The Dorset walk – Longburton, Folke and Leweston
Paul Quagliana takes a trek around the North-West of the county
Published in November ’18
The Rose and Crown pub and St James the Great church at Longburton
The Reverend Charles Herbert Mayo was for forty years the vicar of Longburton, just south of Sherborne, yet he is more famous as a keen historian of Dorset. His Bibliotheca Dorsetiensis (an 1885 bibliography of all the then-known books and pamphlets written about Dorset) was his best-known work.
An orchard in the fourth section of the walkKeep going forwards
Longburton itself was known as Long Burton until the 19th century, the name deriving from the Old English for fortified homestead and the prefix ‘Long’ presumably describing its shape, which is roughly a rectangle twice as long N-S as it is wide E-W. It could simply have been to distinguish it from four other parishes called Burton in Dorset. Sir Walter Raleigh held the manor at one point then conveyed it to John Fitzjames, who held the adjacent manor at Leweston.
A bridge near Leweston School
After the 1944 Education Act, senior pupils from Sherborne’s St Antony’s School moved to Leweston. Its Trinity Chapel is one of the first post-Reformation churches in the country while what has, since 2007, been known as Leweston School is set in the estate’s late 18th-century Palladian manor house. The school crest retains a reference to St Antony’s. Folke is a small hamlet, but has a splendid rectory and an early 16th-century manor house itself.
THE WALK
1 Between the Rose & Crown and St James the Great Church is a metalled lane. Go down this and stay on it. It passes through open fields and some trees and you should pass West Hall on your right before reaching West Hall Farm on the left. Go through the gap to the left of a metal gate with a sign marked Private Drive No Through Road and continue straight ahead until you reach a small road (Broke Lane), where turn left. After a road sign for Folke, ascend a flight of stone steps. Follow the path along the edge of a tall hedge keeping the hedge on your left. Go through a metal gate and continue to keep the wooden fence on your left, heading towards a house (Folke Farm); there is a narrow earth path visible passing the building which is to your left. Keep going.
2 Ignore the metal gates at Folke Church, instead turn right and follow the field down with the stone wall on your left. A narrow earth path/sheep track goes across the field to two metal gates with stiles. Go over the stiles and turn left and walk along the hedge keeping it on your left. At a wooden fence with a gap at the beginning of it, ignore the gap and turn right and walk down a gently sloping field with the fence on your left until the fence is replaced by woodland on your left. Ignore the entrance to a field at the end of some trees on the left and keep going forwards with the hedge on your left. Head for a metal gate in the hedge with a wooden footbridge immediately after it. Turn left after crossing and walk down a narrow field flanked by tall hedges and some trees. At the far end is an oak tree with a stile on its left. Go over this and go up the field with the hedge on your left. Go over another wooden stile with a large oak tree on the right of it, where turn left and keep walking up the field with the hedge on your left. Ignore the first metal gate in the entrance to a field and keep going up with the hedge on your left until you reach a field entrance with a metal gate. Go through it and stay on the track that runs up the side of the field and past some trees on the left. The track passes a stone trough on the left beyond which is a metal gate. Go through this and the track leads to a lane, where turn right.
3 Keep following the lane until you pass Willow Tree Farm on your right. Keep going. You will come to a T-junction where turn left towards Holnest. Take a track on the right-hand side of the road through woodland until you reach a metal gate with a large boulder to its right. Go through the gate onto Burton Common. Keep the hedge/treeline on your right and Burton Common on your left. Go through either the large or small wooden gate at the end of the common then turn left onto the A352. This road can be busy so take care. When you see the fencing beyond Woodlands Equine clinic on the right, turn right down the entrance to Cancer Drove..
4 The drove road passes through woodlands and hedges, becomes grassy passing through bracken and long grass. Ignore paths to the left. As you pass Drove Farm on the left the track becomes gravelled. When it meets the road turn right. Continue a fair way until you pass Lower Stockbridge Farm on your right and Higher Stockbridge Farm on the left. Shortly after the latter the road bends gently to the right. There is an oak tree on the left-hand side of the road with a metal gate to its right. Go through this and turn right. You will see two staggered oak trees. Walk between them and continue to a tall hedge where go through a wooden stile and over the footbridge then turn immediately right. Keep the hedge on your right and follow uphill to a metal gate with a wooden stile on its right. Ignore this and keep following the hedge to another metal gate with a stile on its left.
Go over the stile and keeping a strip of woodland on your right and a large arable field on your left, continue until you reach a metal gate next to a short section of three-bar wooden fence, where turn left. Follow the stony track with a line of trees and a hedge on your right. Pass two large metal gates that cross the stony track keeping the woodland on your right. After a short distance you will see a wooden gate on your right. Go through this and straight ahead over a stony track. Over the track is another wooden stile that leads into an orchard. Go over it and turn immediately left. Keeping the apple trees on your right follow the line of the grassy ground around to the right and keep going.
Go past the sports field and cedar trees of Leweston School with a metal fence on your left. Keep following along the fence at the end of which is a footpath and marker that leads through a poplar tree plantation. It is short and soon opens out onto the Leweston School drive. Turn right here, follow the drive and go over a low, humpbacked bridge surrounded by woodland. Shortly after the bridge go through a kissing gate in a metal fence and onto a grassy path in a short strip of woodland.
5 Emerge from the woodland and follow a straight section between the trees right through the orchard. On emerging from the orchard you will see a two-bar wooden fence and a gap to the right of it on the edge of woodland. Proceed through the gap onto a path that leads through the woodland. Keep going straight ahead until you reach a metalled road, cross this and ascend a flight of stone steps and go through a metal gate onto a wide grassy strip between an orchard and a hedge. At the end of the orchard follow the wooden telegraph poles on your right. Go through the kissing gate at the end go down a gentle slope. Go through a wooden gate onto a track then over a stile. Keep following the track and you will see the church and yew tree ahead of you and walk back to your car.
Distance: About 6½ miles.
Terrain: Usually damp underfoot and occasionally very wet. Undulating but with no steep climbs.
Start: By the Rose & Crown, Longburton, about 2.2 miles south of Sherborne on the A352. OS reference SY848842. Postcode DT9 5PD. Please park considerately in the village.
Maps: OS Explorer 119 (Yeovil & Sherborne), OS Landranger 194 (Dorchester & Weymouth).
Refreshments: Rose & Crown at Longburton.
