Winchcombe and Belas Knap

The Winchcombe and Belas Knap walk is a 5.5-mile (8.8km) circular walk from Back Lane car park in Winchcombe to Belas Knap, a Neolithic long barrow south of the town. It is moderate, with two stiles, and takes two to two and three quarter hours. The White Hart and the Lion Inn are in the town at the end.

It is one of the National Landscape's Cotswold Gateway walks. It goes up by the Cotswold Way and a lane through the woods and comes back on the Winchcombe Way by Wadfield Farm and the edge of Sudeley. A variant from the junction of lanes follows the Cotswold Way straight up to the barrow, about half a mile shorter, with a short steep section through a wood.

Vineyard Street and the climb

The walk leaves the town down Vineyard Street and over the River Isbourne, then climbs steadily on the Cotswold Way and a wooded lane. The leaflet says the street was once known as Duck Street: a stump of the town's ducking stool was found when the ground was dug for a new bridge. Vineyard Bridge, at the bottom of the street, is listed Grade II: it was built in 1891, the last work in Winchcombe of the architect J. Drayton Wyatt, with the mason John Oakey, who worked for Emma Dent of Sudeley Castle.

Across the river the Cotswold Way crosses fields to Corndean Lane, then follows a drive uphill past the cricket pitch and climbs a field, with views back over Winchcombe. From the junction of lanes at the top, the leaflet points out the view over the Isbourne valley to the hills north-west of the town. The main route then climbs steadily through woods, where you may see deer, to Hill Barn Farm.

Belas Knap

Belas Knap is a chambered long barrow just below the crest of a ridge, with burials dated to between 4000 and 3700 BC. The leaflet gives its mound as about 55m long, 20m across at its widest and three to four metres high, trapezoidal and lying north to south. English Heritage says it was excavated in 1863 and 1865, when the remains of 31 people were found; the leaflet adds a further excavation in 1928, and a restoration by the Ministry of Works between 1929 and 1931, which gave the barrow much of its present shape.

Under the lintel of the false entrance, the leaflet says, the diggers found the remains of five infants and an adult of a round-headed type not usually found in Gloucestershire burials before 2200 BC. When the bones were dated in 2000, all of them fell between 4000 and 3700 BC. There are historical notes on a board at the site. Belas Knap is free to visit and open in daylight all year, and English Heritage asks for dogs to be kept on leads because sheep graze around it.

Wadfield and Sudeley

The way home comes down through the woods and along the Winchcombe Way past Wadfield Farm to the gates of Sudeley Castle. The sunken path through the woods meets a narrow road, then the gravel track of the Winchcombe Way runs past cottages and the farm. Where the path meets the first field, the leaflet points out the view towards Sudeley Castle and St Mary's Church. The fields lead to the Old Brockhampton Road, which comes out at the entrance to Sudeley Castle at the top of Vineyard Street.

Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's six wives, is buried in St Mary's chapel at Sudeley; she died there on 5 September 1548. The castle, built for Ralph Boteler in the fifteenth century and slighted on Parliament's orders in 1649, was bought by the Dents, Worcester glove makers, in 1837; the castle says it is still home to the Dent-Brocklehurst family. It is listed Grade I and charges for entry; our guide to Cotswold houses and castles has more.

Dent's Terrace

Dent's Terrace, on Abbey Terrace near the end of the walk, is a row of ten almshouses of 1865 built for the Dents of Sudeley. Sir George Gilbert Scott and J. Drayton Wyatt designed it in cream, yellow and pink limestone, with the date and the letter D in the porch gables. Its listing calls the row a good example of the generosity of John Coucher Dent and his wife Emma, then the owners of Sudeley, and records it as externally as built. It is listed Grade II.

The Cotswolds Info newsletter

Events, new places and the best of the season, about once a month. Unsubscribe at any time.

Leave this field blank

Your name

Your email address

Yes, send me the Cotswolds Info newsletter

Sign me up

Food, parking and toilets

The places to eat are all in Winchcombe, at the start and finish; there is nothing on the hill. The White Hart Inn on the High Street has a restaurant and a bar open to non-residents, and the Lion Inn, a restored fifteenth-century coaching inn on North Street, welcomes dogs in the pub. Winchcombe Museum, free and run by volunteers in the former Town Hall on the High Street, shows fragments of the Winchcombe meteorite. To stay, the Sudeley Castle cottages are on the estate the walk skirts, and our places to stay in Winchcombe has more.

The walk starts at Back Lane car park, where Tewkesbury Borough Council charges £1.50 for the day (pay by RingGo; Blue Badge holders park free). The National Landscape’s route page for this walk puts the car park behind the library and lists public toilets there.

Paths, stiles, dogs and road

There are two stiles, both on the way home after Wadfield Farm, and a footbridge in the fields below. The route follows about 500m of narrow road between the sunken path and the Winchcombe Way track, so watch for traffic, and there are short stretches of lane on the way up. The leaflet asks you to keep to the edges of the field below Belas Knap, where the right of way runs, rather than cutting across. It says nothing about dogs, but sheep graze round the barrow, where English Heritage asks for leads.

More walks from Winchcombe

For a shorter walk, the 2-mile walk to Sudeley Castle goes through the castle grounds and back by the River Isbourne. For a longer day, the loop by Belas Knap and Cleeve Common goes on from the barrow to the open common. The walk from Hailes to Beckbury Camp starts about 3 miles away by road at Hayles Fruit Farm.