Exton's Modest Heights

About trip

Located a couple of miles north of Rutland Water, Exton is a picturesque village of ironstone and thatched cottages laid out around a green ringed by mature sycamore trees and overlooked by the attractive, tall, creeper-covered village pub. There has been a community here since Norman times, and once the manor belonged to King David of Scotland. Since then it has changed hands a number of times, finally passing to the Noels, Viscounts Campden, Earls of Gainsborough, in the 1620s. The family still owns neighbouring Exton Hall, which was built to replace the Old Hall after it was largely destroyed by a fire in 1810. The ruins of the Old Hall are inside the grounds (accessible to the public from the road to the south) close to the Church of St Peter and St Paul, which itself was struck by lightning in 1843, causing the spire to collapse. Despite some of the original work being lost, most of the fine monuments survived, including some medieval sculptures and various tombs. Also look out for the giant memorial by the master carver Grinling Gibbons to the 3rd Viscount Campden, his fourth wife and 19 children, which is considered something of a rarity since Gibbons is far better known for working in wood rather than stone. The film Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980) was shot on location in Exton and featured, among other places, the village church. Exton’s Glorious Grounds. The grounds and parkland were mainly developed in the late 17th century by the 6th Earl of Gainsborough, when water features, such as cascades, artificial ponds and streams, were created (proving that landscaper gardeners were at it 300 years before any television makeover show you could mention). Among the ornamental follies on the estate is an elaborate Gothic summer house that dates from the late 18th century. It is known as Fort Henry, and overlooks Fort Henry Lake, which you will see halfway round the walk. Behind it, until quite recently, stood the even more bizarre Bark Temple, an elaborate wooden structure that not surprisingly has rotted away over time. Rutland: a County in Miniature. Measuring less than 20 miles (32.4km) across, Rutland has a resident population of around 37,000, and apart from Oakham and Uppingham most of its inhabitants live in tiny villages and hamlets like Exton. The county’s name possibly derives from the 11th-century word ‘Roteland’, denoting the red colour of the soil in the east of the region; or it could have been part of the estate belonging to an early landowner called Rota. For many years this tiny place was in the hands of either the Crown or the Church, but in 1974 local government reorganisation ended its independence and relegated it to a mere district of Leicestershire. Happily that decision was reversed in 1997, and Rutland is once more England’s smallest county, whose Latin motto Multum in Parvo means ‘so much in so little’. While you're there: Barnsdale Gardens, a mile (1.6km) west of Exton, will be familiar to millions of TV gardeners as the home of the late Geoff Hamilton. Open to the public daily, there are 37 gardens within the southfacing 8-acre (3.2ha) site, plus an arboretum, coffee shop and a well-stocked nursery with a range of garden plants initially propagated from the gardens. What to look for: Just below Lower Lake is the moated outline of a former trout pool, fish pond or possibly a stockade of some sort. It was probably built at the same time as the now deserted medieval village of Horn, whose buildings once stood on the hillside above North Brook and today remain as simple, grassy outlines. Where to eat and drink: Fox and Hounds Inn by The Green in Exton is an elegant 17th-century pub which serves food daily (except Monday) and has a pleasant garden situated to the rear. Alternatively visit the coffee shop at Barnsdale Gardens (see While You’re There), which is open all year round (closed Monday and Tuesday from November to February). Directions: With your back to the pub leave The Green on the far right-hand side on Stamford Road and, at the end, turn right. This becomes Empingham Road and, when the houses finish, continue over the stream and go over a stile on your left to follow a public footpath. Just before a gate at the entrance to a field, bear right to follow a wide, grassy track along the shallow valley, keeping the stream to your right. Stay on this track for just under 1 mile (1.6km), at one point crossing the stream and returning via a footbridge before climbing into a field on the left to avoid Cuckoo Farm. Finally the path crosses the stream once more and clambers up through the fields on the right to reach a lane. Turn left and walk along the verge until just beyond the bend, then go left on a footpath indicated ‘Fort Henry and Greetham’. Follow this route above the trout hatchery, then head diagonally right via a small concrete bridge to reach the fence at the top. Turn left and walk along to Lower Lake, then go ahead on the surfaced drive for a few paces, to fork left before the gate and head out across open pasture above the water. Turn left where it reaches a surfaced lane that bisects Fort Henry Lake and Lower Lake and walk uphill until it veers right. Here go straight on, over a stone-filled patch of ground, for a rough grassy track that heads through some newly planted trees and out, straight ahead across the open hilltop. The vast, hedgeless fields stretch out in all directions, and from the top of this small and sometimes windy plateau there are views across the Rutland countryside. In the distance ahead is the dense green woodland surrounding Exton Hall, while closer to hand is Tunneley Wood. Together with the intensive farmland you are walking across, this is all part of the Exton Estate. Don’t forget, however, that it’s private land, so stick to the well-signposted public rights of way. The dips in some of the fields, especially to the north, are the result of former ironstone workings. The ironstone outcrop forms a low ridge that runs across Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Rutland and produces distinctive chestnut or orange/brown soils. Since medieval times the shallow quarries have provided stone for local buildings and, although long exhausted, they have resulted in a series of peculiarly low or uneven fields. When the grassy track dips down to reach a junction of routes go straight across, indicated ‘public bridleway’. Walk along this open surfaced lane as it gradually climbs up towards Exton, approaching the village along a slender avenue of trees. Go through the gate and continue along New Field Road past houses. At the end turn right (look out for the millennium walnut tree on an open patch of grass) and walk along Stamford Road into Top Street. Go left by the stone shelter into High Street and past a row of beautiful thatched cottages in order to return to the pub on The Green.