Walk Instructions: Choose what works for you

Directions

1. Looking at The George, turn left down Church Street. You’ll soon pass the 13^th Century All Saints Church, and a squadron of Mallards parked on the bank of Nunney Brook on the opposite side of the road. Study the Market Cross.
2. Turn left signposted Donkey Lane and continue until this tarmac lane approaches Combe Farm. You’ll pick up a public footpath to the right-hand side, heading into a grassy area amongst trees.
3. This leads to a path that follows Nunney Brook away from the village through its wooded valley. It’s been a dry few days as I walk this path and it’s still ‘sticky’ under foot. After heavy rain it would be very muddy, but I can see alternative paths created further away from the bank for such times.
4. This path continues to its first crossing point over the Nunney Brook. Take this left hand turn over the little bridge and you’ll quickly spy a public footpath signposted to your right, now on the other side of the Brook. Take this path.
5. Continue through this wooded valley. Eventually, the path takes you up a slope to an old stone bridge over the Brook. Follow this path over the bridge, then round to your right, uphill to some gates. You’re leaving the valley now and heading into fields to start the return journey to the village.
6. You’ll see the footpath through a gate to your left. Follow the field boundary by the right-hand hedge/edge to the gate at the other end of this field #1.
7. Through the gate into field #2 you cross to the left-hand hedge and continue a short way slightly uphill to a kissing gate through to the field #3.
8. Bear right through this gate – the footpath is clearly visible – to the top of the field, then turning left to follow the hedge line across this field. You come to a boundary of multiple fields. You’re turning right in front of the tree stump in the picture, slightly downhill, following the hedge line of field #4.
9. At the bottom of this field, cross a drainage ditch to bear right following a clearly marked path across the next field #5, now slightly uphill. Cross into field #6. Continue to the top end of this field.
10. There are two gates here. You need the one on the left-hand side. Go straight on with the hedge on your right now, in penultimate field #7.
11. Use a pair of kiss gates as you cross a farm driveway into field #8, the last field! You’ll soon see that the footpath enters a wooded passage between the fields.
12. Follow this eventually turning right. Continue to the end of this section, exiting through a metal kiss gate to your right. This leads eventually back onto a tarmac drive to signal the arrival back in the village. Follow this Fulwell Lane as it rejoins Donkey Lane, then back onto Church Street.
13. Finish the walk with a visit to Nunney Castle.

Notes - The Castle that came down twice!

Nunney Castle is an oddity, and it rewards a moment's thought before you walk away from it.

Most English village castles occupy the high ground — the hill, the ridge, something defensible. This one sits in the lowest part of the village, next to the brook, surrounded by its moat.

The reason is that the church had already claimed the elevated position by the time Sir John de la Mare decided to build his castle, in 1373. So he took the low-lying site instead, dug a moat that is said to be among the deepest in England, and built something that looked like nothing else in Somerset.

De la Mare had made his fortune in France — not heroically on the battlefield, but practically, by capturing wealthy French noblemen during the Hundred Years War and ransoming them back to their families. He came home rich, sought royal favour from Edward III, and built himself a castle that made his wealth visible.

What he built was unmistakably French in character: four round corner towers capped with conical roofs, prominent machicolations, a tall elegant keep that Nikolaus Pevsner would later call the most impressive castle in Somerset. Whether he was consciously imitating the French designs he'd seen on his travels, or whether the resemblance is coincidence, apparently remains a matter of academic debate. What's certain is that standing before it in an English village, it still looks slightly out of place — which is presumably what Sir John intended.

The castle stood for nearly three centuries before its only siege. By the 1640s it was owned by Colonel Richard Prater, a Catholic and a Royalist, who garrisoned it as the Civil War turned against the King.

In September 1645, a Parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell swept through Somerset — taking Sherborne, Cary and Shepton Mallet — before arriving at Nunney. Prater refused to surrender. He raised a flag bearing a Catholic crucifix so large it was reportedly taken to London and presented to Parliament as a trophy.

The castle's walls, eight feet thick but never designed to withstand artillery, lasted two days. A single cannon ball breached the north wall, the garrison surrendered, and Parliament had the castle scuppered to prevent its further use. The fireplaces were stripped out and installed in cottages around the village, where some reportedly remain.

After that, the castle did what ruined castles do: it decayed slowly and picturesquely. The walls still stood, the moat stayed full, the village built itself around it over the following centuries.

Then, on Christmas Day 1910 — 265 years after the siege — the north wall finally came down completely, collapsing into the moat. The castle had been damaged twice: once in a morning's bombardment in 1645, and once by the quiet persistence of time.

Before you leave the village, it's worth stepping into All Saints Church, just across from the pub. Sir John de la Mare is still there, lying in effigy in stone, six centuries after he built the strange French-looking castle on the low ground at the end of the lane. He looks composed. He has a moat.