Stanwick Footpaths

Recommended map : 

Ordnance Survey ‘Explorer 304’ Darlington & Richmond’  1 : 25 

(4 cm to 1 km)

 The Brigantian fortifications at Stanwick St John entirely surround and dwarf the tiny village. They form a huge enclosure, about 7 km (4 miles) round and 300 hectares (700 acres) in area, within which there is a settlement site - also fortified - south of the church. Much of this enormous encampment can be seen (if you can recognise the traces) looking east from the English Heritage ‘guardianship site’ (a small put impressive Mortimer Wheeler reconstruction).   It’s clearly visible on the map and is probably the best place to start.

 First try to pick out the fortification which continues round to your left and is marked by the line of trees. It then crosses south east over the modern road at the Stanwick turn-off and runs down the slope and round the base of a natural mound (Henah Hill) but the main line continues away south past Outer Lodge and up to the south-east horizon. There it turns west and follows the line of distant trees right along the south horizon; now out of your view, it crosses the Forcett to Gilling road and finally turns back north again down the East Layton to Forcett road (within the boundary wall of Forcett Hall park), crossing it just before the village and swinging back up to the Heritage Site.

Walk 1            (1 km)             Heritage site to Kirk Bridge

From the English Heritage gate cross the road, turn left, and walk a short distance to the Public Footpath sign on your right. This path crosses the field diagonally towards Stanwick church tower (if there’s a crop you can walk round the edge, first left and then down) to a stile and gate in the hedge.   NOW Careful; if the ground is soft you must circle out from the stile to the beck and along it to the left before heading towards the west end of the churchyard wall in the corner, where there are a couple of metal steps up to the churchyard. The path leads up to the church and down to the Lych Gate.

Walk 2            (3 km circular)            Kirk Bridge - Kirk Bridge

Start on the bridge (near the Lych Gate) and follow the marked bridle path right (south-west) running up from the stream across the field. This is known as the Tofts (‘tofts’ means a settlement) where successive excavations beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 1990s have uncovered Brigantian (iron age) round houses and unusually rich Roman imported ware, implying strongly the presence of high status dwellings in the first century AD. as well as much earlier occupation.

  At  the SW top corner of the Tofts a view back towards the church shows more artificial humps and hollows as well as 'rigg and furrow' below over to the right beyond the farm buildings. The small hexagonal building was a Victorian ice-house and deer shelter. (The ice house is a rectangular brick-lined cavity under the ornamental deer shelter, and has been investigated recently; its date is unclear but it was probably built and covered with the mound about the end of the eighteenth century). Your path now cuts through at a new gate between the old estate wall on the left and the overgrown ‘Duchess’s Walk’ heading NW which you may detect is another part of the earthwork. (The Duchess concerned was  Eleanor of Northumberland who built it in the late nineteenth century as a romantic stroll amongst statuary.)

 Continuing along the bridleway, follow the estate wall until a clear track branches west (to your right) leading up towards some trees (High House lane) from the highest point of which you can get the best view of the entire enclosure before dropping down to the Forcett to Gilling road.

 At the road turn left and walk uphill and south until you again encounter the earthwork; here the ramparts cross the road; their line can be traced by following - with the eye - the hedge and line of trees to the right as far as the Forcett estate wall to the west, and then north, back towards the Heritage site.

 Take the path left through the farm gate and follow it eastwards along the inner side of the ditch with good views to the north up into the high ground on the far side of the Tees valley in County Durham. You will pass a twist in the ramparts (possibly a southern entrance), and then the path crosses them to the south side. Continue to the east for half a mile, keeping the old Stanwick Park dilapidated estate wall on your left, and then turn north after the ditch following the wall and then cutting off the corner of the field when you come out at a stile on the road to Aldbrough.

 Here you can return either by the partly asphalted and gated farm track in past Outer Lodge to the Stanwick village asphalted road or by the main road down to the bridge, after which another public footpath meanders left along the beck past the Henah Hill entrenchments back to your starting point.

Note              

Walking on the mounds themselves is not encouraged and none of the public footpaths follows their line precisely. If you have particular reasons for investigating the embankments other than at the Heritage site, you are advised to make a request to the farmer concerned or of English Heritage itself.

 Please follow the Countryside Code: leave no litter, close all gates behind you, keep all dogs firmly on a leash, and take only photographs.