Nick Burton is your guide around Stonyhurst

IT is surprisingly easy to stumble across medieval manor houses and ancient farmsteads when walking through the fields, woods and parkland around Hurst Green.

One of the finest to be found is the hunting lodge of Greengore, situated on an old highway at the western boundary of the medieval Stonyhurst deer park.

A house existed here as early as 1314 and Greengore, with its stone buttresses and mullion windows, is thought to have played host to Lancastrian kings.

Henry VII is said to have stayed here when he came hunting in the deer park of the Shireburn family who lived at Stonyhurst Hall, now the College.

This short stroll passes Greengore after heading upstream from Hurst Green via a wooded clough cut into the lower slopes of Longridge Fell.

On Hurst Green’s main street are the impressive almshouses, built by Sir Nicholas Shireburn in 1706.

They are not in their original location, as they were once to be found on the eastern end of Longridge Fell. They were dismantled and rebuilt in the centre of the village in the 1940s.

1. Walk up the main village street passing the Bayley Arms and village hall on the right. You then pass the Shireburn almshouses on the same side. Immediately after the almshouses join a signed bridleway on the left hand side of the road opposite Smithy Lane.

Follow the track and keep to the higher level when it forks - ignore the left fork dropping downhill.

Keep to the main track which gradually drops downhill through woodland. Follow the stream, Dean Brook, to reach a footbridge over it.

2. Turn left and cross the footbridge. Dean Brook rises on Longridge Fell and heads through Hurst Green to join the nearby River Ribble.

Follow the main track as it climbs uphill from the footbridge. The track soon leaves the woodland behind and becomes a wide green lane between fields.

At a track junction on the left keep going straight ahead and the imposing stone lodge of Greengore is soon reached on the left.

3. Continue straight ahead along the track, a gated bridleway, following the wall boundary of Deer House Wood on the right.

The view opens out to the wooded slopes of Longridge Fell. A junction of tracks is soon reached at the edge of a wood. Leave the bridleway here by turning sharp left at the track junction, joining another bridleway which soon enters Hudd Lee Wood.

The track passes through the wood and drops downhill to a gate at the opposite side.

4. Turn left towards the buildings of Higher Hud Lee.

Turn right and follow the track away from the farm.

The track is now followed straight ahead for the next half mile past Lower Hud Lee Farm, it becomes a hedged lane and eventually meets the B6243 Longridge Road.

Turn left and follow this road with care for a short distance until a lane, signed as Shire Lane, is reached on the left.

5. Shire Lane is now followed for about three-quarters-of-a-mile mile back to Hurst Green village.

Along the way a small detour can be made on the right to visit St John’s Church.

The lane winds downhill and crosses Dean Brook again and then climbs uphill to meet the main village street.