Biddestone heritage trail

The Biddestone heritage trail is a 6.5-mile (10.5km) circular walk from the village hall in Biddestone, to Slaughterford and Ford (the older leaflet says 6.6 miles). It is moderate, with 188m of climbing, stiles and two short, steep climbs, and takes two to two and a half hours. The White Hart at Ford is halfway, and the White Horse is on the green.

It is one of a series of heritage trails round Corsham made with the support of the local councils and the Corsham Walking Festival. It tours the green, climbs over Common Hill to Ford and comes back down the brook past the ruins of the Rag Mill.

Biddestone's green

The trail visits many of Biddestone's listed houses, and begins with a slow circuit of the green. The Close, set back behind a stone wall, was made from three cottages in 1929, the leaflet says; its listing records an eighteenth-century house largely reconstructed from 1924 to 1929, with a panelled Perpendicular-style archway inside, possibly reused. The leaflet calls it a contender for the oldest house in the village. Its garden held Attwood's agricultural machinery works, where the Attwood plough was made, until 1914.

The pond was made by William Mountjoy in about 1661 to improve his pasture, and is fed by a spring the leaflet says never runs dry. Opposite is the White Horse, an eighteenth-century inn whose porch carries a datestone of 1872 with the initials of T. H. A. Poynder of Hartham Park; the leaflet says an inn here was called the George in the middle of the seventeenth century. The war memorial, a limestone cross more than 3m tall on a granite base, was dedicated in 1920.

Chippenham Lane leads to the entrance of Biddestone Manor, an early seventeenth-century house listed Grade II*, with triple-gabled fronts and much restoration after 1914. Its barn carries a datestone of 1705, and behind the wall by the stable gate is the site of St Peter's, a church recorded in Domesday and pulled down in 1846. Back on the green, the leaflet singles out Willow House: three storeys with a formal front, dated 1730 and built, the leaflet says, for the maltster Samuel Alborne (S. Aldbourne in its listing).

St Nicholas' Church and the Butts

St Nicholas' is Biddestone's twelfth-century church, listed Grade I. The south doorway is twelfth century, with a carved tympanum showing a cross in a beaded circle, and so is the round font with its band of zig-zag. The bell turret on the nave is thirteenth century, topped with a short fifteenth-century spire. Inside are box pews of about 1800, a late eighteenth-century west gallery and a series of wall plaques of about 1695 to 1823, several of them to the Mountjoy family.

The gallery has a story. The leaflet says a gallery was built in 1712 for the congregation of Slaughterford, whose church had been wrecked by Cromwell's men in 1649, and that the two parishes quarrelled enough to need separate doors; the listing dates the present gallery to the late eighteenth century. Beyond the church, Mountjoy Farm opens onto the Butts, the village's archery ground, which the leaflet ties to Henry III's law of 1252 requiring men to be armed.

Slaughterford and its mills

Slaughterford is a hamlet of mills and a church in the By Brook valley, the first village on the trail after Biddestone. Ham Lane and the fields beyond it bring you over the brow of the hill with Slaughterford below: its church, the old brewery and the By Brook valley.

Slaughterford Mill, also called Chapps Mill, was a fulling mill until 1790. It turned to paper in 1805, back to cloth by 1818 and to paper again by 1827, and made paper until it closed in 1994. The brook above it was raised and widened to hold a reservoir of water, and small businesses now use the site.

St Nicholas' at Slaughterford keeps a small fifteenth-century tower. The leaflet says Cromwell's troops wrecked the church and it lay in ruins for 200 years; its listing records the nave, chancel and porch rebuilt in 1823 by G. Forder of Winchester, with an inscription recording the rebuilding after two centuries of disuse, and new tracery in 1883.

Ford, the By Brook and the Rag Mill

The White Hart at Ford is the halfway stop, with refreshments and toilets, and our Ford, Long Dean and Castle Combe walk starts from its door. The inn and the leaflet call it a sixteenth-century coaching inn, and its listing dates it to the seventeenth, possibly on an earlier core, with a south range of about 1830 to 1840. Local tradition, repeated in the leaflet, says scenes from the original Doctor Dolittle were shot there in the 1960s; the film's records name nearby Castle Combe.

The return follows the By Brook, about 12 miles long, which the leaflet says once turned twenty watermills, first for corn, then fulling wool, then paper. Doncombe Mill, where you join the brook, was probably a fulling mill in 1704, made paper from the 1790s and became a corn mill in 1887 before it was turned into a house. The Rag Mill, the first of three fulling mills on the brook in the late sixteenth century, later had the valley's earliest paper machine; it was demolished in 1964, but its undershot wheel, about 4.6m across, and the remains of a rag boiler are still there. Cotswold Voluntary Wardens cleared the site in 2018, and a plaque on the gate marks it. From the Rag Mill you can see the stack of Slaughterford's brewery, which ran from 1858 to 1915.

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Parking, buses and food

The car park and the pub are both in Biddestone, at the start. Park in the public car park behind the village hall on Yatton Road, SN14 7BZ, and park thoughtfully. There is a bus stop by the pond on The Green, but buses are few. Faresaver's 635 and 636 between Chippenham and Marshfield (the 636 by way of Corsham) stop there only a few times a day on weekdays, and none run at weekends. The 635 also stops at Ford. Coachstyle's X79 between Hullavington and Bath calls at the pond once each way on Thursdays only.

The White Horse is on the route at the start and the end. It is dog friendly, with a garden at the back. It is closed on Mondays except bank holidays and opens only from 5pm from Tuesday to Thursday, so on those days the White Hart is the only lunch stop; it reopened with a new landlord in September 2025. The White Hart at Ford opens every day from breakfast (7.30am on weekdays, 8am at weekends), serves food from then until 9pm or 10pm and welcomes dogs.

Stiles, mud and roads

This is a walk for boots, with stiles, mud and three stretches of road. There are several stiles, one of them a slabbed Cotswold stone stile at the end, as well as gates, kissing gates and footbridges. The paths through woods and fields and beside the By Brook can be muddy, so wear suitable footwear, as the leaflet asks. Keep dogs under close control, as the Countryside Code asks, and our guide to the Cotswolds with a dog has more on livestock and stiles.

Take care on three stretches of road: the road from Ford towards Colerne, which has no pavement and can be busy; 250m of Slaughterford Lane; and 530m of Slaughterford Road. One large field near the end is farmed, and you may have to skirt it rather than cross. The leaflet recommends OS Explorer 156 alongside it.

More near Biddestone

Castle Combe and Lacock are the nearest places for more walking and a meal. Castle Combe is 3.6 miles away by road, and the White Hart on its Street is a dog-friendly Wadworth pub. Biddestone was a location for Sky 1's Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, which our guide to Cotswolds film locations covers. For another Wiltshire walk with history on the way, try Lacock, Naish Hill and Bowden Park, which starts near Lacock Abbey.