Today, Barnack's outstanding feature is the Hills and Holes National Nature Reserve, where this walk begins. Set up in 1976 and run by English Nature, the reserve is set in a complex area of mounds and hollows created by the medieval quarrying of Barnack ragstone (operations ceased in the 16th century).
Since then, the thin layer of soil over the limestone base has become home to colonies of rare plants that thrive in these specialized conditions, including nine species of orchid and sunny slopes encouraging the growth of the rare and beautiful pasque flower. These flowers attract butterflies such as the marbled white, and glow worms can be seen in summer.
Barnack stone was first quarried in Roman times, its high quality seeing it used in Ely and Peterborough Cathedrals, the abbeys of Crowland, Ramsey, and Bury St Edmunds, several Cambridge colleges, and literally dozens of churches.
Some of the stone would have travelled along the Roman Ermine Street, which passes just outside Barnack on its way to Lincoln. The route follows the course of the Roman road — also known here as the Hereward Way, a long-distance footpath followed on the road section of this walk beyond the nature reserve and Walcot Hall Park. At the start of this part of the walk there are good views of an 18th-century windmill, preserved in 1961 and now open to the public at weekends.
A road leads through the hamlet of Southorpe. On the roadside just before a telephone box are two large lumps of Barnack ragstone, shaded by a copper beech; a notice tells how these fell from carts while in transit to the River Nene sometime before the mid-15th century and have lain there ever since.
The walk continues through rolling pastureland to Barnack, a very handsome village built almost entirely from local stone that weathers to gentle tones of grey and buff (even the farm buildings look like stone fortresses).
Equally massive is the Church of St John the Baptist, a Saxon foundation whose tower base dates to the early 11th century. There is a fine Saxon sculpture of Christ in Majesty found under the floor in 1931, a font dating through the 13th century, and a Lady Chapel added by the Walcot family from nearby the hall around 1500 containing a beautiful contemporary carving of the Annunciation.
In the churchyard is a wealth of 17th-century headstones, along with a Victorian memorial in the form of a fallen palm tree.
Charles Kingsley's father was rector here and moved his family into the rectory (now called Kingsley House) opposite the church. Young Charles Kingsley was five years old when living there, where he supposedly saw the ghost of a former rector who haunts a room in the house.
From here, the walk returns through the village square and past the old village school (dated 1796, now the Wilfred Wood Hall) to return to the nature reserve.
