Cockfield Walk

After the sogginess of Wednesday's walk (see here), Joyce postponed the next stage of our St Edmund Way walk as it is likely to be even soggier at the moment. Instead we did a walk from Cockfield. This was the invite from Joyce.

"Friday 15th March. I am proposing that we park/meet at Cockfield Community Car park which is next to the village primary school. It is Church Lane IP30 0LA. We will start at 10.30am. A lot of the walk is on high ground before we get to the disused railway line portion. It is an 8 mile circular walk.  Please bring lunch and coffee with you – I am not sure quite where we will have our lunch stop yet . I have included an afternoon drinks stop at The Horseshoes Pub in Cockfield if peeps want (just waiting to see if it’s open at lunchtime)."

This was our route today, travelling clockwise from Cockfield village hall.

Here are a few of my photos.

The car park was just down the road from the church.

We had another great turnout - 18 of us today. Here we are assembling in the car park.

We started by visiting the Church.

St. Peter's Cockfield is a large church dating from the 14th century. As Simon Knott tells us, among other things, "It sits in what was one of the county's wealthiest medieval parishes; a 19th century Rector here would take home £1050 a year, roughly £200,000 in today's money. He would also get to live in the stunning former gild house, on the south-eastern side of the graveyard.

An unlikely name associated with Cockfield given its long history is the author Robert Louis Stephenson. His cousin married Churchill Babington, the redoubtable Rector of Cockfield. Babington was better known in his day as a naturalist, antiquarian and writer, and was greatly admired by Prime Minister William Gladstone. The young Stephenson came often to visit and stay with his cousin and her remarkable husband, writing enthusiastically of his adventures and explorations in and around the village"

An unusual feature in the church interior is this medieval door.

This is the splendid listed gild house Simon refers to, known as Church House or Church Cottage. You can read the Historic England listing here.

But now it was time to get going on our walk.

The daffodils are doing well at the moment.

We nearly got to the green at Great Green, but turned right here.

This is to be found in Colchester Green.

Joyce's plan was to go through Bulls Wood, but the path was too muddy so we just walked round the outside.

Next we came to Thorpe Green.

We then headed for Thorpe Morieux, but this was as close as we got.

We passed Bird Farm on a familiar path. We turned right here - going left, I seemed to recall, would have taken us past a weighbridge.

Going the other way we passed a reservoir.

At the top of the hill we stopped for our drinks break.

Over there is Thorpe Green that we had walked through earlier.

Suitably refreshed, we carried on and shortly after came across this sign commemorating the crash of flying fortress in March 1942,

There is a sign explaining the story.

We passed Bullswood farm...

...and descended Bullswood Lane. Here we got a view across to Cockfield Church....

...and the part of the sprawling Cockfield village that lies along the main road to Lavenham, including the converted Cockfield Mill, now providing self-catering holiday accommodation.

We came across a herd of deer.

The moved from the middle to the edge of the field when they saw us.

We continued downhill to reach and cross the dismantled railway and fields beyond...

...before climbing up to the main road and The Horseshoes Inn, where we stopped for a drink.

Jane mentioned that she thought the pub was called the Three Horseshoes, and so did I. It turns out that it used to be, but the present owners changed the name. It also raised the question of why "The Three Horseshoes"? It turns out the name has changed between one and the other over time, as you can see here. (Click "more" under landlords for the complete list).

The 1997 Suffolk Real Ale guide has it as "Three Horseshoes". For the origins of the name, see what a pub of that name near Brecon in Wales says...

"In 1846 a man named David Powell who was a local blacksmith decided that he would open a Blacksmith Shop and Inn in the house and named it The Three Horseshoes. The name was derived from the belief that when a horse lost its shoe, the horse’s owner would stop at the inn to re-shoe his horse and thus when they came, the horse only had three shoes."

And, what is more, one of the landlords of the Cockfield pub, William Hammond, was named as a blacksmith.

Moving on, we passed the charming Earls Hall on our way back to the dismantled railway line.

This road bridge goes over the old route.

We stopped again here in Earls Meadow for our packed lunches.

Continuing along the railway route we found plenty of blossom...

..and the remains of some sunflowers..

Passing Cockfield Hall...

...we were soon back at Church Lane where we started.

Thank-you Joyce for the lovely walk and also to the other lovely people for the company. You can see ore of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our 8.25 mile route here on MapMyWalk (or download a GPX file here).

Other related walks you can find on my blog include:

• Thorpe Morieux Walk (Mar 2020)
• Thorpe Morieux Walk (Apr 2021)
• Brettenham Walks (Apr 2021)
• Brettenham Walk (Aug 2023)