Walks in Little Shelford
By Tony Westbrook
Little Shelford on the surface seems to be a very average south Cambridgeshire village, but beneath its estate agent’s charm of being ‘one of the most sought-after villages near Cambridge’, and the ‘ever popular village of Little Shelford’ with its ‘desirable South Cambridge location’, Little Shelford is a genuinely interesting place with plenty of history and some very intriguing places to walk to and explore.
Dwarfed by its bigger sister, Great Shelford, you might think Little Shelford would have an inferiority complex, but far from it. Admittedly, Great Shelford has all the shops including two supermarkets and one of the best butchers in the county (and it used to have a choice of banks), but it does still have a thriving village school, which has always served both villages, and a railway station that has direct trains to London or Cambridge.
Meanwhile, Little Shelford lost its shops and most of its pubs many years ago, although one pub does still remain in place (although as I write in autumn 2024 it is closed pending re-opening under a new owner) and another former pub, The Chequers in Church Street, was turned into Winners, the Fish and Chip and Chinese take away. There is also an extremely active church community (based at the beautiful old church), a thriving cricket team, a bowls club and a badminton club, which meets in the rebuilt village hall, in the centre of the village.
But what I want to help publicise are the walks and footpaths that can be made in and around Little Shelford. All of the walks listed below are assumed to start from All Saints Church in Church Street, but you can start from anywhere in the village and I have prepared a sketch map showing their routes.
One of the first walks to do (1) is a simple walk around the village, around what we always used to call ‘the little triangle’, comprising Church Street, most of the High Street, then along a small footpath called ‘The Terrace’ (with a prominent sign saying ‘No horses or bikes’) to the Whittlesford Road, coming out where there are some small offices and local businesses. It is really a truncated triangle – a longer walk (2) goes the whole way around the village on the full triangle by going down to the end of the High Street and turning sharp right back down the Whittlesford Road and back to the junction of Church Street and Bridge Lane, although one has to beware, as there are no footpaths in places and one has to walk on the grass verge.
The aptly named Bridge Lane is the only link to Great Shelford, and includes not one but two bridges over the River Granta or Cam. Generations of school children have enjoyed walking this way to and from school. The river is temporarily divided here, with the furthest branch forming the parish boundary with Great Shelford. The road itself is a pleasant walk (3) on its own, leading as it does to Great Shelford but it is worth a detour to the right down Kings Mill Lane (4), where it is always a delight to watch the ducks swimming in the pool below the mill and listening to the water pouring through the old mill building itself. On the way you will pass the cottage identified by a Blue Plaque that was home to the author Phillippa Pearce, who wrote ‘Minnow on the Say’ here, all about two boys having an adventure canoeing on the river.
Just opposite Kings Mill Lane there is a Permissive Footpath (5) called ‘Jenny’s Path’ (I am not sure why it is called that?) which heads northwards beside the farm buildings, towards Hauxton, along the side of the river (make sure you go down the slope to be as close to the river as possible). The path here is like a delightful sunken road at this point, with views over the water meadows back towards Little Shelford Manor House. It then goes under the railway (requiring the wearing of wellington boots if it has rained) and after a bracing walk alongside the fields (if it is windy), it then goes beneath the M11, ending up at Hauxton Mill. Be sure to take the path on the left when you get to the main road, and walk along the old roadway right in front of the vacant Victorian mill building, turning left again to follow the river back towards Hauxton. The route runs beside the new housing estate to get to a path over the field leading back to the historic St Edmunds church, which is only rarely open to view. If you then continue back along the road to Little Shelford, there is a paved footpath all the way, so this will allow you a circular walk of about 8km.
There is a short walk (6) down Manor Lane, an un-gated Private Road, but it gives you a good view of the handsome Georgian Manor House. The lane does not go anywhere else nowadays, apart from some private houses, the vicar’s manse and some horse paddocks. In the past, you used to be able to go up the cart-track behind Howards Farm, over a railway crossing, and alongside the river, to some woods near Hauxton, but only with the farmers consent – not that we ever asked as young boys, when I grew up in the village in the 1960s. The level crossing here has disappeared now, so not a walk to recreate.
Another easy walk is along the other private road at the far end of Church Street called Garden Fields, which anyone can access (7), as it leads to ‘Blennies Patch’ – the area of land sold at a discount to the Parish Council by Blennie Powell, one of the relatives of the Wale family who owned the manor house and a lot of land in the village. Blennies Patch contains the village allotments and SCOWP, The Little Shelford Orchard and Woodland Project, a lovely area of newly planted trees and wild flower meadows, ideal for observing nature in peaceful surroundings. A few years ago, after a big campaign, the village tried unsuccessfully to resurrect an old footpath that lead from the end of Garden Fields southwards alongside the brook beside the fields, to the Cinder Track (see below), but unfortunately this was unsuccessful, despite a public enquiry being held. Hopefully the new owners of Hall Farm (which is currently for sale and who own much of the land in question), will take a more enlightened view. If you look hard, you can still see where the old path went at the end of Garden Fields, going across the brook to the left and then along a cart-track as far as the end of Clunch Pit Lane.
Of course, one of the commonest walks in the village (8) is around the Wale Recreation Ground, accessed from the Whittlesford Road or direct from Courtyards, with its lovely riverside path with large plane and chestnut trees overhanging the water, near the Bowls Club. When the river floods, the bottom half of the Rec is overwhelmed, including the bowls pitch, but apart from that, it is fine and safe to walk. The Rec was an earlier gift from the Wale family to the village and is home to the village cricket team and a fine pavilion, rebuilt a few years ago to form a multi-purpose meeting space.
There was another old footpath, also not confirmed by the public enquiry, which used to go through the woods from the bottom of the Rec, behind Courtyards, and joined up with the old farm track popularly known as The Cow Walk, which runs down from the Whittlesford Road to a small bridge over the stream in the woods. It leads to the lovely water meadows by the river, but the track is now a private road leading to Little Shelford Farm. It was an incredibly muddy walk, as it was used twice a day by the cows coming up from the fields to be milked at Hall Farm, hence the name ‘the cow walk’ but is now paved.
Nearly opposite the entrance to the old Cow Walk, just past the tip of the Triangle, is one of Little Shelford’s hidden gems, a public footpath (9) leading to a small picnic area with a picnic bench situated beside the village pond. There you can watch the ducks swimming, herons standing and lillies flowering in the summer months. The footpath (which is known as Bradmere Lane) then leads about half a mile in a straight line down to the old clunch pits, which one can walk around, and there is an old bridge over the brook to the old path. Bradmere Lane is one of the nicest walks in Little Shelford on a summer’s day, as there are no houses or cars to interrupt the peace, and even the motorway does not seem to invade the space. Until fairly recently you could also turn left at the end, and cross over the private grass airstrip to link up to the Cinder Track, which I believe used to be a permissive path, until a past owner (and/or pilot) apparently got too worried about people and horses wandering about on the airstrip, when he was about to land his plane, so this is not now possible, although some people do still seem walk this way.
If you carry on down the Whittlesford Road for half a mile, taking care to walk on the verge, where there is usually a mown path, you get to a choice of signed public footpaths. On the left is a path (10) that leads down beside of a large field (it used to follow the track through the middle of Rectory Farm) leading down to the River Granta, crossing the water via a small bridge beside Dernford Mill, and thence on towards either Stapleford, going past the Dernford Reservoir, which is worth the slight detour through the car park for the variety of bird life visible on the lake with its island in the middle. Or turn right off the track and head for Sawston – take your pick. You can make it a circular walk by either walking back from Stapleford via the main road to Great Shelford, or from Sawston by taking the well-maintained cycle track to Whittlesford church, but then you would have to take the road back to Little Shelford, although you could stop at the Tickell Arms or the Bees in the Wall for refreshments.
On the opposite side of the road at Rectory Farm is the Cinder Track (11) to Newton. This is a wide bridleway, more like an unmade road, admirably suited to both bikes and horses as well as walkers.
It crosses over the M11 on a purpose-built bridge, giving a rather impressive view of the motorway as the cars pour down it to London, or up to Huntingdon and ‘the North’. As the path nears Newton, there is a public dog-walking area, but when you reach the road, you do have to walk along it with no pavement, although there is soon a footpath on the right which will help a bit. Again, you can make it a circular walk by using the road back towards Harston and then the Newton Road, some of which has a decent path along the verge, particularly as you leave Newton village (so long as you are not held up too long by sitting in the garden at the Queens Head).
You can extend this walk (and avoid walking on the verges) by crossing over the railway bridge and taking the sylvan footpath immediately on the right to Hauxton and back along the road along the pavements to Little Shelford.
Off of the Newton Road is the last Little Shelford walk (12) I am listing, although it is actually just outside the parish boundary. As you walk along the Newton Road from Little Shelford, passing under the M11, there is a footpath sign on the left pointing up a path to the top of a small hill. This is popularly known as either Monument Hill or Maggots Mount. At the top of the path turn right and you will see on the highest point of the hill, an obelisk built in the 18th century by James Church, who lived in Newton, in memory of his good friend Gregory Wale of Little Shelford. There is an inscription on the Wale Memorial which can still be read, or has been set out on the Little Shelford History website. The memorial was restored some years ago after a campaign led by my parents, who cared deeply about the history of the village.
These twelve walks take you back through some of the history of the village, more of which can be found at the website noted above, but a village is a living thing – it is much better to take an active part in the physical life of the village, by walking along its paths and byways, and meeting its people, so please take care and enjoy these walks as often as possible.
This article was written by Tony Westbrook in memory of his mother Marjorie Westbrook, who passed away in Little Shelford aged 97 on 8th September 2024. She had lived in the village since 1955 and was a keen walker, who helped campaign for the lost footpaths of the village to be reinstated, was twice a Parish Councillor and she was the founder of the Little Shelford History Society, as well as the author of a book ‘The Making of a Village School’ (150 years of the history of Great and Little Shelford Primary School, 1843-1993).
