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Time Out Country Walks near London Volume 1

Walk 44 : Witley to Haslemere

Chiddingfold & the Crown Inn

Length	15.5km (9.6 miles), 4 hours 40 minutes. For the whole outing, including trains and meals, allow 7 hours 40 minutes.
OS Landranger Map	No.186. Witley, map reference SU 948 379, is in Surrey, 12km south-west of Guildford.
Toughness	2 out of 10.
Features	This is an easy but interesting walk from Witley (where walking sticks used to be made - hence the local copses of ash and sweet-chestnut), passing Lockwood Donkey Sanctuary (open 9am to 5.30pm daily, with free admission; it is also a sanctuary for rabbits, pigeons, geese and deer) and passing Combe Court manor house and its fifteenth-century farmhouse, through the churchyard of St Mary's Church to the medieval village of Chiddingfold, with the Crown Inn as the suggested Lunch stop. After Lunch the walk is through Frillinghurst Wood and various National Trust estates, coming out into Haslemere High Street near a tearoom.
Shortening the Walk	Buses run, approximately once an hour, from outside the lunchtime pub in Chiddingfold to Haslemere.
History	Chiddingfold's main splendour is the lunchtime pub, the twelfth-century Crown Inn. In the late fourteenth century, the publican was convicted of selling ale 'contrary to the assize' (courts tested ale by pouring some on to a wooden bench, then sitting on it - if it had a sticky quality, it was pronounced good). In 1552, Edward VI stayed at this inn, while his 4,000-strong retinue camped on the green. Chiddingfold was the centre of the stained glass industry between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the foreigners who ran it were driven out by an edict of Elizabeth I, in response to local petitions. The village was isolated enough to be able to keep working through the plague years, supplying stained glass for St Stephen's Chapel at Westminster in the 1350s. In the churchyard of thirteenth-century St Mary's Church in Chiddingfold, there is a 1776 epitaph to Arthur Stedman, blacksmith: 'My fire is out, my forge decay'dŠ ' The town of Haslemere is lucky to be surrounded by National Trust land in almost every direction - thanks to the campaigns in the early 1900s of Sir Robert Hunter, one of the National Trust's founders, who lived in Haslemere. In Tudor and Stuart times Haslemere was a centre for the iron industry. With the coming of the railway in the mid-nineteenth century it became a popular spot for literary people. The poet Tennyson's house, Aldworth, is on the slopes of Black Down where he loved to walk; and George Eliot wrote Middlemarch in Shottermill. The town has an interesting museum up the High Street, 100 metres north of the Georgian Hotel. The museum is open 10am to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday, and has a fine explanatory display of local wild flowers in the foyer. Other highlights include an Egyptian mummy showing the toes of one foot and an observation beehive.
Lunch	The suggested lunchtime stop is the Crown Inn tel 01428 682 255) in Chiddingfold, which serves Lunch midday to 2.30pm daily; groups of more than ten people should phone to book. The Swan ppub and the Old Bakery also both serve food at lunchtime.

Driving	Start: Witley Station is near : GU8 5TD [gmap] Finish: Haslemere Station is near : GU27 1DB [gmap] Return to your car by train: (park at the start) at 4pm (park at the end) at 10am
Train Travel	Out: Back:
Warning	The text above was taken from an older edition of the book, and is a little out of date. Please check the updates for this walk.

Driving

Start: Witley Station is near : GU8 5TD [gmap]

Finish: Haslemere Station is near : GU27 1DB [gmap]

Return to your car by train:

(park at the start) at 4pm
(park at the end) at 10am

Train Travel

Out:
Back:

Warning

The text above was taken from an older edition of the book, and is a little out of date. Please check the updates for this walk.

Walking Instructions

For a map and detailed walking instruction, please see Time Out Country Walks near London Volume 1