Public Transport
Finding Your Way
Getting Access to Churches
Setting the Scene - Lincoln
The Trail - Section 1
Stage 1. Lincoln to Washingborough
Stage 2. Washingborough to Branston
Stage 3. Branston to Potterhanworth
Stage 4. Potterhanworth to Nocton
Stage 5. Nocton to Dunston
Stage 6. Dunston to Metheringham
The Trail - Section 2
Stage 1. Metheringham to Blankney
Stage 2. Blankney to Scopwick
Stage 3. Scopwick to Digby
Stage 4. Digby to Dorrington
Stage 5. Dorrington to Ruskington
Stage 6. Ruskington to Sleaford
History | The Route
Section 1 - Stage 3
Branston to Potterhanworth
Don't leave Branston without stopping to admire the large mosaic designed by artsNK assosciate artist Alan Potter and made by village residents as a central feature for their Arts Trail. As you set off on the next leg of the trail you will see it in the centre of the car park by the church. The sinuous design depicts aspects of village history with one panel being a particularly graphic illustration of the 1962 church fire.
On the way to Potterhanworth we pass woods surrounding Longhills Hall built in 1838 and which was one of the houses that were supplied by Branston's new waterwheel in 1879.
Potterhanworth occupies a position where the Lincoln heath to the west merges with the fens of the Witham Valley and lies close to the Roman Car Dyke. Also some seven miles to the west is the Roman Ermine Street and as fragments of Roman pottery have been found locally there may well have been a Roman settlement (or at least a villa farm) in the vicinity.
The "Hanworth" element of the place-name is from the Old English for "Hana's" farmstead and the "Potter" constituent refers to the local pottery industry that developed here in the C14th. However it took until the 1940s to combine into one word.
At St Andrew's church Potterhanworth we find a C14th tower attached to a Victorian nave and chancel. There is believed to have been a pre-conquest church here but, apart from the tower, anything mediaeval or earlier vanished in 1749 to be replaced by a Georgian church. That in turn was removed in the 1850s when the present one was built, albeit in replica Gothic style. One of the bells was recast for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 with a quotation from "Morte D'Arthur" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was by then poet laureate. The lines include the famous (and some may think prophetic) words "The old order changeth, yielding place to new".
It is rare for a small village to have its church overshadowed by an even more massive building - but that is the case here! Immediately over the road stands, or rather looms, a huge water tower built in 1903 as part of an innovative water supply system from a borehole in a nearby field.
Potterhanworth has two small village greens. On one there proudly stands a brilliantly coloured village sign and on the other the war memorial. A nearby bus shelter was erected to commemorate the 1951 Festival of Britain.
DISTANCE : 2 3/4 miles : 4.5 kilometres.
REFRESHMENTS : The Chequers Inn, Potterhanworth.
NOTES. There is a good carpark adjacent to the church in Branston plus a Stepping Out carpark at the village hall on Lincoln Road. (GR018676) Potterhanworth has a village trail and leaflet.
The Route
Cross the car park behind All Saints church Branston and enter a walled footpath at the rear. At a road (Silver Street) the path continues opposite by house number 23 and goes over a cul-de-sac to the next road (Villa Close). Turn left and on reaching the main road cross carefully and turn right to the junction with Moor Lane.
Cross Moor Lane to the signed footpath opposite that heads off diagonally over a large area of open grassland. At the far side go right by a hedge then left at its corner to reach a way mark. Now veer right through trees and then walk over more open grassland to the left hand corner of Longhills Wood seen ahead. Walk down the side of the woods, join a track and follow that to a road. Turn right.
Continue towards a small factory seen ahead (less than half a mile) and there turn left at another footpath sign. Immediately enter a field to bear half right towards a stile where the path crosses the railway. From the stile at the other side maintain your line over the next field to a track where there is a waymarker. Continue diagonally in the third field to its far corner before bearing half left on a rough grass path parallel with a ditch on your left. After 100 yards a waymarker points half right to another on a fence corner; now aim to a hedge corner by a house and a few feet away join a road.
Cross to a kissing gate in the hedge just to the left of Battle's Farm entrance and walk between a house and a barn, then behind a shed and through the farmyard to a road (Cross Street). You are now in Potterhanworth village with the Chequers Inn a few paces to your left, whilst almost opposite Middle Street leads to the village green and the church.
