RoutesHiking trails & RoutesUnited KingdomEnglandSouth East EnglandHampshireNew ForestBransgore
The Crown Inn – New Forest Airfields Memorial loop from Bransgore
RoutesHiking trails & RoutesUnited KingdomEnglandSouth East EnglandHampshireNew ForestBransgore
The Crown Inn – New Forest Airfields Memorial loop from Bransgore
Moderate
5.0
(2)
13
hikers
The Crown Inn – New Forest Airfields Memorial loop from Bransgore
02:44
10.5km
70m
Hiking
Moderate hike. Good fitness required. Easily walkable paths. The starting point of the route is accessible with public transport.
Last updated: October 14, 2026
Tips
Your route passes through protected areas
Please check local regulations for:
Waypoints
A
Start point
Bus stop
2.09 km
Devils Den
Forest
2
2.52 km
A historic bowl barrow—not just a grassy mound!
Highlight • Historical Site
To the untrained modern eye, this "ancient burial bowl" doesn’t look like a majestic final resting place for a legendary prehistoric chieftain. It looks like a 1-metre-high lump of grass that a municipal lawnmower would aggressively try to avoid.
Around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, the local New Forest Bronze Age community decided that when an important VIP passed away, digging a standard hole simply lacked flair. Instead, they opted for the "Bowl Barrow" design—which is archaeology-speak for an inverted cereal bowl made entirely of dirt, gravel, and rubble.The Thorney Hill barrow is roughly 11 metres in diameter. The entire community spent days digging a massive 3-metre-wide circular ditch, piling all that loose earth into the center to create a giant "Look at me!" hillock. It was the ultimate prehistoric neighborhood flex, designed to ensure that absolutely everyone traveling across the Forest knew exactly where the local bigwig was buried.
If you walk up to it today, you will notice a suspicious, sad little dip right in the dead center of the mound.That crater is the calling card of enthusiastic 19th-century amateur antiquarians—which is a polite historical term for Victorian gentlemen who got bored on weekends, grabbed shovels, and went hunting for "pagan gold". Unfortunately for those Victorian treasure hunters (but luckily for science), the intensely acidic soil of the New Forest is notoriously brutal. It eats organic matter for breakfast. Any grand wooden coffins, fancy clothes, or skeletons dissolved into nothingness millennia ago, leaving the tomb-raiders with nothing but a giant pile of damp Hampshire mud.
Around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, the local New Forest Bronze Age community decided that when an important VIP passed away, digging a standard hole simply lacked flair. Instead, they opted for the "Bowl Barrow" design—which is archaeology-speak for an inverted cereal bowl made entirely of dirt, gravel, and rubble.The Thorney Hill barrow is roughly 11 metres in diameter. The entire community spent days digging a massive 3-metre-wide circular ditch, piling all that loose earth into the center to create a giant "Look at me!" hillock. It was the ultimate prehistoric neighborhood flex, designed to ensure that absolutely everyone traveling across the Forest knew exactly where the local bigwig was buried.
If you walk up to it today, you will notice a suspicious, sad little dip right in the dead center of the mound.That crater is the calling card of enthusiastic 19th-century amateur antiquarians—which is a polite historical term for Victorian gentlemen who got bored on weekends, grabbed shovels, and went hunting for "pagan gold". Unfortunately for those Victorian treasure hunters (but luckily for science), the intensely acidic soil of the New Forest is notoriously brutal. It eats organic matter for breakfast. Any grand wooden coffins, fancy clothes, or skeletons dissolved into nothingness millennia ago, leaving the tomb-raiders with nothing but a giant pile of damp Hampshire mud.
Tip by
3
2.99 km
All Saints' Church (also known as the Gypsy Church)
Highlight • Religious Site
A Sanctuary for Everyone
Though funded by nobility, the church was specifically intended to serve the local working population, notably the New Forest Romany Gypsy families camped nearby. This welcoming spirit is captured in the church's defining masterpiece: a massive "Te Deum" wall mural painted in 1922 by Arts and Crafts artist Phoebe Anna Traquair. The mural seamlessly blends portraits of figures like Lord Tennyson and William Blake alongside the local estate labourers and Travellers who worshipped there.
The Toll of the World War
Tragedy struck the family a second time at the outbreak of the First World War. The Manners' eldest son, Lieutenant John Manners, was killed in action in August 1914 during the gruelling retreat from Mons. Inside the church, a beautifully detailed bronze effigy crafted by Sir Bertram McKennal rests in his memory. The churchyard memorial also serves as a prominent landmark bearing the names of many Romany soldiers from the village who never returned.
Though funded by nobility, the church was specifically intended to serve the local working population, notably the New Forest Romany Gypsy families camped nearby. This welcoming spirit is captured in the church's defining masterpiece: a massive "Te Deum" wall mural painted in 1922 by Arts and Crafts artist Phoebe Anna Traquair. The mural seamlessly blends portraits of figures like Lord Tennyson and William Blake alongside the local estate labourers and Travellers who worshipped there.
The Toll of the World War
Tragedy struck the family a second time at the outbreak of the First World War. The Manners' eldest son, Lieutenant John Manners, was killed in action in August 1914 during the gruelling retreat from Mons. Inside the church, a beautifully detailed bronze effigy crafted by Sir Bertram McKennal rests in his memory. The churchyard memorial also serves as a prominent landmark bearing the names of many Romany soldiers from the village who never returned.
Tip by
4
5.11 km
The Crown Inn
Highlight • Pub
5
9.50 km
Deer Viewing in New Forest National Park
Highlight • Forest
6
9.61 km
New Forest Airfields Memorial
Highlight • Historical Site
The memorial standing on the western boundary of the wartime airfield of Holmsley South sprang from the desire to commemorate all those people who had served on the New Forest airfields during and immediately after the Second World War.
The twelve airfields of the New Forest area played an important part in securing the eventual victory, and with the coming of peace, in bringing home thousands of prisoners-of-war and service personnel, and opening up the new air routes across the globe, which we use today as a matter of course. They were involved in every aspect of air warfare from research and development, training, flying on both defensive and offensive missions and supporting the operations of secret agents and Resistance Organisations in occupied Europe.
Many younger people have no conception of what was happening in the area all those years ago, yet what occurred then helped in no small way to secure the freedom we enjoy and take for granted today. Had the War been lost, Great Britain would have become part of the Third Reich, a vassal state, with slavery, concentration camps, murder, torture and intimidation being everyday features of life, as they were in those countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany at that time. Our wartime leaders would have been executed by Hitler’s Nazis.
The twelve airfields of the New Forest area played an important part in securing the eventual victory, and with the coming of peace, in bringing home thousands of prisoners-of-war and service personnel, and opening up the new air routes across the globe, which we use today as a matter of course. They were involved in every aspect of air warfare from research and development, training, flying on both defensive and offensive missions and supporting the operations of secret agents and Resistance Organisations in occupied Europe.
Many younger people have no conception of what was happening in the area all those years ago, yet what occurred then helped in no small way to secure the freedom we enjoy and take for granted today. Had the War been lost, Great Britain would have become part of the Third Reich, a vassal state, with slavery, concentration camps, murder, torture and intimidation being everyday features of life, as they were in those countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany at that time. Our wartime leaders would have been executed by Hitler’s Nazis.
Tip by
B
10.5 km
End point
Bus stop
Way Types & Surfaces
Way Types
9.55 km
439 m
411 m
< 100 m
Surfaces
9.37 km
621 m
474 m
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