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DISTANCE: 5 miles
MAP: OS 134. grid ref 233969.
THE WALK
Leave the recreation ground in Saxlingham Nethergate
and turn right and past a junction to the village sign opposite
the school.
Turn right and over the green and through the church
gate to follow a path which bends left past the tower and along
the left edge of the churchyard to a kissing gate.
Pass through and a left edge of a field leads to
its corner and after a few more paces you turn right over a stile
into a meadow.
Follow a right edge to a metal gate where cross
a stile at its side and turn right and then left into a hedgeless
track. Follow the track for approximately 350 yards and when you
meet the second crop division continue a few yards further and turn
right into a field.
Go straight up the slope passing closely to the
third tree from the hedge on the left side of the field and eventually
through a wide gap into a road.
Turn left for a short distance then turn right
into a field corner and into a green enclosed path which leads eventually
through trees for a quarter mile to a road. Turn left and opposite
Chequers Lane by a telephone kiosk you turn right in a farm track.
When the track ends you turn left through a gap
into a field and turn and follow its long right edge soon with a
ditch on your right but just before the end of the field you turn
right over a culvert.
A short green track leads into another field and
you follow a left edge to a road. Turn left but at the end of the
first field on your right turn right over a plank bridge into a
field.
Go straight ahead along a left edge to a corner
and over another plank bridge into the next field. Again follow
a long left edge curving to a power pole and ignore a path on your
left before you reach the field corner.
Go ahead over a plank into another field and again
follow a left edge to a corner where turn right for a few yards
to turn left through a gap in the hedge and over a plank into another
field. Turn left a short way into a corner and turn right and again
along left edges ignoring a path on your left before reaching the
end of the field.
Turn right and follow the edge to its end in a
crossing lane. Turn left and the lane winds uphill then bends sharply
right to a farm then curves left through farm buildings to join
another crossing lane.
Turn right and the lane winds to a paved road.
Turn right but when the road soon bends left you go straight ahead
into a green path.
Continue now for half mile, ignoring any side
turns until you go down a slope and into a clear crossing lane.
Go straight over and into a sunken lane which goes uphill and soon
swings right then straight over fields to the corner of a wood in
which there are the remains of St Mary's Church abandoned in 1688.
Turn left into a green path with the wood on your right to the end
of the wood and into another track on a corner. Turn left and with
a fine view of the John Soane parsonage away to your left you continue
to a road. Turn left but quite soon you can turn right into a green
path parallel with the road which takes you safely back to the recreation
ground.
Historical note
Saxlingham Nethergate is a beautiful village with
a lovingly tended church which lies on a small green between good
examples on one side of an Elizabethan manor and on the other a
parsonage built by Sir John Soane in 1784.
Inside the church are rare examples of stained
glass from the 13th to the 15th centuries which are certainly among
the best in Norfolk. An interesting citizen of Saxlingham when Soane
was building the parsonage and nearby Shotesham Hall was George
Watson the miller of Saxlingham Mill. George was a member of the
Norwich Revolution Society and an advocate of equal representation
for both rich and poor.
It was the time of Tom Paine and The Rights of
Man and when Norwich had a reputation as a Jacobin City. The agitation
for greater democracy was however, put on hold when the price of
wheat went up to 57s a combe. "The greatest price I ever received"
said Parson Woodforde and the flour mills of Trowse and Hellesdon
were attacked by a rioting population.
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