Charwelton, Fawsley and Church Charwelton

The walk goes through the park to the church, which is richly rewarding inside. Effectively the family chapel of the Knightleys, it is crammed with their memorials and boasts a large squire's pew. There is also a fine collection of 16th-century Flemish stained glass.

A waymarked path between the lakes crosses one of the great "laundes", or sheep pastures. This gives a good feel of the 16th-century landscape, with sheep grazing amid long views back over the hall, the church, and the park.

Over the crest of the rise, you descend to the Charwelton road. The valley ahead is occupied by the superbly clear earthworks of the deserted medieval village of Charwelton, the houses of which were cleared away by the early 16th century at the behest of three generations of the Andrewes family. A former road, or holloway, runs from left to right, with remains of house platforms on either side.

The Church of the Holy Trinity has a collection of monuments to the Andrewes family. The porch has a low stone rib-vaulted roof, and its archway frames a good view of the deserted village site. Charwelton House, opposite, was built after the village was abandoned. This four-square, hipped-roof, ironstone house dates from the early 18th century.

The route continues parallel to a spectacular system of ponds and islets, described on the 1847 tithe map as fish ponds, but more likely to have been provided for wildfowl.

You cross a dismantled railway into modern-day Charwelton, with cottages along the lane and a village green. At the end, the pavement crosses a narrow, two-arched, late-medieval packhorse bridge. The route back to the start passes Charwelton Hall, an ironstone Georgian house with coped gables.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.