Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Continue ahead along the edge of the golf course, then over a cross-
track to pass a low building on your right (where the wood curves left-
wards), and come to another junction of tracks. Turn left and walk along
the left-hand side of another woodland. Eventually the track veers left and
descends towards a gate. Now head to the right, pass through a gap in
a wall and shortly after leave the golf course to follow the wall along the
edge of the escarpment once more.
Reaching a trig point on the promontory of Hanging Hill, go through a
kissing gate and turn right. Keeping to the top edge of a sloping mead-
ow, walk on to find a gate giving access to an enclosed path alongside the
perimeter fence of a complex of buildings owned by the Avon Fire Brigade.
On coming to an access road, continue ahead a few paces, then through
another kissing gate where a faint path runs parallel with the road. At the
end of the meadow section go through another kissing gate, and follow
the road a short distance until a waymark post directs you left through a
screen of trees to a road opposite a parking area.
Cross with care to find two information boards describing the Battle of
Lansdown. A path now crosses a meadow to the
Granville Monument
(grid ref: 722704). Beyond the monument find a stile in a low mossy wall
on the right, cross it and follow the wall and fence. Walling continues along
the edge of the Battlefields, at the end of which you come to a stone stile.
There are wonderful views from here, looking down into a generous folding
landscape. Cross the stile, descend a path along the top edge of a sloping
meadow, go through a gate and continue on a track.
THE GRANVILLE MONUMENT
The Granville Monument stands on Lansdown Hill in an area known as the Battlefields.
On the evening of 5 July 1643, during the Civil War, Royalist troops under the com-
mand of Sir Bevil Granville pursued a Parliamentarian army in what became known as
the Battle of Lansdown. During the pursuit up the hill, the Parliamentarians fired their
cannon into the Royalist troops. Inspiring his men, Granville stormed the hill on horse-
back and silenced the guns. But he was hit as his troops broke through and, mortally
wounded, was carried to Cold Ashton Manor where he died later that night. The monu-
ment was erected in 1720 by Sir Bevil's grandson, Lord Lansdown.
When you come to a kissing gate on the left, go through this to cross
a fairly flat hilltop field, then continue by descending two meadows to a
farm track by a ford. Turn left, cross the stream and two cattlegrids, and
wander up a slight slope towards a barn by a house. Now head to the right
