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Ski holidays
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A luscious landscape, where once a rebel was roused.
Distance 7.5 miles (12.1km)
Minimum time 4hrs
Ascent/gradient 426ft (130m)
Level of difficulty Medium
Paths Field paths, tracks, some road, 15 stiles
Landscape Gently rolling farmland, mixed woodland
Suggested map aqua3 OS Explorer OL 22 New Forest; Explorer 118 Shaftesbury & Cranborne Chase
Start/finish SU 034072 (on Explorer 118)
Dog friendliness On lead on road sections
Parking Lay-by with phone box, just west of Horton
Public toilets None on route
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© The Automobile Association 2008. © Crown Copyright Licence number 100021153
1 Go towards the village and turn left over the stile by the pump. Head towards Horton Tower, crossing two more stiles. Go up the hill, bearing diagonally left. Cross the fence at the top corner, and turn right to view the tower.
2 Retrace your steps and stay on the track through a gate into Ferndown Forest. After ¼ mile (400m) join a firmer track. Shortly, turn right between trees. Cross a stream and a track to a gate.
3 Pass this, go through a bank and turn left along a forest ride. Turn right before the edge of the wood, and follow the path for ¾ mile (1.2km). Bear left at the bottom, down a track. Turn left at the road and pass Paradise Farmhouse.
4 Turn left between the houses and follow the road to Holt Lodge Farm. With the buildings to your left, bear half-right across the yard to a grassy lane.
5 Where this peters out bear left into the field, with the hedge to your right. Cross a stile and go through a gate to Early's Farm. Turn immediately left to the gate, and right, in front of the house, into a lane. At a junction after Chapel Farm, turn left, signed the 'Long House'. Turn right at the gate and cross a stile. Bear left around the field, cross a stile by a bungalow and another stile to the road.
6 Turn left, then right into the lane by Pee Wee Lodge. Keep straight on at the junction, then fork right into Grixey Farm. Follow the waymarker up the hill, crossing two stiles. With a copse on your left, go up the field. Cross a stile and turn left on to the road.
7 After ½ mile (800m) bear left, signed 'Monmouth's Ash Farm', and take the path to the right of the bungalow. Keep straight on this bridleway up over a sandy heath and down into woodland. After a mile (1.6km) the track emerges from the woods, and you can see Horton Tower.
8 Just past Woodlands Manor Farm turn left along the road with the fence. Bear down to the right beside the lake and stay on this road. After it becomes a track, look for two stiles in the hedge on the right, just after the farm. Cross these and go diagonally across the field to another stile. Cross the top of the next field and a stile, turning right to meet the road.
9 Turn left through Haythorne but, before the road descends, go right, through trees, to a gate and down the field, to emerge by the vineyard. Turn left and left again to return to your car.
The countryside around Horton holds a sad reminder of a flamboyant rebel, who was captured here after being discovered asleep in a ditch below an ash tree. On 11 June 1685 James, Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of the late King Charles II, landed from exile in Holland at Lyme Regis. West Dorset was a base for anti-Catholic Dissenters and on earlier visits the Duke had been warmly greeted with cries of 'God bless the Protestant Duke, and the Devil take the Pope'. He believed he could raise enough support in the West Country to claim the throne from his uncle, the Catholic James II.
Accompanied by a small band of supporters, Monmouth set about recruiting. He announced that he had come to defend the Protestant religion and to deliver the country from the tyranny of James II. Within a few days his following had grown to 4,000. At Taunton Monmouth had himself declared King. On 6 July the rebels clashed with James II's forces at Sedgemoor, across the border in Somerset. The battle was over in 90 minutes, with a loss of 16 of the King's men and some 300 rebels. His ill-equipped army having been routed, the Duke was forced to flee with three followers. He hoped to escape on foot, disguised as a local shepherd, through Dorset to the coast at Poole, where he could board a ship.
However, rewards were posted, and the countryside quickly filled with troops seeking the rebel leader. Two of his companions were caught at Holt the next morning. The Duke and his last companion, a German officer named Buyse, fled across the fields of Horton Heath, but were spotted climbing a hedge by an old lady, Amy Farrant, who told the authorities. Buyse was soon captured and a few hours later militiaman Henry Parkin, while searching beneath an ash tree, discovered another exhausted figure. A search of his pockets disclosed the badge of the Knight of the Garter, golden guineas and recipes for cosmetics, revealing that this was no ordinary shepherd. After a defiant declaration that, given the chance, he would do it all again, Monmouth was taken to London. He was beheaded on 15 July.
The repercussions of the failed rebellion were felt hard in Dorset. The brutal Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys was put in charge of the trials of 312 of Monmouth's supporters in what became known as the 'Bloody Assizes' at Dorchester. Most were transported to the colonies, but 74 were executed, their bodies publicly mutilated and hung on display.
On the main road east of Horton village is Drusilla's, a cosy old pub with a thatched roof, real ales and a fabulous view over to Horton Tower. If you're after a Dorset cream tea, try the Horton Inn, at a junction 1 mile (1.6km) west of the village - children and dogs welcome.
The landmark folly of Horton Tower stands like a giant rocket-launcher, splendidly isolated on its hilltop. Some 230ft (70m) high, it was built by Humphrey Sturt in 1762 as an 'observatory', probably for deer-spotting, and was restored in 1994.
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