Great Brington, Harlestone, Nobottle and Little Brington

The interior of St Mary's Church is a spiky sea of poppyhead bench ends. The set was made up in 1846, using many medieval examples and some fifty seven carved in 1606. Near the south door is a rare survival, a Jacobean almsbox on a timber column.

The main reason for visiting the church, though, is the Spencer Chapel. Members of the family have been buried in Great Brington since the 16th century. The 8th Earl Spencer, father of Princess Diana, joined his ancestors here in 1992.

There is a very fine collection of monuments in the chapel, which is closed off by its original Tudor railings. Between the chancel and the chapel are three canopied Tudor tombs, complete with effigies; many more cluster beyond. The oddest is that to St Edward Spencer, who died in 1655, set off in a corner where he appears to be climbing out of his urn!

From the church, the route sets out past the Old Rectory of 1822, whose curious polygonal Scottish Baronial tower is a blunt counterpoint to that of the church.

You go through Chinkwell Spinney, a fox covert, to join a road alongside Althorp Park. The park was created in about 1512, when over 300 acres were set aside beside a fence for the pursuit of pleasure and game alike. It looks much the same today, though a drystone wall has long replaced the fence, and most of the great trees are of a later date.

In the midst of the park is Althorp House, which can be seen from the road. The original Tudor mansion, much enlarged and altered, was clad in white brick made from Cambridge gault clay in the late 18th century. At the same time, the moat was filled in, and the formal gardens swept away.

The white brick is visually disappointing, but the Palladian stable block in fiery local ironstone is an altogether different matter. This well composed building can be seen from the gatehouse beside the road.

The route next takes you to Harlestone, an interesting ironstone village that is scattered along a small, steep winding valley. The Northampton Golf Clubhouse, a two-storey modern building, looks over an artificial lake whose dam masquerades as a rusticated three-arched bridge. The clubhouse occupies the site of Harlestone House, demolished in 1940. The old mansion was one of many claimed to be the model for Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

St Andrews Church, just beyond the house, is well documented in the memorial estate Book of Henry de Bray, a rich source of local history. The chancel was built around 1320 and the nave by 1325. But the tower must be earlier; A bell-rope was bought in 1294. Inside, there are many interesting things to see, including the two-bay crypt, a good font, a pulpit dating from around 1500 with Flemish panels, and a very handsome west gallery.

You continue through Lower Harlestone passing the Georgian old rectory, now called Harlestone House, and a school by George Devey, a Victorian architect who specialised in domestic styles. The pastures within the village contain many signs of former houses and closes; the village was originally more densely built up.

Here, and in the other villages on the walk, are occasional Spencer estate cottages of the 1840's and 1850's. They are built in picturesque Tudor style with leaded lattice casements in timber-mullioned windows frames and steep gables.

Across the fields, past the ancient Nobottle Wood on the parish boundary is Nobottle, a medieval village now reduced to a few farms and cottages. The heart of the village was in the fields immediately west of the aptly named Townsend Farm. The woodland itself is glorious in springtime, when it is a carpet of bluebells.

You approached the village of Little Brington on an oak lined Avenue, the end of a carriage road that ran for two miles from Althorp, and is now a quiet green lane. The village has a Victorian church whose spire is visible for miles around. There are many Spencer estate cottages here, as well as good ironstone buildings.

The route back to Great Brington crosses some of the most spectacular ridge and furrow land, in a county where many thousands of acres of these relics of medieval communally farmed ploughland survive in the pastures.

Many of these communal fields were swept away by graziers such as the Spencers, who destroyed villages and enclosed the land for sheep runs in the 15th and 16th centuries. Others fell victim to enclosure by Act of Parliament, particularly in the 18th century. Here, the furrows are so deep and the ridges so high, the walking across them is like a ride on a roller coaster.