Have you ever walked around Kings Barton?
In summer 2022 a couple of new footpath opened around the growing new housing estate that is Kings Barton. As more and more of the 2000 new homes materialise, the developer of the site has also opened a couple of new footpaths that make for an interesting circular walk around the estate. In addition it opens up another route between Headbourne Worthy and the Andover Road part of Winchester. The new footpath are indicated in purple:
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zoom out to see the entire Clarendon Way (thick pink line)
compass to orient the map – north at the top
locate your current position on the map (browser will ask for permission, works best on phones due to use of GPS). We don’t track your location.Our circular walk starts on Andover Road, incorporates the two clusters of houses in the new estate, the new footpaths and loops around Headbourne Worthy, taking in st. Swithun’s Church (built in 1043AD, read about the history here), the watercress fields and Cobbs farm shop on the way. The latter has a great café for everyone who needs a pit stop roughly halfway through the walk. If you are driving and you want to get your shopping done at the same time, you could park near the farm shop and start your walk from there.
The suggested route has one stretch that is marked as a footpath on an official site map, but currently only exists as an unmade path on the side of a field–this is to the west of the zigzag.
Length: 6.3 km / 3.9 miles
Time: 1.5 to 2 hours
Difficulty: Easy – 84 m total ascent
Along the route
We took a number of photos along the route:
Enjoy the open field and views as long as they last. The Development Plan indicates that almost the entire area will be turned into houses:
The routes between Headbourne worthy & Barton farm have always been there. At one stage you used to cross the railway over a stile until it was deemed dangerous. You could also walk down past the stables on to Well house lane I believe it has always been a foot path.
I don’t think you need to hurry too much. The developers are being slow because too much on the market at once would lower prices. And benefits like Park & Ride and the sewage works on site don’t happen until a certain number of houses have been built. They should have happened by now but the houses aren’t there to trigger them. It’s all very depressing, though one thing in favour is that they do seem to be building the correct proportion of affordable homes, unlike most developers who get planning consent and then find the affordable homes they’ve promised would make the scheme ‘unviable’. How genuinely affordable they are is another matter.