Additional information
Terrain
- Tracks and paths, some lanes around Ashwell
Landscape
- Arable chalk downs and muddy plain
Dog friendliness
- Mostly arable land, some cattle approaching Ashwell
Parking
- East end of High Street, outside United Reformed Church
Toilets en route
- Recreation Ground off Lucas Lane
About the walk
One of the most moving things you will see on any of these walks is the graffiti on the north wall inside the tower of St Mary's Church in Ashwell. High up the wall is a graffito inscription in Latin, which translated says 'The first plague was in 1349', and lower down a more desperate one,... 'Miserable, wild, distracted, the dregs of the people alone survive to witness, 1350', while the last in the series refers to a great storm, 'At the end of the second (plague) a tempest full mighty this year 1361 St Maur thunders in the heavens'. Black Death The graffiti bear a remarkable witness to the Black Death, the bubonic plague spread by fleas, that swept into England from the Continent and Asia in 1348. It was devastating, particularly as the harvests had failed repeatedly since 1314 and already large areas were unploughed. It is thought that a third of the population died in the first outbreaks. No-one was immune: the Abbot of St Albans, Michael of Mentmore, and 47 of his monks died of the plague in April 1349 alone. The scrawlings give an awesome insight into the state of mind of Ashwell's residents, but the January storms, which did great damage and would have seemed to be the final blow, probably cleared out the plague for a while and gave the community a chance to recover. Defiant spike There are other equally interesting pieces of graffiti, including a 15th-century drawing of old St Paul's Cathedral in London and, elsewhere in the church, one by a bitter mason or builder which translates 'The corners are not pointed (mortared) correctly – I spit'. The tower is an immense piece of work – one could speculate that it eventually rose as a defiance or commemoration of the tribulations of the village. At 176ft (54m), it can be seen for miles around with its three storeys, massive angle buttresses and crowning 'Hertfordshire spike' spire. Ashwell itself is an interesting village. There is a museum in an early 16th-century, timber-framed building, originally built as the local estate office for the Abbey of Westminster, which owned the manor until 1540. Ashwell was a market town and one of five in the county recorded in the Domesday Book. To the west, Caldecote is a deserted, medieval village whose economic viability probably received a serious setback from the Black Death. Owned by St Albans Abbey, it was deserted by 1428 and now consists of just a moated manor house (rebuilt around 1500) and a small church.
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