Bishop's Waltham heritage walk

History

The Bishop's Waltham heritage walk is one of three walks in a leaflet published by Bishop's Waltham Parish Council and Hampshire County Council through the county's Small Grants Scheme. The routes were put forward by the parish council, and the leaflet's map is dated 2009. In 2012 Hampshire County Council launched five circular walks, one for each of the Olympic rings, to celebrate the London Olympics, promote the Games and encourage everyone to have a more active lifestyle, and the heritage walk was one of them.

The four-mile walk takes in the history around Newtown, west of the town. It begins at Station Roundabout on the path of the old branch line to Botley, which ran 13 trains a day before it closed in 1962, and follows part of the medieval Pilgrims' Trail from Winchester to Mont St Michel in Normandy. It crosses Tangier Lane, named after the port of Tangier, which was part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, who passed this way from Portugal to marry Charles II in 1662, and a short section of the Roman road that ran from Winchester to Portchester, and it ends at Claylands, where the clay pits date from Roman times and a brickworks was established in 1802.