A Christian Aid Walk 

As promised, I’m updating you with the Six Churches Walk that my wife and I did on the Friday of Christian Aid week. The walk is situated between Barnsley and Rotherham, an area not normally associated with pleasant country walks. We parked the car close to the Heritage Centre at Elsecar (bonus – free parking!) and walked anti-clockwise to take in the Villages of Wentworth, Wath-upon-Dearne and West Melton. We started the walk with a climb through Kings Wood, the bluebells providing a lovely contrast to the bright green of new leaves on trees.

We then used footpaths and lanes over rolling hills to arrive at Wentworth. This village has not one but two Holy Trinity Churches. One is partly ruined and has medieval origins, whilst the other (built in 1877 and shown in the pictures below) is huge with seating for over 500 people. Not bad for a village with ~1000 inhabitants!

Wentworth is also the home of the Wentworth and Fitzwilliam families who provided generations of the Marquis of Rockingham. As well as the impressive Wentworth Woodhouse, home to the Fitzwilliam’s, there are a number of follies some of which are passed on the walk.

We saw the Needles Eye (build so the second Marquis could win a bet concerning driving a coach through the eye of the needle!) and the Hoober Stand (a 100 foot triangular tower built by the first Marquis to thank the King for his title and to celebrate the defeat of the Jacobites two years earlier in 1745).

Later, we passed the United Reform Church at West Melton. Dating from 1799, the church was built in a very simple puritan style and represented dissention and a break away from the Church of England.
 
The weather was kind to us and we spent a pleasant day challenging ourselves with this 10 mile circular walk to commemorate Christian Aid week and learning some history. We sponsored ourselves to raise money that ordinarily we’d have generated through envelope collections or an official sponsored walk. One of the good things to come out of the Covid epidemic, I feel, is the ability for all of us to be resourceful and re-invent new ways to achieve goals.