Your route starts  from the Welsh Lane.

The Welsh Lane, an old drovers' route, now called the B4525, runs across the south of the village, and other roads come from Sulgrave, Weston, and Wappenham.

You will  start your journey by passing through the Jubilee Wall, which was built to commemorate the Queen's Jubilee of 2012.                                                           

Go down Station Road and cross the bridge over a deep cutting which is the abandoned route of the old Great Central Railway which

opened for freight in 1898 and for passengers in 1899. Helmdon station closed in 1963, and the whole route was abandoned in 1966.

There are fields on your right, usually filled with sheep.

The first house on your left is the former stationmaster's house for the "Helmdon for Sulgrave" station.  

Also here are the sparse remains of the old station, now out of sight behind a gate.

The line runs on an embankment and then traverses the valley on the nine arch Great Central viaduct which crosses the Helmdon brook.

Continuing down the road, now lined by houses, you then reach Grange Lane on the left, which has a tunnel under the embankment to reach Grange Farm.

Turning right at the bottom of the hill you will find Helmdon Primary School. This much regarded school has in excess of 110 pupils, around a third of whom come from Brackley and villages outside Helmdon. Until as recently as 1992 a public house stood opposite called The Chequers dating from around 1760.

Now turn right up Church Street. On the right, just before The Fat Landlord, formerly The Bell Inn, is Leeden Tye fronted by a little shop where boot polish was once made. The Fat Landlord is the only pub in the village still in business today.

Shortly you will see the Reading Room where many of the village activities take place. The Reading Room is the focus for many of the groups in the village and is the venue for many of their activities and events.  It has on its walls photographs of the Village of the Year competitions won by Helmdon.

Almost opposite the Reading Room, on the other side of the road, is a short close. On the left is an old cottage called Shortlands, reputedly the oldest house in the village

The Old Bakehouse on Church Street

Walking on up Church Street, you reach on the right the Old Bakehouse, still open in the 1950s for villagers wanting newly baked bread and their roasts cooked in the oven on a Sunday.

The parish church of St Mary Magdalene, on the highest ground in the village, has stood by its old yew for many hundreds of years. Its fourteenth

St Mary Magdalene Church

The present Manor Farm house

Helmdon ViaductRa viaduct

The village is proud of its war memorial commemorating the fallen of World Wars 1 and 2.    It was given grade 2 listed building status in 2015.  In 2009 an American memorial was set up beside it which honours the Americans who crashed at Astwell Castle Farm in 1943. In 2017 a flag pole was erected in one corner to commemorate national occasions.

Just on the left,along the Sulgrave Road, can be seen Priory Farm, which in Charles II's reign was the largest house in Helmdon. Its has a large barn. For long in a state of disrepair, it is now being restored.

Opposite Priory Farm is the road to Weston and Weedon Lois.  Just up the hill on the right are Weston Hill cottages and there is evidence that this building was originally the village school, though it was not on this site.

On each side of the Weston Road were the old stone quarries, which produced the pale Helmdon stone for so many years. The building material was used for many of the local houses as well as for much more famous ones. Today the left hand side is the site of a large wood yard.

Wappenham Road, Helmdon

Going back to Priory Farm turn left and as you go up Wappenham Road, you will find Fountain House, a late nineteenth-century brick house, on your right.  It has hosted drama productions, fetes and sales.

Just beyond, Magpie Cottage used to be the Magpie public house. It prospered while it catered for the drinking needs of the navvies employed on the Great Central Railway in the 1890s, and closed soon after.

A  little way up on the left is the Old House, fronted by a long abandoned shop, a flourishing butcher's business in the 30s.

Just up fron the old shop, on the same side of the road, is what looks like a new house but is a renovation of the mid-nineteenth century Baptist Chapel which closed some few years ago.

Above the bend in the hill is Home Farm, the only fully working farm left inside the village. Some farmhouses were built outside the village as a result of the mid-eighteenth century enclosure of the open fields, and the land is still worked from them.

On the right you will find Field Way, at the end of which is Field View House.

Then comes what is known as "The Square".  Look to the right of it and see Long Acre.  Here, and in several houses in Helmdon, are stone features obviously cut for more prestigious houses and used because the masons had odd bits of masonry left on their hands - or the stone could have come from Astwell castle which was drastically reduced in size in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Proceeding down Cross Lane you will pass by the house called The Old Manor, and thence to the Old Cross on the left at the end, which used to be a public house.

A path in front of the Old Cross leads to the Jubilee Wood.

The footpath to Astwell