charles Stuart fled, runs along the land outside.
While staying at Moseley Old Hall a small group of Parliamentary soldiers passed along the lane in front of the house, then a major thoroughfare up towards Stafford, causing Charles to hide in the property’s priest hole. The soldiers did not in fact stop and attempt to search the house.
Moseley Old Hall’s owners the Whitgrave’s (who had attained the property through marrying into the Pitt’s who had built the house) were like a substantial minority of the gentry in the western Midlands secretly Roman Catholic. They retained their own priest to preside over mass for the family, hear confessions, and so on. Their priest Father John Huddleston was like the Whitgrave family remembered by Charles when he later took the throne. Huddleston was given a special dispensation exempting him from the ban on serving as a Roman Catholic priest in England which pertained at the time. He was even invited at the end of Charles’ life in a highly controversial action to read the monarch the last rites.
The Whitgrave family remained at Moseley Old Hall until the 1820s when the far grander Moseley “new hall” was constructed a little nearer to Wolverhampton. It now sits inside the city’s boundary. Moseley Old Hall then became a farmhouse leased out by the Whitgrave’s, with the house taking on its current appearance in the 1870s when the original early modern timbered exterior was replaced with brick. This followed a fire in 1864 which nearly saw the property destroyed and which may have encouraged the resolution to rebuild the exterior in brick.
In 1925 the Whitgrave family sold the property. For the next forty or so years Moseley Old Hall’s future looked uncertain, with the house’s condition slowly deteriorating, despite some of the property’s owners attempts to restore the house.
By this time the property’s connections to Charles II and the wider history of Catholic Recusancy in early modern England was widely known and attracting attention. This led to the National Trust agreeing to take on the property in the early 1960s, supported by an energetic fundraising campaign to support the property’s restoration, which attracted wide support in the Wolverhampton area.
Since the mid-1960s Moseley Old Hall has been managed by the National Trust and open to visitors. In 1962 a knot garden in a fashion which would have been popular in the mid-17th Century was created adjacent to the hall.
The old studded back door through which the future Charles II purportedly interested the property remains and is now how visitors enter the building. Moseley Old Hall also retains the bed which he slept in, positioned where it probably stood, and other relevant items of ephemera related to Charles II and the mid-17th Century which has been donated to the property. After the Whitgraves sold the property in 1925 the bed where the future Charles II slept was bought by the Mander family who owned nearby Wightwick Manor. A property which is also now part of the National Trust’s patrimony, leading to the bed being restored to Moseley Old Hall after the National Trust took it on.
Moseley Old Hall’s setting was altered in the early 1980s when the M54 from Wolverhampton to Telford was constructed just north of the property’s boundary. Massing and the planting of a thick screen of trees means that the carriageway is not visible from Moseley Old Hall or its grounds but the sound of traffic is very apparent.
The National Trust’s stewardship of Moseley Old Hall has also changed over the years. Adjacent land has been purchased to expand beyond the building’s immediate outbuildings and gardens, adding woodland and meadows to the site. The woodland area is now home to den building areas and a treehouse for children. While a property is underway to increase the diversity and species variety in the meadow area, to enhance the area’s biodiversity and sustainability.
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 to the National Trust’s Moseley Old Hall on Wolverhampton’s eastern fringe just over the boundary with Staffordshire, begins at Wolverhampton Railway Station.
Upon leaving Wolverhampton Railway Station by its main exit onto the forecourt walk straight ahead towards the white suspension bridge leading into the city centre.
Just prior to reaching the bridge there is a footpath off to the left waymarked for the canal.
Turn left here, then right, to reach a pavement next to the busy St. David’s ring road around the centre of the city.
Once on the pavement turn right, walking beneath the bridge from the station across the road into central Wolverhampton.
Keep walking straight along the pavement on the other side of the bridge. Next to you on the right runs the Birmingham Canal Navigation Main Line. Which you soon will join.
Presently you come to a junction with traffic lights which you cross.
Here there is a small canal wharf surrounded by parkland. Turn right after crossing the road, then left onto the canal towpath.
Once on the canal towpath, keep heading right walking straight ahead.
The first phase of the walk is through a primarily industrial area on the edge of Wolverhampton city centre.
Then past the tall chimney of the city’s incinerator.
Just beyond the incinerator, you come to a bridge across the canal. Here at the bridge turn right coming off the canal and enter Fowler’s Park.
Follow a wide tarmac path running along to the right again, along the wooded edge of the park.
Keep walking straight for quite some distance passing through a wooded area and heading down a dip past a large pool.
Beyond the pool keep on walking straight ahead along the path passing along the side of a playing field.
At the top of the playing field there is a metal gate leading out onto a railway line with factory buildings on the other side.
Checking if it is safe to do so, pass through the gate and cross the tracks heading through a corresponding gate on the far side.
Having passed through the gate, the path runs sharply to the right, before leading you to walk straight ahead along a wide snicket leading past the factory to a main road.
Upon reaching the road cross over and heading to the left down a broad tree lined road called Park Lane which runs along the edge of the Falling Park and Low Hill estates.
Continue walking for some distance straight ahead until you come to the mouth of a road called Second Avenue running off to the left.
Keep on walking straight up Second Avenue, walking through a series of wide crescents, lined with interwar era council built homes.
Presently after quite some distance you come out onto an even larger crescent with a little park type area in the centre fringed with shops. Here, turn right and walk around the crescent.
After crossing one road and continuing along past a scrap of railing off waste ground you reach Leacroft Avenue running off to the right back into a residential area.
Carry on walking along Leacroft Avenue for quite some distance, presently starting to walk up a hill.
Soon you come out at a road where the country park centred upon Bushbury Hill begins.
Cross over the road here and walk straight ahead passing through a metal gate.
Carry on uphill along a bridleway.
After some distance you come out at the top of Bushbury Hill which stands 184 metres above sea level with great views across the northern Black Country and out into the Staffordshire and Shropshire countryside beyond.
Continue straight ahead on bridleway along the ridge at the top of Bushbury Hill.
Presently, on the edge of the cemetery which stands on the slopes to the north of Bushbury Hill the bridleway runs sharply to the right.
Turn right and follow the bridleway downhill.
Soon at the bottom of the slope you come out on the edge of a housing estate right on the northern edge of Wolverhampton.
Here walk straight ahead along a grass verge on the edge of the housing estate. Soon off to the left there is a path which runs for a little way behind a hedgerow. Follow this path for a short distance until you reach the side of a busy main road.
Upon reaching the main road turn left and walk along a pavement crossing the entrances to the cemetery and passing through woodland.
Presently ahead of you on the right hand side of the road just in front of a roundabout there stands an old farm now partially converted to a cafe.
Just before you reach it there is a place where you can cross the road onto a pavement on the far side. Having crossed the road turn left and keep on walking past the old farm building towards the roundabout.
Beyond the old farm building, turn right and head down a short stretch of cycle path towards a narrow old lane now redesignated as soley for the use of pedestrians and cyclists.
Keep on walking straight ahead along this tarmac path lined with trees giving it a feel akin to a green lane.
Continue walking straight ahead until you reach a bridleway sign pointing off to the right. Upon reaching this sign turn right up the bridleway.
Keep on walking straight ahead along the bridleway heading into woodland.
Carry on walking straight down through the trees crossing a stream.
A little way further on having crossed the stream you come out on the side of a lane. It is quite busy so take care as you begin walking along it.
Upon reaching the lane turn right and walk along the lane for some distance.
Presently off to the right you reach a sign for Moseley Old Hall pointing down a narrower lane to the left.
Turn left down this lane and continue walking for some distance until you walk past the car park and the main Moseley Old Hall house building to reach the entrance to the property.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
No buses call especially close to Moseley Old Hall. However, there are numerous bus routes which run frequently from Wolverhampton’s north western suburbs near the hall back into the city. At the time of writing in March 2024 the nearest bus route to Moseley Old Hall was the hourly until early evening 65 bus into Wolverhampton via Wednesfield. Stops for this service where reachable by retracing your steps and continuing along the main public road for accessing the hall until you reach a primary road where a little way to the left past a couple of modern housing estates there are bus stops for the 65.