ROUTE DESCRIPTION - Walk 20 – Goring and Mapledurham
OS Explorer Maps required: 171
Approximate distance: 13.4 miles
Start at car park in Goring-on-Thames (SU 599808).
ANTI-CLOCKWISE
From the car park in Goring, go out to the High Street and turn left. DON’T cross the bridges over the Thames, instead turn left onto the path along the river bank (this is part of the Thames Path). Follow the path close to the river for about 1.5 miles. A few hundred yards after passing under a railway bridge, the path turns left to reach a bridleway near Gatehampton Manor. Turn right and follow the bridleway for about 2 miles (it becomes a surfaced drive after about 1½ miles) to reach a road on the edge of Whitchurch-on-Thames (SU 633776).
Turn right, and carefully follow the road round a bend, then take the road going left (thus leaving the route of the Thames Path). Follow this out of Whitchurch (there is initially a path on the bank on the left of the road) and continue for about a mile. When the lane turns sharp left, continue ahead on a bridleway along the drive to Hardwick House. Near the house the drive splits into three – take the leftmost track. Continue on the bridleway until it ends on a lane just north of Mapledurham (SU 672771). It is well worth a short detour to the right to visit this interesting and isolated old estate village.
Turn left, away from the village. When the lane turns sharply right, take the bridleway going ahead to Bottom Farm. Just past the farm and some cottages, turn right onto a footpath following a right-hand hedge. Near the top of the hill, the path goes over a stile and joins a farm track on the other side of the hedgeline. Follow the track past Whittle Farm to a minor road. Take the path almost opposite, which follows a left-hand field boundary, before going through a metal kissing-gate and continuing through Nuney Wood. It then passes between gardens and goes through a wooden gate. Turn left and follow the path ahead through the isolated dwellings of Nuney Green and then on through more woods (eventually with fields on your right) to reach Deadman’s Lane (SU 663800).
Continue across the road on another path through woods. After about quarter of a mile, the right of way turns to the left. It soon reaches a T-junction of paths, where you turn right. Ignore a path going left, and follow the white arrows right at a fork. The OS map now shows a rather complicated junction, but in fact the bridleway just seems to go straight ahead over a crossing bridleway. When you reach a bridleway crossroads by a corner of a field (ahead and to your right), turn left, close to the boundary between Common Wood and Birchen Copse. Cross a road and continue on the bridleway until you reach a crossroads of rights of way, where you turn right (Note: DO NOT take the obvious forestry track going right, the path is a few yards before that, rather indistinct but as usual marked by white arrows on trees). The path soon goes over a stile in a wire fence. At the next path junction turn left. Go straight on when the path crosses a muddy track or drive, and follow the path all the way to a road (the B4526) just east of Cray’s Pond (SU 640804).
Take the footpath on the other side of the road. This goes diagonally across some school playing fields and an area of rough grass (it might be more polite to walk round the edge of the sports pitch rather than across it). Cross another road and take the bridleway almost opposite, initially along a hard-surfaced track. Follow the bridleway for about a mile until you reach a bridleway junction (Note: this is actually a four-way junction, not the three-way junction shown on the map). Take the path ahead, which immediately turns left. At the next junction, turn right onto a footpath through Great Chalk Wood (joining the route of the southern extension of the Chiltern Way, waymarked but not shown on the OS map). Keep right at a couple of forks, following the Chiltern Way signs. On leaving the wood, the path follows a hedgerow on the right, passing a cemetery at the top of the hill. It then crosses a playing field on the edge of Goring. Follow the residential street ahead, which goes left, then right. At the end turn left, and turn right at the T-junction. Turn left at the next road junction, crossing over the railway line to return to the pedestrian entrance to the car park.
The Oxfordshire village of Goring-on-Thames is situated in the Goring Gap, where the river Thames has carved a route between the Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs. Across the bridge over the Thames here lies Streatley, in Berkshire. Goring is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and the village church dates to the time of the Normans – it was originally dedicated to St Mary, but was later re-dedicated to St Thomas a Becket. Goring Priory, an Augustinian establishment, was founded around 1200 – at the time of the dissolution in 1536, there was only the Prioress and three nuns still in residence.
The whole village of Mapledurham still belongs to the Mapledurham estate, which has not allowed any new development for over a hundred years, which is one reason why the village retains its old-world charm. The idyllic and isolated riverside setting also adds to its attractions. Mapledurham House has been the home of the Blount family and their descendants since 1490. Part of the house is fifteenth-century, but most of it is built of red-brick dating from 1585-1588, with nineteenth-century alterations. The house was visited by Elizabeth I, and is mentioned in John Galsworthy’s “Forsyte Saga” (it is Soames Forsyte’s home). St Margaret’s church dates back to the late 13th century, and contains a private Roman Catholic chapel belonging to the Blounts. The watermill here is the oldest one on the river Thames, and the only one to still be working (my parents’ neighbour Tony was brought up in the village, and remembers taking corn to the mill to be ground into flour). There was a mill here at the time of the Domesday Book, but most of the current mill dates from the fifteenth century, with additions in the 1670’s and around 1700. The mill features in the 1976 film “The eagle has landed” and on the cover of a Black Sabbath album. The village also has almshouses (now converted into two cottages) that date from 1613.