Monkton Farleigh

The Inn, the High Ground and the Long Walk

The Kings Arms is a 17th-century building with an early-16th-century doorway and a two-storey porch with original windows. After the pub closed in 2024, village resident Sir Charles Hobhouse bought the freehold and leased it to the Beckford Group. Villagers had restored the historic name in 2016 when they took over day-to-day running from the Muddy Duck. The published eight-mile circular walk starts outside the building.

Monkton Farleigh stands on high ground between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon, mostly 600 to 700 feet up, with views especially to the east. Its houses are chiefly two storeys, built of rubble or coursed stone; many have tall Victorian chimneys, stone-mullioned windows and gables. Mature trees help the conservation area blend into the surrounding countryside. An 1881 parish history praised the varied landscape of hills, valleys, woods and streams.

The eight-mile circuit drops through farmland to the River Avon and Dundas Aqueduct, follows the Kennet and Avon Canal past Claverton Pumping Station to Bathampton, then climbs back through Browne's Folly Nature Reserve. There are 315 metres of ascent, plus steps and stiles, so it is not a route for wheels; dogs need leads around livestock. A short detour reaches Monk's Conduit, a 14th-century limestone building barely nine feet square, built to shelter the spring that once supplied the priory.

Village Life and Nearby Days Out

The village hall, opposite the school, opened in 1925 on land given by Hobhouse and put up by volunteers. It seats about fifty at tables and has a car park and garden. It is a place you hire rather than drop into.

Bradford-on-Avon, about four miles away, has shops and places to eat, as well as the canal and heritage walks. Further afield are the American Museum and Gardens at Claverton, with trails, open grounds and a garden deli, and Great Chalfield Manor, a 15th-century house with a moat, topiary and a spring-fed pond, shown by guided tour.

Getting Here and the Priory Beneath the Manor

Bradford-on-Avon is the nearest station, about three miles away, managed by GWR with step-free access to both platforms. The A363 Bath to Bradford-on-Avon road runs through Farleigh Wick; Bath is five and a half miles west. Route 96 provides a limited weekday link between Monkton Farleigh and Bradford-on-Avon.

The Grade I manor stands on the site of the former priory. A Cluniac priory of St Mary Magdalene was founded here about 1120–25, administered from Lewes until 1374, and dissolved in 1536; excavation traced its church, chapter house, cloister and hall. The manor reused 12th-century priory carving, including a coffin lid with a carved cross. John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, died at the manor in 1571.

St Peter's and What the Ground Revealed

St Peter's Church carries the older work more plainly. Its north porch has an inner 12th-century doorway with chevron ornament and a scalloped capital, and the saddleback tower holds bells cast in 1623, 1724 and 1783. T. H. Wyatt rebuilt much of the rest in 1844.

Two things surface from the ground here. In 1980 a householder found an earthenware pot holding 3,466 Roman coins, running from the reign of Valerian I to the start of Diocletian's. And the Bath stone under the village, quarried hard through the 19th century, was approved in 1935 for one of three underground ammunition sub-depots, Monkton Farleigh among them, developed to keep the country's shells safe from bombing.

Monkton Farleigh in Domesday

The Domesday surveyors found 24 households and eight plough teams, and valued the whole place at seven pounds.

Each of Monkton Farleigh's two Domesday holdings included 20 acres of pasture and three acres of woodland.