Woolpit Walk

Joyce had found a walk that links up with the walk I did from Rattlesden recently. That sounded interesting. This was the invite...

"Monday Nov 4th will be a shorter stroll from Woolpit Church at 1.30pm - free car park opposite church (photo below). It's a walk of just 10Km and we visit Drinkstone and Rattlesden and back to Woolpit. John did a combo of this in a recent walk and I'm hoping he'll be on hand to 'assist'!"

How could I refuse? The walk was as described in this leaflet, but the route on the map was a little broad-brush so we had to pay attention to the details.

This was our route, pretty much exactly as described in the leaflet, with the exception of going down the road into Rattlesden.

Joyce hadn't expected a great turnout, but there were 11 of us gathered at the church for the walk, including nearly everyone from Friday's walk.

Here are a few photos.

Assembling at the start...

...by St. Mary's Church.

The 18th century smock mill and a 16th century post mill, thought to be the oldest in England.

Looking back we could still see Woolpit church.

We glimpsed Drinkstone Church through the hedge, but didn't go that way.

Soon we were onto our Rattlesden walk route, but in the opposite direction.

We admired this house and garden.

We passed St. Peter's church in Rattlesden, but didn't linger.

The village website explains the interesting village sign...

"The sign at the entrance to the village was made by Edward Hitchcock of Gedding Mill Forge in 1991. Based on a design by Mrs. Linda Wood, the sign portrays an archway of whalebones within which are set the village church and stream, across them lying an anchor.

Rattlesden has long been connected in tradition with navigation (see history). In 1814 a visitor to the village was shown a ring on the church door as being made from an anchor found in the river bed, and later that century the owner of the nearby house set up the whalebones across the stream, these are the elements that make up the sign.

A small plate on the post beneath the sign depicts the "Rattlesden St. John the Evangelist", formerly part of a crucifion group, which was discovered in a ploughed field in the village. The experts date this figure to approximately 1180 and it was sold at Christie's for a considerable sum."

As we climbed towards Clopton Hall, we got nice views back to the village...

and across to Great Finborough.

We took a minor detour to look at Clopton Hall and its moat.

The trees at Clopton Green were looking nice and autumnal...

...and provided some leaves for a bit of fun.

On our way back into Woolpit, we passed "Searchlight corner".

Then we were back at the church and the Woolpit village sign....

...with its depiction of the "green children". As the village website says...

"One prominent feature of the village sign is two small children. They depict a story that goes back to the 12th century and tells the legend of 'The Green Children of Woolpit'. This curious tale is recorded as taking place at about the same time as Sampson's journey to Rome. Very briefly, reapers were astonished at the discovery of a boy and a girl in a hole in the ground. The children were green, and spoke no recognisable language. The boy, who was sickly, soon died, but the girl grew up in Woolpit, and is said to have married a man from King's Lynn. This story has been re-enacted on many occasions and has appeared on children's television."

Well that was a lovely walk. Thanks Joyce. And we were back before dark so avoided an encounter with the Naked Ghost of Rattlesden "with pale, blotchy skin".

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos here on Flickr.