Badby Woods and Fawsley

Badby Woods and Fawsley is a 2.9-mile (4.7km) circular walk on the Fawsley estate in south-west Northamptonshire, from the car park at Fawsley to the church at Badby and back. It is moderate, with about 120m of climbing, and takes about an hour and a half. It follows Northamptonshire County Council's Southern Circular, from its Badby walks leaflet of 2003, and for most of the way the Knightley Way, which the leaflet calls a 12-mile county footpath from Badby to Greens Norton.

The leaflet gives the walk as 2.3 miles. Our line uses the same paths and measures 2.9 miles, so we give that figure. Either way it is a short walk with a stiff climb in the middle.

Fawsley and its park

Fawsley is an estate rather than a village. Richard Knightley, a Staffordshire lawyer, bought the manor in 1416, and his family held it until the 1930s, gaining Badby after the dissolution of Evesham Abbey. The Tudor hall was begun by Sir Richard Knightley, who died in 1534, and Sir Edmund Knightley added its great hall in 1537; Elizabeth I visited in 1575. It is now Fawsley Hall Hotel and Spa.

The park around it covers over 330 hectares of wood, parkland and lakes. Its origins lie in a 13th-century deer park of Evesham Abbey, and its look comes from the 18th century, when Capability Brown worked on the double lakes, the leaflet says. The lakes cover the site of the village that once stood here. The walk crosses the open park on both legs, so expect grazing animals.

Badby Wood

Badby Woods is ancient woodland, growing for over 700 years, the leaflet says, mainly native hazel and oak, and most of it has been a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1985. It was imparked as a deer park for the abbot of Evesham in 1245 to 1246, and the banks of its park pale still run round much of the wood. The bluebells are the draw in spring, though the parish warns that nature does not always oblige on Bluebell Sunday.

The wood is private, on the Fawsley estate, but open to visitors. The Knightley Way along its edge is the only public right of way; the other paths inside are permissive. This walk keeps to the Knightley Way, so for the bluebells either walk in from Badby on the permissive paths or come back another day.

Badby

Badby is an ironstone and thatch village round its greens, and the walk reaches it at the top, by the church of St Mary the Virgin. Historic England dates the church to the 14th and 15th centuries, restored from 1880, and the leaflet warns of a steep climb up to it from the green. On Bluebell Sunday, the first Sunday in May, now extended to the bank holiday Monday, Badby Village Hall serves teas, and the village gets busy.

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Fawsley church

Before you leave, walk the 200m south from the car park to Fawsley's church of St Mary, standing alone on a grassy knoll inside a ha-ha. The county's leaflet notes the Knightley family tombs, including 16th-century effigies of Sir Richard Knightley and his wife Jane, and carved poppy heads, and the National Churches Trust says the Washington family's heraldic glass in the north aisle came from Sulgrave Manor in 1830. The Trust lists the church as open daily from 9.30am to 5pm, though it may close in bad weather to keep out mud from the fields.

Parking, food and the route

OpenStreetMap maps the car park at Fawsley as free, though we have not confirmed it, and the county's leaflet suggests parking at Fawsley, because parking in Badby is extremely limited and never allowed on the greens. We found no café on the walk and have not confirmed a pub in Badby trading in 2026, so bring what you need.

Nearby, Canons Ashby, the Dryden family's Elizabethan manor in the National Trust's care, is a short drive south-east. The Sulgrave and Culworth circular is another parish walk in the same corner of the county, and the Kings Sutton station walk starts from a station further south.

This route is drawn, not recorded: we drew it along the paths the leaflet names, as OpenStreetMap maps them, and checked it against West Northamptonshire Council's rights of way data. Nobody from this guide has walked it yet, and a walk-through is still to come.