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Welland Circular Trail
Walk length: 8.6 km 5.4 miles Allow 3 to 3 and a half hours at a moderate pace. Terrain: Flat.
Start: Buttercross, Bainton, located at the junction of Tallington Road and the B1443
Grid reference: TF094060 What 3 words:
How to get to Bainton:
By public transport - Hourly daytime Delaine 201 Bus service from the Stamford or Peterborough direction, Monday to Saturday inclusive. Check bus times: https://www.delainebuses.com/TT201-2.pdf
By car – there is limited on-road parking on the side roads in the village. Please do not park on the grass verges, the verges are looked after for wildflowers and are easily damaged at any time of the year.
The walk could also be undertaken by starting at Barnack. The Delaine 201 bus service also serves Barnack. Adding up to one mile/30 minutes to the walk depending on where Barnack you start the walk. The village of Tallington is also an alternative starting point for this walk.
Refreshments: The Millstone PH, Mill Lane, Barnack – small shop and café serving cakes and sandwiches and pub serving meals. https://www.themillstonebarnack.co.uk/
Shade: this walk covers mainly open country, there is no shade for most of the route.
Un-manned railway crossings: The footpaths cross the Peterborough to Stamford railway line in two places. After leaving Bainton the first crossing is gated and walkers are asked to use the telephone by the gate to let the signalman know of their intention to cross the line. The second crossing is also gated and has lights to indicate when it is safe to cross. Please keep your dog on a lead when approaching the railway crossings – unfortunate accidents have occurred involving dogs. Exercise caution and keep children close by you when approaching and crossing the railway line.
Road walking: There is a short section of road walking near Tallington, it is a minor road but is well used by traffic.
Dogs: Please bag dog poo and take it home with you or place in one of the dog waste bins on route - near Bainton Church, on the road bridge over the Maxey Cut at Tallington or between the moat and the Sheepwash on the return to Bainton.
Please keep to route on the designated public footpaths.
Description of the walk: The walk follows footpaths and tracks exploring a landscape alongside the River Welland that has been used and changed by people for thousands of years. At first sight the landscape today is dominated by large arable fields but there is much of interest along the way - the attractive stone built village of Bainton, glimpses of Bainton Heath Nature Reserve, lakes, watercourses, a small woodland, a medieval moat and an historic Sheepwash. Along the way there will be opportunities to pause and find out a bit about things you see and to imagine how it all looked in times past, before the flood alleviation channel was built, before the Enclosures, while the Romans were here and back into pre-historical times. Depending on the time of year there’ll be wildlife to spot and wildflowers to see.
The route follows public footpaths – these are mostly well signposted along the route with yellow arrows or yellow topped posts. The turning off the main road in Bainton can be difficult to see. The Public Footpath fingerpost is on the opposite side of the road pointing towards a track between two cottages. A gate across the track makes it look like you can’t go that way but there is an opening on either side of the gate.
Please keep to route on the designated public footpaths.
Points of interest:
Buttercross - The Buttercross is a Grade One listed structure. It consists of a limestone ball sitting on the base of an old cross shaft and all on a plinth of four limestone steps. It is thought that parts of the Buttercross date back to the Middle Ages, and that it may have been used as a market for dairy produce. The Buttercross hosts a self-sown miniature garden of small ferns, mosses and tiny annual wildflowers, these are seen at their best in the late winter and spring.
Bainton Village in Middle Ages was known as Badyngton, but apart from the church and the Buttercross which are medieval, all the old stone buildings you can see in the centre of the village date from the 18th and 19th century. Visible parts of Bainton house date from the 17th century onwards. They are built of limestone from quarries in Barnack and most have Collyweston slate roofs. Many were farmhouses, part of small farm complexes which were clustered together in the village centre – Manor Farm, Vine Farm, Bainton Farm, Cobleys Farm. The verges and green spaces in the village have been managed by the local Parish Council for wildflowers since 2020 – many wildflowers have appeared by reducing the frequency of mowing the grass. There are signs up around the village to help identify the wildflowers.
Bainton Church The churchyard is locally renowned for its wonderful display of primroses, violets and other native and naturalised flowers in spring-time, followed by carpets of buttercups and then later on in early summer Ox-eye daisies.
The church building was begun in the 12th, inside there are fine Norman style round-topped arches dating from that time. The nave of the church was altered in the 14th century and further alterations to the chancel and in the nave took place in the following century, using the new architectural styles of those times. The church is peaceful and filled with natural light and welcomes visitors.
Railway – The line connects Stansted Airport to Birmingham New Street Station, with hourly passenger service, the line is also well used by goods trains which pass more frequently. This section between Peterborough and Stamford was opened by the Midland Railway on its Syston and Peterborough Railway, train services began on 2 October 1846, using a temporary station in Stamford on Water Street, as the tunnel was not complete.
A lost landscape. When hunter-gatherer people moved through the Welland valley floodplain after the end of last Ice Age, they would have found a landscape of braided river channels ever changing through the busy work of beavers, grassy clearings where small herds of deer grazed and perhaps huge aurochs (very large wild cattle), woodland of hazel and birch, bulldozed by wild boar. It was a dynamic landscape constantly changed by flooding, beavers and by the large grazing animals. These people have left little trace of their presence, but as people began to farm animals and grow crops, some 5- 6000 years ago the evidence they left behind increased. The Welland valley from roughly the Barnack to Uffington Road area to the edge of the Fens has some of the best evidence of pre-historic human activity in the country. More about this further along the walk.
Bainton Heath – The track passes Bainton Heath Nature Reserve. The reserve is owned by National Grid and managed by the Langdyke Countryside Trust in collaboration with National Grid. There is no public access to the site but if you would like to visit, there are occasional organised walks guided by the warden – details can be found on the Langdyke Countryside Trust website. The area was excavated for gravel in the early decades of the 20th century. After the WW2, demolition material from the London blitz was transported by train to the site and dumped, fly ash from power stations has also been dumped there. A train track ran around the perimeter. Later left to nature, the site has become a fascinating and locally unique wildlife habitat for plants, lichens, insects, small mammals and birds with acid grassland, ponds and woodland. Coming soon – a public viewing platform with information about the site, which will overlook a large pond and be accessible from this public footpath.
Pre-enclosure landscape – Standing at this spot in the Middle Ages and looking back the way you have come towards Bainton, you would have been looking across one of Badyngton’s open fields called Stow Field. The open field stretched all the way from the edge of the village to King Street in the east to roughly up to this little stream. It is hard to visualise the size of this open field as half of it is now covered by Bainton Heath Nature Reserve. The open field was divided up into narrow strips grouped together in furlongs. The furlongs were surrounded by banks or baulks thrown up by centuries of ploughing. Each person had separate strips, some in this open field and some in the other open fields surrounding the village, this meant that no-one was favoured by having all the best land. The strips would have been cultivated using a small plough pulled by an oxen. All evidence of the strips has been lost by modern ploughing but some of the baulks still show up as long banks in this and other fields on the north side of Bainton. Turning now and looking north, this stream then known interchangeably as the Medwedyk/ Meadow Dike or Stowdyk is roughly where cultivated land ended and Bainton’s great meadow began. It was then known as the Mikel Medwe/meadow. Mikel is an early English word for big/large. And the meadow was very large indeed, stretching from Tallington Road all the way to King Street and north-east to Lolham Mill. The meadow would have been common grazing for much of the year but was divided up into strips of an acre in size, held by different people so that they could harvest the hay crop. This would have been a water meadow, seasonally flooded by the river and streams. Although divided up into large fields by the Enclosure Act and allocated to individuals, the land was still liable to flooding until the building of the Maxey Cut so much still remained as Bainton meadow.
Bainton Lakes were also created after the gravel extraction ceased. They belong to Bainton Fisheries, a syndicate fishery, who manage the 8 lakes with conservation in mind to maximise the benefit to wildlife and anglers. You are likely to see a variety of waterfowl particularly on Carp Lake on the north side of the Maxey Cut.
Songbird haven. The shrub covered land between the fishing lake and the Maxey Cut is a haven for songbirds, with lots of cover for nesting and abundant berries for food in autumn. Depending on the time of year you pass by you may be treated to a symphony of birdsong. There is no public access to this shrubby area, so please listen from the public footpath!
Maxey Cut and Bailey bridge. The Maxey Cut is part of the River Welland Major Improvement Scheme carried out by the then Welland River Board in the late 1940’s and 1950’s after disastrous floods in 1947. The Improvement Scheme spanned all the way from Uffington to the tidal outlet at Fosdyke. The scheme was designed to prevent flooding of land, roads and property in the future under similar river flood and tidal conditions or worse. Along this Tallington to Lolham Bridges stretch an entirely new channel was constructed. At times of higher river flow all the excess water is diverted along this deep and wide channel instead of following the old course to Market Deeping. The work here was completed in 1955 and the flood channel was in operation in early 1956. The Environment Agency is now responsible for the Maxey Cut.
Cross the Bailey Bridge and walk along the north side of the Maxey Cut. Bailey bridges were developed by the British for use during the Second World War. A Bailey bridge has the advantages of requiring no special tools or heavy equipment to assemble. The wood and steel bridge elements were small and light enough to be carried in trucks and lifted into place by hand, without the use of a crane. The bridges were strong enough to carry tanks. Bailey bridges continue to be manufactured. The ease of transport and construction is no doubt why a Bailey bridge was used to cross the Maxey Cut at this point.
Wildlife on the Maxey Cut. The Maxey Cut is a flood relief channel. For much of the year there is very little flow, but following extreme rainfall the channel can fill almost to the top of the bank. When constructed in 1954, it was a straight, wide, parallel-sided watercourse running between high grass embankments. In 2016, having accessed that there was sufficient capacity in this stretch of the Maxey Cut to cope with flood flows, the Environment Agency made changes to the bottom of the channel to enable the water to meander through silt and gravel banks where natural wetland habitat could develop and to create sections of faster flowing water. This has improved the value of the Maxey Cut for wildlife, creating a more natural water channel between the high banks. High fences to keep otters out of the fishing lakes means there are otters in this area of the Welland – at quiet times of day you may be lucky to see one. Look out for egrets, kingfishers, moorhens, goosanders, terns.
The Welland. Two small sluices divert water from the Maxey Cut into what was the main route of the River Welland prior to the construction of the Cut. The eastern watercourse flows to the old watermills at Lolham Mill and Maxey Mill, the western watercourse flows to the old watermills at Tallington Mill, West Deeping Mill and Molecey’s Mill. The two channels come together just west of Market Deeping and the Welland is re-joined by the Maxey Cut near Deeping Lakes from where the Welland continues on through the Fens past Crowland and Spalding. Soon after Spalding it becomes tidal and eventually flows out into the Wash at Fosdyke.
Gauging stations. There are three river flow gauging stations here which continuously monitor the three watercourses. A gauging station consists of a weir and a hut housing the monitoring equipment. The information from the gauging stations enable the Environment Agency to control the water level in the channels through the system of sluices, and provide information for planning future. The maximum flood flow recorded here since records began in 1967 was almost 95 cubic metres per second (which is the same as 95 tonnes of water per second) in April 1998.
John Clare wrote about experiencing the tumultuous flow of the River Welland in winter flood, from the bridges at Lolham which are about a mile further downstream, in ‘The Flood’.
On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I’ve seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o’er its wall to watch the dashing spray…..
White foam brown crested with the russet soil
As washed from new ploughed lands – would dart beneath
Then round and round a thousand eddies boil…..
Waves trough – rebound – and fury boil again…
Outside periods of heavy rainfall the total flow in the three channels is more like 1 or 2 cubic metres a second.
Fish pass On the south side of the main weir across the Maxey Cut a fish pass channel was installed in December 2014, to enable sea trout and young eels called elvers to travel upstream past the weir.
Old Course of the Welland. The path now follows an old course of the river Welland. The county boundary with Lincolnshire wiggles close to this watercourse. Most county boundaries had been established before 1066AD so this must have been a significant course of the River Welland at that time. Alongside this old channel was Bainton’s other water meadow, known as Litlynges in the Middle Ages and later called Little Meadow. The coming of the Maxey Cut flood alleviation channel meant this area was no longer liable to flooding so it is now arable farmland.
Pre-history and the Romano-British – the area you are now walking through is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The Scheduled Monument is protected by Law, and covers a large swathe of the Welland valley extending all the way from the Uffington Road in Barnack almost to the edge of the Bainton Lakes and Bainton Heath Nature Reserve area. Aerial photography has revealed multi-layered evidence of human activity from the Neolithic period right through to Roman times, that’s from about 5500 years ago to 1600 years ago. These show up as crop-marks: where soil has been disturbed, for instance in the digging of a ditch, vegetation grows thicker and this shows up well from the air, even though it may not be obvious from the ground. The Scheduled Monument has a cursus and a wood henge from the Neolithic, ring ditches from Bronze Age burial mounds and smaller hut circles, numerous field boundary ditches from different eras and small enclosures perhaps animal pens, Romano-British buildings and field systems, and long lines of circular pits which have been called ‘pit alignments’. Just north of Bainton the pit alignments can be easily seen from ground level as the crops begin to ripen in the summer but archaeologists have not been able to explain their purpose.
In the 1960’s a stone building from the Roman period was excavated in the far south-west corner of this large field. The Aisled building was roughly 40 metres long by 10 metres wide and was built around 250 AD. It contained hearths at one end which may have been used in metal working and corn drying kilns at the other end. Evidence of other Roman period buildings, field boundaries and tracks were also found.
Wildflower dyke The banks of the drainage ditch here are full of wildflowers in summer – Wild Marjoram, Common Fleabane, Common Knapweed, Figwort, Water Mint to name but a few. Various species of rushes thrive here and Great Reedmace, often known as ‘bulrush’ with its big, long sausage shaped brown seed heads, which eventually ‘explode’ releasing thousands of fluffy seeds.
Bainton Brook and tributary streams. After crossing the B1443 the path now runs along the north edge of a broad shallow valley, with spring-fed streams. Bainton Brook is close-by, it appears out of a culvert on the edge of Barnack - it is fed by springs rising in Barnack. The course of the stream has been much altered and it is now confined to an over-deepened channel. Nonetheless kingfishers are occasionally seen particularly in the Bainton (Wildlife) Conservation Area. In the Middle Ages common pasture land stretched on either side of the stream, covering a large area all the way to King Street. This was called Bainton Green.
Bainton Moated site – Bainton’s Medieval moated homestead site is a mystery. No contemporary written record of the site has been found, and over the centuries it had gradually filled in but the roughly square shape of a moat and a surrounding outer enclosure could clearly be seen on aerial photographs in the 1970’s. Recently it has come to light from documents that from at least the mid 1200’s to the mid 1300’s there were Lords and Ladies of Badyngton who may well have lived at this moated site. In 1988 the farmer re-excavated the moat as near as possible to its original depth and contours. The water filled moat now forms part of Bainton (Wildlife) Conservation Area – this was once arable farmland but was converted to woodland, meadows and wetland in the late 1980’s.
Sheepwash The rectangular stone-lined pit was filled with water by damming off Bainton Brook, known along this stretch as the Washdyke. Once it was full, the sheep were shepherded into the eastern pen and slid backwards into the water. Their backs were scrubbed with a long handled t-shaped implement called a poyse, they were ducked under a floating pole and then they clambered out up the sloping ramp into the western pen. The post and rail fences are a copy of the style of fence in use up to the 1950’s. With the widening of the road since then the western pen does not now line up with the ramp. Sheep have been important locally since the Middle Ages, so the Sheepwash may date back to that time.
The traditional style wooden fences around the Sheepwash are due to be replaced in the same style, using locally grown timber, in early 2023, through grants kindly given by John Clare Countryside and Milton Estates.
Mini meadows are being established in the two pens on either side, as part of the local Nature Recovery plans. Wildflower seeds were sown in the autumn of 2020 and augmented the following year by home grown wildflower plant plugs and more yellow rattle seed. A special selection of locally found native wildflower species was chosen so that these new mini meadows will have the best chance of success and will be in keeping with other wildflower rich areas nearby.
Willow pollards Returning to the Buttercross along Ufford Road you pass, on the right, five ancient willows pollarded in the traditional manner. Pollard willows like this would have been a common feature of the Welland landscape in the past. Annual regrowth could be harvested for animal fodder or left to grow for several years to provide useful poles.
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