Nettlecombe to Monksilver: A Brendon Hills Walk Through a Lost Demesne
Oh, the heat, the heat. It was a little bit like the old film Ice Cold in Alex at times during one long heatwave – certainly too hot for a long drive specially to go for a walk.
Sometimes nothing beats a walk in the area where you live – and the heatwave forced me to stay in the deep cool Brendon Hill valleys which I call home.
A friend phoned me from the next valley to invite us over for tea, so I walked over the hill, musing all the way upon my destination because it always reminds me of a romantic French novel.
The Lost Demesne is sometimes used as a subtitle for Alain-Fournier’s book Le Grand Meaulnes, and so popular is the novel I wonder if we don’t all have some lost paradise lurking somewhere in our romantic souls. It’s about a young man who finds himself at a party in the countryside – he falls in love and then proceeds to wander about for years searching, not only for the beautiful girl, but also for the lost demesne that he can never find again.
My own long lost youth lies there in that fabulous demesne called Nettlecombe where I got up to all sorts as a young man working for a reporter on a weekly newspaper. A reporter who increasingly wanted to swap local council chambers and court rooms for romance, creative writing and travel.
Nothing changes. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with tales of my wasted youth – but I will tell you about the excellent triangular route that takes you up one of the loveliest coombes in England, high onto a forested hill, and down long and ancient pack-horse trails to the charming village of Monksilver where you can lunch at one of the most pleasant pubs in Somerset.
You’ll find Nettlecombe a couple of miles south of Williton, in the great coastal vale of West Somerset. The grand old house is now a field studies centre, but you can motor up the humped drive and park somewhere near the handsome, red-sandstone church. Go in for a look around and see the tomb recesses where crusading and mediaeval knights of the Raleigh family repose. At least, their Ham-stone effigies do – you’ll see Sir Simon Raleigh lying there with his sword and shield; and Sir John Raleigh – a seven foot giant with a dog at his foot and a lady at his side.
The graveyard has a leat running under the boughs of its massive yews and on a hot day it’s one of the coolest places I know. The leat feeds an ornamental stream that runs off along the side of the hill to what used to be known as the Pleasure Grounds. I certainly remember them as such.
But we must turn our back on this luxuriant corner and walk between the pillars that mark entry to the lawns of the old house. These used to be crowned by giant bronze horses that kicked their front hooves above sculpted waves – the family crest of the Trevelyans who lived here for 500 years after the Raleighs lost title to the place through marriage.
Tradition has it that the Trevelyans originally hailed from the legendary Land of Lyonesse, way out in the ocean beyond Cornwall, but that the country was flooded in a terrible cataclysm. A Trevelyan saved himself by climbing aboard a swimming horse.
Keep to the left of the lawn as you walk past the old house and head for the gate in the south east corner. This introduces you to the parkland and a footpath which follows one of Nettlecombe’s twin valleys, and takes you up to a place called Coombe.
Some of England’s largest oaks grow in the valley and remind me of the Trevelyan squire who thought he was a bird. He would climb these arboreal monsters to pursue his favourite pastime of roosting. The only way to get him down was for the butler to stand under the branch with a silver platter loaded with nuts and seeds. Down would swoop the squire, and three or four burly retainers would bundle him off to bed.
There is a rich vein of aristocratic craziness in these hills and I could tell you a dozen stories of blue-blooded bedlam. But we’ve got a steep hill to climb and we do this by taking the path past Coombe, through Pooke Wood, to a high place called Colton Cross.
There’s a gate to the east of the crossroads and the path it opens onto leads through the wild woods of Bird’s Hill down to Monksilver. It’s a couple of miles and you can catch glimpses of vistas of West Somerset and its coast on the way.
Shortly after entering the village at the bottom of the valley, walk through the graveyard to find the footpath that follows the pretty valley north west out of the village. This dips and climbs for a mile or so – always following the Monksilver Stream until it reaches the hamlet of Woodford. You then turn left and walk 50 yards along the lane to a sharp bend where a gate opens into the field directly ahead. A path leads across this to the Nettlecombe drive close to Island Pond.
There is a story about a Trevelyan squire signing a teetotal pledge and ordering his entire cellar of wine to be deposited in this pond, but I had no time for such sorrows as I strode on to meet my friends for tea and maybe spy the fleeting memory of the young reporter who will haunt Nettlecombe for as long as it is a place of dreams.
Walk details
Route: From Nettlecombe in West Somerset, south up Bird’s Hill, descending east to Monksilver and back via the stream-side path.
Distance and going: Four and a half miles – one steep climb; the descent to Monksilver can be muddy.
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