Royal Hunting Days at Hunsdon

This walk focuses on the great estate of Hunsdon, whose glory days were in the Tudor age. The poorly-drained boulder clay hereabouts proved ideal for the semi-wild hunting park landscape favoured in medieval and Tudor times. A hunting park was made here after the Norman Conquest. Its earliest known royal connection dates from 1445, when Richard, Duke of York, was permitted to enlarge the park. In 1447 he was licensed to build a tower of stone and crenellate it, royal consent being needed to construct any battlements. However, that year the estate passed to Sir John Oldhall, who duly built the mansion with a tower 100ft (30m) high by 80ft (24m) square.

By 1527 the house and estate were owned by Henry VIII. He increased the number of hunting parks to three and is recorded as personally killing two stags there in 1532. He spent a great deal of money on Hunsdon House, the shape being an early example of the 'E-plan'. When Elizabeth I granted the estate to Sir Henry Carey in 1559 it must have been a very substantial mansion. Carey, who took the title Baron Hunsdon, was one of the Queen's most important advisors. A blunt and direct soldier, a jouster, Governor of Berwick and Privy Councillor, he was Elizabeth's first cousin. His mother was Mary Boleyn, sister of the Queen's mother, Ann Boleyn. There is a famous painting of the Queen arriving in procession at a very fanciful Hunsdon in about 1580. This was truly the golden age of Hunsdon House for in 1653, after the Civil War, the Royalist Lord Hunsdon had to sell the estate. The Hertfordshire brewing family, the Calverts, set out to rebuild the house but faltered, and the centre and south wings were demolished in 1804. The present house, three storeys high and battlemented, is based around the 1447 structure and the Tudor north wing. Most of the external walls incorporate original brickwork, as far as the middle of the second storey.

The park is now a shadow of it former self, just a small area near the house, the remainder has gone under the plough. Near the start of the walk is Hunsdon Lodge Farm, the lodge in question was demolished in 1946. It may have been a hunting lodge in the northernmost of the three royal parks but now is amid cloying arable farmland and an old Second World War airfield. You get a partial view of Hunsdon House from the parish churchyard. The church itself, well to the south of the village, has notable monuments and a sumptuous Jacobean screen into the south chapel. Both this chapel and the north one are in Tudor brick, while the rest is in flint with stone dressings from the early and late 15th century.

While you're there

To see a remarkable survival with rich historic overtones visit the Rye House Gatehouse next to the River Lea. This battlemented brick gatehouse is all that remains of a moated courtyard mansion, licenced in 1443, and famous for being the scene of the Rye House Plot of 1683 which schemed the assassination of Charles II. It is best reached via Stanstead Abbotts, along the west side of the river.

What to look for

Eastwick village, virtually rebuilt for Lord Hunsdon's estate, has several dated buildings around its crossroads, built in a Tudor style; the Lion pub in 1852, estate cottages of 1861 and 1872 and a school of 1884. The church was also rebuilt by the estate in the 1870s. In its churchyard is one of those poignant reminders of the impact of war on a small village - the grave of a local Home Guardsman killed in October 1940 by the same bomb that mortally wounded his father, an Air Raid Warden.

Where to eat and drink

There are two pubs in Hunsdon, the Crown on the corner of the High Street and Acorn Street and on Hunsdon Road the Fox and Hounds, a former coaching inn. Opposite is Hunsdon Post Office Stores for rations. In Eastwick there is the Lion in a building dated 1852.