A winter walk around Barham | - Click on the image above to view gallery
|
|
During 2009 it’s our intention to do far more local walks and visit areas we’ve never been to before. We realised there is so much of our county we probably don’t know at all. So, looking for some ideas, I found an old AA “50 Walks in Kent” book we have and looked for some ideas. One that seemed suitable was a walk around Barham, a small village in the Elham valley which dates from Saxon times. In the past it has seen many historical events. I can’t find out who it was that said it, but this area was once described as “The most historic mile of countryside in England”. It seems that the Barham Downs surrounding the village have been an ideal place for armies of men to camp out and prepare for battles. The Roman legions used it first in 54 BC and apparently 40,000 camped here as they battled their way across Kent.
It seems that other armies including those during the Norman Conquest and the Napoleonic Wars used the Downs for assembling their forces, and even in the 20th century during the First World War the fields were filled with soldiers waiting to go to France and Flanders. In the Second World War, in an incident reminiscent of an episode of Dad’s Army, a German aircraft crashed on the railway line. The unharmed crew were captured by the local Home Guard.
 Village sign  Black and white Lych-gate.
We weren’t expecting for one minute to see gathering armies but our 4 mile walk on the downland around the village was for the most part very enjoyable. It has to be said, however, that we crossed some very dodgy stiles, which could do with replacing before they fall apart. In fact at one point a pallet was used to block an old stile so some sheep couldn’t escape from their field. It meant, of course, that we had to climb the fence to get out of the field. Since the book was written in 2002, changes have been made on the section that crosses the golf course at Broome Park. It was obvious that walkers are less than welcome walking across that footpath because most of the signposts have disappeared.
We had sat eating out lunch quite close to Broome Park surrounded by mole hills and I wondered if the visiting armies ever had trouble with molehills. At one point we thought we might actually see a mole as the soil was moving so it was obviously active underneath. Sadly it didn’t appear, so with lunchtime entertainment over we got moving once more. It doesn’t take long to get cold when you stop walking in mid January.
 Millenium window After feeling rather pleased with ourselves that we’d managed to stay relatively mud-free, the last field we crossed soon put an end to that and we got back to the car wondering how we would get the heavy clay off the bottom of our boots. It’s amazing how heavy your boots can get when that happens. We changed out of our boots and went to have a look inside St John the Baptist Church, which had dominated the walk as the green copper spire could be seen often on the walk, and so always acted as a reference point for the return journey. It has an upstairs gallery for the bell ringers which meant you could get a good view of the inside of the church. We also found a delightful modern stained-glass window which was installed in the year 2000. An enjoyable short walk for a winter’s day and an area I now know has many historical connections I wasn’t aware of before.
 |
Simon