Wentworth, Wentworth Woodhouse, Nether Haugh, Hoober and Elsecar Heritage Village

Enjoying a long weekend away, my wife and daughter were on a shopping expedition in Sheffield (soft furnishings for the house in Walkley and clothes for each of them if the opportunity arose), giving me the chance to do this walk which I had in my sights for quite some time. I arrived in the village of Wentworth quite early, but a few groups of even earlier visitors were already milling around the grounds of Holy Trinity Church as I parked up, donned the walking gear, and set off on my way. Wentworth is a popular village in these parts, with lots of people choosing it as the starting location for their particular walk — be it a stroll in the Wentworth Woodhouse grounds or a longer one such as the one I was embarking on.

From Holy Trinity Church I had the choice of starting my walk by heading south-east on the back lane following the path of the Rotherham Round Walk or by walking down Church Drive to the main street and walking through the village. I chose the main street, passing some pretty cottages with lovely well-kept gardens. Paradise Square, a community of cottages standing around a communal green, was particularly striking, and at the eastern end of the village I came first to the Millennium Beacon and then passed the Rockingham Arms, which was looking pretty in the cover of Virginia creeper. The climber was just about hanging on to its golden-red foliage while lapsing into the darker days of a mid-November day, and nearby trees were all shed of leaf (one next to the pub now revealing a number of substantial bird nests in the higher reaches — a rookery perhaps).

Looking north across a field after passing the Rockingham Arms, my eyes were drawn to a circular building with a castellated top on Clayfield Lane (I guessed it was a converted windmill). With that thought I turned from the road which had led me through the village and entered the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse by way of a lodge gatehouse, where a sign told me I was following the Trans Pennine Trail as well as the Rotherham Round Walk.

Not far into the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse I passed the Grade I listed house where cars and vans were parked nearby and scaffolding was up supporting parts of the imposing building for substantial restoration work. After admiring the external view and thanking the talents of skilled workers for saving the impressive house for us to enjoy even more, I continued on my walk in a south-east direction through Wentworth Woodhouse Park. First up was Temple Hill, and once there I had to leave the path to get up close to the lovely Doric Temple (well worth it!).

Next I passed close to Upper Swallow Wood and past the Deer Shed; being well into winter now I had no chance of seeing any swallows, nor did I see any deer (if any are still here, they were playing at hiding). Next I followed a hedged lane to Roman Ridge Dyke, enjoying a good view of Dog Kennel Pond as I did so, before turning left and climbing up the side of a field to reach Mausoleum Plantation, site of the Rockingham Mausoleum. By following a tree-lined avenue I got up close to the impressive structure celebrating Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. After admiring the three-storey structure which has four columns on all sides, I returned by the access avenue and followed a couple of fields and a lane leading to the village of Nether Haugh.

Take care walking through Nether Haugh — it is a notorious accident blackspot which would benefit from traffic calming measures (none were in place during my walk in November 2017). I was glad to be rid of the main B6089 road when I turned to walk the footpath of the quieter B6091 for half a mile along Cortworth Lane, taking me back to rural affairs along the edge of a field leading to the village of Hoober.

This approach to Hoober also reconnected me with the Roman Ridge Dyke which had led me to Charles Watson-Wentworth's mausoleum. Nearing the village I could clearly make out the dyke — much like Offa's Dyke, a ramped bank beside a low ditch. The Roman Ridge Dyke is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, though despite searching I could find little more information about it.

Following the short B6090 through Hoober (no more than a row of houses) led me to the next monument of my walk: Hoober Stand, a tapering pyramid with a hexagonal lantern named for the ancient wood in which it was erected. Built to commemorate the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 (as many edifices of Wentworth Woodhouse are, representing one of the family's finest hours), the follies, mausoleum, and stand are quite impressive and imposing structures on the landscape. Hoober Stand Wood was also super to walk through — a wood of carousel humps and hollows that, even in the sad fall of leaf to winter, had a grandiose appearance (I chose to enjoy my lunch here in the wood).

After lunch my next objective was the village of Street. A wide-open field led me from the woods to Street, and this high-elevation stretch provided excellent long-distance views — most prevalent to the north where the M62 corridor and the cooling towers of Eggborough Power Station could clearly be seen belching out the last smoke of their lives before closure in coming months.

After leaving the field I joined the road to Street (which, like Hoober before it, was no more than a single row of homes — nine cottages and a few individual houses added later). After walking swiftly through Street I crossed Coley Lane and edged Lee Wood to reach The Needle's Eye, built to win a bet about driving a horse and cart through the eye of a needle. Those landed gentry were a pompous lot, but their boasting left us with yet another impressive landmark (though I am glad I was not the object of their spite — musket holes found at approximately head height on the needle are thought to have been made by a firing squad seeing off an undesirable!).

While this walk is not exactly taxing in respect of big climbs, I had practically done all the uphill work by reaching Hoober Stand, and after The Needle's Eye I began the big descent from the high ground of the park across farmland to the lower terrain of Elsecar — about 100 metres of landfall. Elsecar is a remarkable village transformed by the Earls Fitzwilliam into a thriving centre of iron and coal. Nothing more than a series of farms up until the 18th century, coal transformed the village into a thriving industrial community, and unlike neighbouring towns and villages dependent on the black gold, it rode out the decline of coal mining in the 1980s by transforming into the premier industrial heritage centre of South Yorkshire. They have done quite a job.

Of course I had to delay my walk and spend some time in the exciting environs of the Elsecar Heritage Railway and Elsecar Heritage Centre. A troop of soldiers were busy working in the vicinity of the Elsecar Station Coalfield Line, cleaning and maintaining both railway lines and rolling stock, while nearby fishermen under large brollies were quietly, patiently waiting for a bite in the waters of the Dearne and Dove Canal. A lovely setting — I watched the fishermen do absolutely nothing for around ten minutes while absolutely nothing at all happened (that's a fisherman's life for you, I suppose — lots of inactivity followed by a rush of blood). I slipped away back to the heritage railway and then to a visit of the heritage centre.

There were plenty of people thronging about the streets and open spaces of the heritage centre. It is a popular place and rightly so; like an industrial village stuck in a moment of time, it provides a sight into the past. I was born and raised during my childhood in the sixties in a village with a weaving mill converted into industrial units, and it looked then much like the Elsecar Heritage Centre does now, taking me back to those innocent times. The centre houses shops, businesses, galleries, art and craft studios, and an exhibition hall, running craft workshops, special events, and holding a monthly antiques fair. Examples of the industrial past are displayed in the streets including valves, sluices, pumps, and a surviving Newcomen Beam Engine. Do this walk, and the Elsecar Heritage Centre has to be a must-do.

Stately homes, follies, monuments, Roman ridges, ancient woods, and now heritage railways and industrial heritage centres — this walk has it all, and each encounter thrilled me. Leaving Elsecar behind I just had a couple of woods and the odd field to go before arriving back at the start and reaching the end of my walk. The first objective, King's Wood, was a thrill to walk through (much like Hoober Stand Wood, it was gorgeous walking along the brown leaf-fall carpet which made a light crumpling sound under my feet). Then after following Barrow Field Gate back into Wentworth I had the bonus of Old Holy Trinity Church to enjoy — a grand old soul of sandstone crumbling slowly away. I enjoyed being there, a fitting finale to a remarkable walk in South Yorkshire.

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