# Kent Ramblers: Walk 81

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![map 081](https://www.kentramblers.org.uk/KentWalks/public/map_081.jpg)

# Kent Ramblers: Walk 81

Volunteer

## Benenden Short Circular

Distance:          2.7 miles (1h 15m)

OS Map:           Explorer 125 (Start at TQ807329)

Park in the street or around village green.

If parked around village green, walk back to Benenden Post Office and Community Shop.  From there walk westwards to cross-roads.  Turn right in direction of Benenden Golf Course. Go downhill, passing pond on left, then uphill to gate on left.  Through gate bear diagonally right across field aiming just to right of highest tree-top on horizon passing waymarker post en route.  On reaching kissing gate into wood, don’t go through but turn left uphill to corner of fence.  Turn right alongside fence and continue to asphalt drive.  Turn right for just a few metres then take path on left across parkland with views of original school building on right.  Keep going until approaching fence ahead then turn left, now joining High Weald Landscape Trail, downhill with fence on right to school drive.  Turn right down to road.

Cross road and turn right.  Shortly take path on left, initially wide, later narrow between fences and then entering open field.  Follow right hand field almost to bottom.  Just before reaching large white field gate into farm, turn left to kissing gate, down steps to stream, over bridge, up more steps and through another kissing gate.

Go straight across farm drive along sunken track initially on right of field then becoming enclosed.  Climb steadily then emerge over stile to road.

Cross very carefully, go over stile opposite and uphill to emerge through gate in corner of large field.  Cross diagonally to corner, go through kissing gate and along tarmac path. At end bear right then right again to emerge in front of church on large village green.  Head down to road and turn left back to Post Office.

## Points of Interest

### Benenden

This secluded, very pretty, 
						village, set among Kent's hop fields, has a fine green 
						and some exquisite timbered houses.

### Benenden School

![](https://www.kentramblers.org.uk/KentWalks/public/images/P081a.jpg)

Known as Hemsted Manor, an 
						earlier house on the site was visited by Queen Elizabeth 
						I in 1573.  The house was rebuilt in 1860 by 
						Gaythorne Hardy (later Lord Cranbrooke).  It 
						belonged to Lord Rothermere from 1912 until 1924 when 
						three teachers from Wycombe Abbey School established a 
						new boarding school for girls here.  The Princess 
						Royal, amongst other members of the current royal 
						family, was educated here.

### The Grange

... now a home for people with 
						learning disabilities, has an informal shrubbery and 
						woodland garden with a notable Japanese cherry tree 
						collection laid out from 1919 by the horticulturalist, 
						plant collector and hybridist Collingwood Ingram 
						(1880-1981) around a late-19th-century house.  
						Prior to Covid the gardens were open once a year, 
						usually in April, but it is not clear whether opening 
						has yet resumed.

### Public Transport

Benenden is served by the 297 
						bus from Tunbridge Wells to Tenterden which runs every 
						couple of hours except on Sundays when there is no 
						service.

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