Milford Common to Castle Ring
Walked by Sally and Richard, Saturday 5th August 2017
9.5 miles of walking (4.5 hours including stops), about 9 miles on route of Heart of England Way
For all photographs taken today click here
This walk essentially took us across Cannock Chase, from north to south, and it was glorious. I had once previously driven close to the Chase, a long time ago, and Richard had never been here at all; we were left wondering how we had managed to avoid such a lovely place for so long (as well as wondering how many other gems there are around our own country waiting for us to discover them; we concluded that the answer to this question is probably "quite a lot"!). Cannock Chase is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, bounded by the towns of Stafford, Cannock and Rugeley. The land is higher than the surroundings, 150–250 metres above sea level as a result of the uplift of Triassic sandstones. Weathering and erosion have also played a major part in the formation of the landscape; the sandstones are harder than the mudstones of the surrounding area and therefore more resilient. The retreat of the great ice sheet resulted in the deposition of erratics like the Glacial Boulder (a lump of granite from Scotland), demonstrating the ability of glaciers to transport material over long distances, whilst glacial meltwater caused the prominent valley that cuts through the heart of the Chase as well as a series of deeply-incised channels around its northern perimeter.
Cannock Chase comprises a mixture of natural deciduous woodland, coniferous plantations and open heathland, with heather just coming into flower on the day we visited. They have been trying to increase the amount of heathland, which requires some management of bracken and beech (which, when left to its own devices will tend to crowd out most other plants); in fact, in places the heather is reintroduced. In Tudor times, the Chase was a Royal hunting forest and by the beginning of the 20th Century it was owned by the Earls of Lichfield, whose home is just to the north, at Shugborough. Trees were planted in the 1920s, initially as a source of pit props for the local coal mines. In both World War I and World War 2 there were military bases on the Chase, along with a WW1 military hospital and prisoner of war camp. Poignant reminders of these dark years remain in the Commonwealth War Cemetery (for men from the Commonwealth who died here) and the adjacent German War Ceremony, established in 1967, where the remains of German servicemen were brought from all over Britain and reburied here.
We were staying at the Rugeley Premier Inn, conveniently situated just to the east of today's route, albeit on the site of a former colliery now shared with a massive Amazon warehouse, and atmospherically in the shadow of power station cooling towers. Knowing that the likelihood of rain increased during the afternoon, we made an early start. It was just a short drive to the car park for the Castle Ring (SK045126) where we left one car, then drove a slightly tortuous route around the west of the Chase to Milford Common (SJ973211) where we left the other car. The guidebook describes this as a pay and display car park but there was no way to pay (the machine as boarded up) so we assumed it to be a free car park now. That was a good start! Whilst Richard was putting on his walking boots I went to read the information board at the start of the Heart of England Way and discovered that we were also on the Two Saints Way, which links Lichfield to Chester. Given my enthusiasm for linking paths together, and that Chester is perhaps not that far from Prestatyn, where we completed the Offa's Dyke path in 2006, I immediately started to scheme...however I have to remember that we are simply not going to walk all the long distance paths that we would like to before age or infirmity forces us to hang up our walking boots.
The path from Milford Common took us into a wooded section of the Chase then up the route of the Tackertoo Railway (laid to serve the WW1 army camps) onto open heathland, with light purple heather and occasional brighter purple plants in flower; I feel that one might have been Calluna whilst the other was Erica, but I can't be sure. We eventually came to a junction with the Staffordshire Way and the Glacial Boulder: ice may have transported the boulder from Scotland, but I don't think it built that plinth! We discovered later that the concrete surrounding the boulder is the base of the water tower which dominated the WW1 Brocton Camp, and the granite boulder was erected precisely here by the Friends of Cannock Chase.
From the Glacial Boulder we continued across the Chase and soon reached a road, close to a cafe; it was rather early in the day to stop for the cream teas which the guidebook recommends.
We cut across the Chase to a point again close to a road, then turned left along a tarmacked path. This brought us to the Katyn Memorial, erected to commemorate the massacre of almost 22,000 Polish soldiers and civilians by the Russian secret police in the Katyn Forest in 1940. There is no obvious direct link between the massacre and Cannock Chase, though there is apparently a large local Polish community and the Chase is reminiscent of the Katyn Forest. It was a very moving memorial - I'm still trying to get my head around the sheer loss of life in the massacre.
We continued across the Chase, now heading east. We were passed by horse-riders and then, close to the Sherbrook Valley, we had to wait for a convoy of 4x4 vehicles which headed towards us from a track to our left then turned along our route. Fortunately they turned off again very soon and the final driver was extremely polite, stopping to tell us he was last. Presumably this was some sort of extreme driving event; some of the ascents and descents on the Chase are quite steep and they were certainly climbing steeply as they headed back into the Forest.
We reached the Cannock Chase Visitor Centre at Marquis Drive; well, strictly we reached and walked through the car park (busy, especially with people heading off on bikes, and not terribly inspiring) then down a path to the cafe, toilets and reconstructed WW1 hut. We had a drink at the cafe (nothing special) then went into the WW1 hut which was extremely interesting. This is a hut from the camps on the Chase which, after the war was sold off for use as a village hall (Lord Lichfield wanted his land back...) then, eventually, reconstructed on Cannock Chase. We were the only visitors and there were two volunteers on duty, one dressed in WW1 nurse's uniform who was about to go on a walking holiday on Hadrian's Wall and had just returned from the events to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele (The Third Battle of Ypres). Somehow this made the experience of visiting the hut even more moving - 100 years ago today (not very long ago - my father, admittedly 57 when I was born, was a teenager who must have narrowly missed fighting on the Western Front), the bloody, muddy battle was raging. One of the volunteers pointed out the hospital beds (raised at one end), the "hospital blues" worn by convalescing soldiers if they went out in public; if they went out in civilian clothes they ran the risk of attracting the attention of zealous patriots who went round handing out white feathers to men not in uniform who they suspected were not doing their bit for King and Country.
We also saw postcards sent by men stationed here, examples of "kit" and a New Zealand coin of the time found on the Chase just recently; I had not appreciated how many New Zealanders made that long journey to train in the UK and then to fight in France and Belgium. J.R. Tolkein was also stationed here. Finally, we learned about the model trenches on the Chase, used for training; again this is something I had known nothing about.
Back on the Heart of England Way, we continued along Marquis Drive, passed the site of RAF Hednesford (with a memorial on its parade ground) and descended "Kitbag Hill", so called because the RAF trainees had to climb up the hill from the Station at Moors Gorse Halt at the bottom of the hill, complete with their kit. Now the routes once used by RAF "erks" (aircraftmen) are used by mountain bikes, as the "Follow the Dog" bike trail crosses the Heart of England Way from time to time. It was raining slightly when we reached the railway, now with no station but a modern bridge across the railway; the rain didn't come to anything and we continued across the A460 (a bridge here would have been useful too; it took ages to cross) then up the hill on the other side, now with the another bike trail "The Monkey Trail" on either side of our path. Towards the top of the hill we stopped for lunch, sitting on a log in a Forestry Commission "lay-by".
After another slight descent and very distinct ascent (passing a couple of dog-walkers who were giving up) we reached Castle Ring. The Iron Age Fort itself is covered in bracken so not terribly impressive, but there is a superb view from the car park over the flatter land to the south. Walking in that direction is tomorrow's adventure.
For now, after driving back to Milford Common, we continued the very short distance to the Shugborough Estate. As we parked the cars it was again raining slightly, and threatening rather more, so we took the advice of the helpful man at the entrance and made straight for the indoor attractions i.e. the mansion house. The story told within the house is that of two brothers, Admiral Lord George Anson (a naval officer who famously circumnavigated the world and got rich on the spoils of naval encounters) and his brother Thomas (who inherited the proceeds of his brother's exploits and used them to turn Shugborough into the paradise of his imagination. Following the death of both brothers without children, the estate passed to their sister's son George Adams, who then took the name George Anson. The Anson Family became the Earls of Lichfield in 1831, and thus it is that arguably the most famous name associated with Shugborough is Thomas Patrick John Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield, better known as Patrick Lichfield the royal family's photographer. It was Patrick Lichfield who gave Shugborough to the nation in lieu of death duties, following his grandfather's death, but he continued to live in an appartment within the mansion until his death in 2005. This is normally open to the public, but following 50 years in the care of Staffordshire County Council, the Estate management reverted to the National Trust at the end of 2016 and extensive renovations are in progress, including of the Lichfield appartments.
The final name brought to our attention as we looked at the house is that of Ben Wigley, who has developed ‘A Lost Paradise?’, a film that can be viewed in hand-powered boxes around the estate. The Arcadian landscape conceived by Thomas Anson was once packed with monuments and early Greek revival structures, but most of these were destroyed by a great flood in 1795. ‘A Lost Paradise?’ tells the story. The rain had stopped by the time we'd finished looking around the house, so we walked around the pretty formal garden, walked towards the Essex Bridge which leads to the village of Great Haywood, looked at the remaining memorials then adjourned to the Park Farm cafe for tea and cake!
