Milton Abbas and Gallows Corner

Milton Abbas

We had hoped to make further progress along the Coast Path today but the weather continued to be very uncertain, so we decided to try our luck inland, at Milton Abbas.

As you drive up the main street to park opposite the church, where this walk starts, it is immediately obvious from the uniformity of the houses that this was a planned village. It turns out that the new owners of nearby Milton Abbey decided in 1771 that the house needed to be rebuilt and placed in a landscaped park. They (almost inevitably) engaged Capability Brown to do the landscaping, which included a large artificial lake. The price of this was that the medieval town was simply moved out of the way, and was seemingly downsized at the same time.

The church, St James's of 1786, was covered with scaffolding and so we couldn't form much of a view of it. Opposite however was the delightful Sir John Tregonwell's Almshouses. They were built in 1674 and re-erected in the new location in 1780. Pevsner is quite sniffy about the "crude" Tuscan and Corinthian columns. We thought they made a delightful group.

The village was located in a narrow valley and so the walk began with quite a steep climb out of it by the side of the church. You emerge onto a high plateau with views of the undulating farm land to the south through which the rest of the walk would pass.

You follow a series of paths along the sides of fields, first south east, then making a sharp turn south west. As we approached the Milton Abbas to Milbourne St Andrew road, we were becoming increasingly conscious of how few flowers we had seen - and we were getting just a little bored with fields. Then all of a sudden a field of sunflowers appeared on our left. A closer look revealed a small set-aside in front of it with an absolute profusion of wild flowers in front. Very cheering!

Across more fields on the other side of the road and then finally we joined a green track which immediately brought us to Gallows Corner - a junction of six green paths. Presumably there was once a gallows, but just for once googling yielded no insight - the premier Gallows Corner seems to be in Romford.

We followed one of the lanes back towards Milton Abbas and enjoyed the view over fields of hay wheels. They were bound with transparent plastic which we thought was much easier on the eye than the more usual tight black plastic wrapping.

We crossed the main road again and a few more fields to eventually walk up the road into Milton Abbas, past Capability Brown's lake, now available for coarse fishing by the day. This gave us the opportunity for a closer look at the village houses. Each building originally contained two houses with a shared front door, and although some are now single dwellings most still seemed to conform to this model. This was evidenced by the separate house numbers either side of the front door and by the two different sets of curtains in the central window on the first floor.

They were obviously quite cramped then and it was fascinating to see the range of rear extensions that had been added over the years. In some cases, a whole further house seemed to have been added at the back.

Conditions: mild, cloudy, threat of rain.

Distance: 5 miles.

From: 50 walks in Dorset (AA).

Map: Explorer 117 (Cerne Abbas and Bere Regis).

Rating: three stars - an interesting village, but the field paths were a bit repetitive.