Great Chalfield from Holt

Threaded by the busy B3107 linking Melksham to Bradford-on-Avon, Holt is a rare industrial Wiltshire village with a significant history as a cloth-making and leather-tanning centre. The tannery, founded in the early 18th century, still occupies the main three-storey factory in the appropriately named small industrial area – The Midlands – while bedding manufacture and light engineering now occupy former cloth factories. Holt also enjoyed short-lived fame between 1690 and 1750 as a spa, based on the curative properties of a spring, but its popularity declined in the face of competition from nearby Bath. The most attractive part of the village is at Ham Green where elegant 17th and 18th-century houses stand along three sides of a fine green shaded by horse chestnut trees, and a quiet lane leads to the late Victorian parish church.

Secret garden and Tudor chimneys

From the green a walled walk leads to The Courts, a substantial 18th century house that served, as its name suggests, as the place where the local magistrate sat to adjudicate in the disputes of the cloth weavers from Bradford-on-Avon. Although not open, the house makes an attractive backdrop to 7 acres (2.8ha) of authentic English country garden owned by the National Trust. Hidden away behind high walls and reached through an avenue of pleached limes, you will find a series of garden ‘rooms’. Stroll along a network of stone paths through formal gardens featuring yew topiary, lawns with colourful herbaceous borders, a lake and a lily pond with aquatic and watertolerant plants, and explore an area given over to wild flowers among an interesting small arboretum of trees and shrubs.

You will glimpse the Tudor chimneys and gabled windows of Great Chalfield Manor as you stride across peaceful field paths a mile (1.6km) or so northwest of Holt. Enhanced by a moat and gatehouse, this fine group of buildings will surely live up to your expectations and really must be visited. Built by Thomas Tropenell in 1480 during the Wars of the Roses, Great Chalfield is one of the most perfect examples of the late medieval English manor house which, with its adjacent church, mill, great barn and other Elizabethan farm buildings, makes a harmonious visual group. Sensitively restored in the early 20th century by Sir Harold Brakspear after two centuries of neglect and disrepair, the manor house is centred on its traditional great hall, which rises to the rafters and is lit by windows, including two beautiful oriels, positioned high in the walls.

Join one of the guided tours and you will be able to see the fine vaulting, the chimney place of the hall, the concealed spy-holes in the gallery designed to allow people to see what was going on in the great hall, and the amusing ornaments, gargoyles and other fascinating details of this fine building.

Turn left out of the car park and then right along the B3107 through the village. Before reaching the Old Ham Tree pub, turn right along Ground Corner. At the end of the lane, take the waymarked path left along a drive. Bear right and follow the fenced path beside Highfields to a kissing gate.

Keep to the right along the edge of the field, then keep going straight ahead in the next field, towards the clump of fir trees. Continue following the worn path to the right, into a further field. Keep left along the field edge to a stile in the top corner, maintain direction to a gate and cross the metalled drive and stile opposite. Bear diagonally left through the field to a stile level with the clump of trees to your right, then turn immediately left over a hidden stile in the hedge to a lane.

Emerge carefully and turn right along the lane. At a junction, turn right towards Great Chalfield and go through the kissing gate almost immediately on your left. Take the arrowed path right, diagonally across a large field towards Great Chalfield Manor, visible ahead.

Go through a kissing gate and bear slightly right down to a gate. Cross a footbridge over a stream, go through a gate, and bear diagonally left across the field to another bridge. Cross it and go ahead beside the hedge to a metalled track by a barn.

Turn right, then right again when you reach the lane, passing in front of Great Chalfield Manor. At the sharp right-hand bend, go through the gate ahead and bear right across a field. Cross a footbridge over a stream and walk straight on up a field beside woodland to a kissing gate in the corner.

Cross a track and follow the left-hand field edge to a kissing gate, then follow the path straight ahead towards a chimney on the skyline. Go through a gate, bear immediately right to a gate in the hedge and turn right along the path around the field edge.

Ignore the stile on your right and continue to the field corner and a raised path beside water. Go through a gate and turn left along the field edge to a further gate on your left. Join the drive past Glove Factory Studios to the road. Turn right, back to the car park.