 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm in Chertsey today, Chertsey in Surrey, and I'm walking along in a man-made linear cutting in the ground, but no, I'm not in an old railway cutting or an old canal for that matter. Although there would have once been water up to about here. I'm in one of the old fish ponds of Chertsey Abbey. We're going to explore what we can of the site of Chertsey Abbey, have a little look in the town, and then we're going to go up to the mysterious St. Anne's Hill, which is just above the town. So as I come up out this fish pond, I must be in what was the Abbey farm. The site of the Abbey was over there. We're going to have a look at that in a minute, but that's one fish pond, which has got hazel all alongside it. If we come over here through these gardens, have a look at the cherry blossom. It really looks nice at this time of year. Have a look through these gardens. We can see two more fish ponds. There's a big eucalyptus tree there. Here's two more fish ponds, which don't have hazel around the side of them. And just over there is the moat, which was once covered. What I assume must have been the Abbey farm, where we have now a Victorian house. Possibly there was a farm house or some form of farm buildings, but just have a look. There's the other two fish ponds. Now, if we go out behind this tree, which has been a bit propped up here, we go over a small bridge and we have a similar looking cutting in the ground. This was the moat of part of the Abbey site. This is the ditch that runs along there, because just over here is the Abbey river. And just over there is the M3, but we're not so interested in that. So we're going to walk along here. We're going to go and find what we can of the Abbey. There's not a lot in the way of ruins, but there seems to be quite a lot in the way of earthwork. So this is the Abbey river. It's a distributary of the River Thames. So upstream that way it comes off the Thames, but downstream that way it joins the Thames. So what I'm not sure about, and somebody may like to comment and tell me is, was that a natural river? It looks pretty natural to me. And they just built the Abbey here because it was convenient, or did the monks build the river? Certainly the moat would have been built by the monks. So yeah, the history of the Abbey goes back a long, long time, as most Abbey's histories do. But the first significant piece of history in the Abbey, it would have been an old sort of wooden construction. Nothing too special, nothing fancy, but in about the year of 871 it was sacked by the Vikings. And they slaughtered the monks, about 50 of them, so quite a sad, sad thing to happen. And then it was quite a while later in the year of 964 or 63 around that time. Monks from Abbingdon came. That's an odd place to just go. But the monks from Abbingdon came here, they re-established the Abbey. So it may have been those monks who dug the ditches and the ponds, but they brought the Abbey back to life. So let's go down into the moat. The last started was just over there behind that tree. I'm now in the Abbey moat. So the plan in today's video is to show you the Abbey. There's not a lot to see of the Abbey, so that's why I said we'll go up to St Anne's Hill. We'll also have a quick look around the town centre. I'm going to go and visit the station because I'm expecting a steam train to pass through. That will be on a separate video, although I might put a little clip in this video. So we're just walking through this moat. I'm going to go up here. There's something up here. Not monastic, but a little bit interesting. It looks as though here we have some form of ornamental pond. I'm not sure when that was, but perhaps they had like a little water flowing. Maybe there was a little cascade down there. But that's obviously not working. Doesn't look like it's worked for a while. What we can see of the Abbey is over here. Really, what I should say is what we see are some outside walls. The whole site of the Abbey is private, so we can't go in there. I believe quite a few tiles survive there in Chertsey Museum, which due to current restrictions is closed, so we can't go there. But I will point out to you, so if you're watching this video in lucky years' time, then you want to do this. You'll be able to go to the museum. I have been in the museum. It's got a very, very small model railway as well, which is quite cool. So here we have a section of wall. Now I'm not sure if this wall is original or if it's been rebuilt by Victorians. It's pretty bit of both, and then these stones here mark the wall. You can see the wall goes along here. So these are some of the only monastic walls. The actual Abbey itself was over there on the other side of that wall. So I would say that's possibly original. This corner here. But if you're looking for an Abbey with big, high, ruined walls, well, this is as high as you're going to get. It's not one of those Abbeys, like Tinton or Croxton, or one with big, ruined walls. But still, I just like to come to these places. It's very peaceful, slightly noisy because they're mowing the grass, but very peaceful and just outside the town. You could come here by train. I didn't. I parked my car in the car park just over there. We are going to the station to the steam train. So we're now going to walk along here. So the slightly Abbey would have been just behind this wall here. So we can't go in. It's now looks like some form of car maintenance garage, so we're not going to go in there. But this is a public footpath down here. This barn, I wonder if that's anything to do with the Abbey. And what looks like possibly a sturdy Abbey is this old gate right here. I'd say those walls are original monastic, but it's been filled in, so I'll see that later. It was a Benedictine monastery. Anyone's wondering what order it was. Now we come through here behind that barn. There's a dove coat. But if you want a real surprise form of animal, you probably really were not expecting to see on this video. And we're coming back to the Abbey River. Here we have the Loch Ness Monster. Yeah, very strange thing to find here. Well, that Loch Ness Monster used to be at Fort Park, which of course isn't far away from here. So the Loch Ness Monster was there. Obviously they didn't want it anymore, so Loch Ness Monster ended up here, overlooking the Abbey River. I'm now going to go back into Chertsea. Like I said, I'll show you the museum, a couple of things in Town Centre, and then we're going to go up to St Anne's Hill. I'm now walking through the final section of the Abbey moat. So what you have above my head just here, this is Abbey Field, which is currently being mown. It's in a Victorian house, just there. So that's where we started the video, behind that hedge. Now coming towards the end of the ditch, we're going to go, and I'm going to point out Chertsea Museum. So like I said, if you do come here, and you want to know even more about the Abbey, some tiles, et cetera, Chertsea Museum is the place to go. So where is Chertsea? Here we are. So we come out here onto a busier road, going into the Town Centre now. This building here, that one there, that's Chertsea Museum. So like I said, when things are a bit more normal again, it's nice we can travel again, but when we can travel and go indoors again, go and visit them. It's a good little museum. And now I'm going to go and look around the town, see the steam train, and then as I said, we're going up to St Anne's Hill. So there you are, it's Chertsea Museum. That's St Peter's Church, that's the parish church for Chertsea. I'm going to go down Guildford Street, just here. This is Windsor Street, just down there, there's the Old Town Hall. I'm going to head down here to the railway station. So I'm beginning to make my way up St Anne's Hill. Everything's St Anne's Hill. You've got St Anne's Lodge there, St Anne's Cottage. This is where we're going, St Anne's Hill Public Park. So I'm quite excited about going up here to have a look. I've been to Chertsea quite a lot of times, either to see a steam train or sometimes I've just been driving this way. I've perhaps stopped here to have a coffee on the way home. Never ever been up St Anne's Hill. And it's one of those places I've always thought I should do at some point. So today seemed the ideal day. Because if I'm going to drive it at a distance like I did today, see a steam train. I like to find something interesting, perhaps not to do with trains, to do as well. So hence the reason we're now walking up St Anne's Hill. So all the way up here we're going to go and find St Anne's Hill Park. I'm just coming towards the top of St Anne's Hill to the point where the road carries on. That way we're going to go up there. There's a big art deco house here called St Anne's Court. You can just see it behind the gate. It's very interesting to go and have a closer look, but it's all private so we can't. We're going to go up here now. So if you wanted to come by car, I could have parked up here, but I parked down near the Abbey so I wouldn't have such a long walk to the station so I could see the train come up here and I'll walk back. But if you wanted to come just here, then you could drive your car up to here. So I'm going to go up past the car park and see what we can find. There's remains of an old hill fort. So more earth work. So there's not so many fragments of ruin or more fragmentary ruins at earth works in this video. So I'm looking forward to finding more of that as we make our way up to the top of St Anne's Hill. So just see past these cars. It's not a big car park and we're going to make our way up there. There's remains of a well. It's a bit of a mysterious place. One of the first Catholic churches in the area in the 1850s was built up here. It was originally private, but then it was open to all the other Catholic worshipers as there was no Catholic church down in church. But now there is. So I'm going to make my way through here. So it's a public footpath. So it says St Anne's Hill Nature Trail and there's a map so I'm going to explore all around here and see what I find. I'm now walking through the footpaths of St Anne's Hill, opening out into this clearing. This is all very nice. There's a big variety of trees. I've got oak trees. I've got a couple of Wellingtonias, a few coniferous trees, various pine trees. This is a really nice place. I've never come here before. I've still got the hill fort to have a look at. What we're also going to do is try and see if we can find a site of an old chapel because the name of the hill comes from St Anne's Chapel which was here in about 1334. I believe there was a possible of the Abbey. There might have been a tunnel between the two but I don't know if anyone really knows that. So it's got quite an interesting history. I know we're not talking quite as far back as the Abbey's history but we're talking a long time ago. This is interesting. I'm trying to work out. So there's clearly benches down there. I'm assuming that's not someone's garden. That's part of the public park. I don't want to just go running down the garden. I think it probably is part of the park. This is interesting. It feels like you're in a stately home with these balustrades here. So it's a very interesting place. There is also a reservoir in the middle so we probably won't be able to see that. I'm pretty sure that's a public park down there because I can see people walking around. They don't look as though it's their garden. So I've got to find my way down here but this is really nice up here which I'll tell you more about the well when we find it but I really am exploring this as I do the video so I've not been here before and done a recce. I'm showing you this as I discover it so I want to find my way down there now. I think I found my way down to this vast open space that we looked down from above. Here we are. We were up there. These were the big Wellentonia trees. We were just up behind there. Let's just have a little look around here. I wonder if there's another way I can get up. I could have come straight down the sides of the cliffs but I didn't. I thought it would be a bit dangerous and I just thought I won't. There's an interesting pond over here so we'll have a look at that and then we'll walk round to directly below where we were a moment ago. So the pond is full of big branches. It looks as though it possibly was all rhododendrons and it's all been cut back because rhododendrons are invasive species. There's a bit of a bridge there. Some sort of bridge across there. Whether this was part of some sort of grotto or garden folly if anyone knows more do feel free to comment and tell me. Some interesting things here. We've got a tree. It's obviously died possibly even struck by a lightning not a lot of it left. Have a look at this tree. This is something quite interesting to see. It looks like it's fallen over. Obviously has fallen over. They've removed the tree itself. But what we get to see here is underneath all the roots so you don't normally see that. That's really quite nicely preserved. That's pretty cool. I like that. I don't know if it's intentionally meant to be a sculpture but it kind of act for that one. That's pretty cool. Wonder how long ago that fell over. Again, if you know do comment and tell me. And look at that Wellington. It's huge. One thing I've always found fascinating about Wellington is I'll show you now. The day where they're huge to start with like really huge in America maybe even bigger. This bark is very soft and it's actually fireproof. I used to put it in fireproof doors. I remember one day I was volunteering with the National Trust about 10 years ago and the person in charge told me it was fireproof and I said but surely I said look it's all sort of flaky. Surely it would catch fire. He caught a cigarette lighter out tried to set fire to it and it just burnt out. So if imagine a big forest somewhere I don't know what part of America they grow to so I'm not going to try and guess the state but just imagine someone in America if there was a forest fire these trees protect themselves which is one of those natural phenomenons really. That's where we were. We were up there. So what I've got to do now is find a way up there. All the way around there gradually getting lower until I came to those steps. I'm going to go back up there. I'm going to find another way up there and then we're going to go and look for this well possibly a chapel and hopefully see some views. This is a very pleasant piece for Woodland. All I can hear is the sounds of the bird singing. I can just about hear the motorway in the background. It's surprising how close we are and how you sort of don't notice the motorway. We've got the M3 over there and the M25 is just down there. Here's one of the viewpoints. I'm thinking the motorway must be almost below us that you don't see it which is quite nice. So the viewpoint allows us to just look straight over probably looking that way out towards Virginia water the crown of faith, etc. See they've cleared the trees so we get a nice view and now I'm assuming this earthwork you can see here and here. Let's just have a look this way. These earthworks probably are the hill fort I was saying about. So my plan is now to follow my way down through this earthwork see what we find and hopefully find the nuns well and various other viewpoints so I'm just going to continue down through here and see what I find. I'll just come around the corner from the well and look it opens out into this huge beach cathedral and we're on a sort of ledge on the hill so you've got the hill going along one side and looking down there I can just see the M3 down there over the edge of it. It looks like there's a quarry here there's a huge rock just in front of me here I'm not going to go down there but look at that what a pretty impressive space this I can't believe I've never been here before all the time been to Chertsey. Looking at the path now going across there almost looks like it's part of a mountain railway or it reminds me perhaps of the children's railway running through the Buddha hills on the railway track holding on to the side of the hill but it's not a railway line it's just a path so I'm going to continue on round here and go back up the hill a bit higher and hopefully get some even more interesting views out over well Surrey, West London towards Staines etc. As for talking about getting up to the top of the hill that is where I'm aiming for is a beacon up there so I've come quite a long way down the hill but it was worth it because I wanted to see the well so I'm just going to follow this path along here I can hear an airplane I've just heard an airplane taking off from Heathrow Airport and still got the noise of the motorway but if you forget about all this it's a really nice wooden but I need to make my way to the top now and have a look at the views I've just zigzagged my way back to the top of the hill into another nice clearing with a variety of trees the rest of why I must be over there there's an area that's all fenced off and here is the beacon which we could see so probably when say, you know, they used to communicate via lighting beacons this would have been one of them they probably weren't all these hills and they'd lit this beacon and then the next one would have lit and so on well that's some view looking out there now whether the camera's picking it out probably isn't, I'm just here playing from Heathrow Airport I can see the lakes which somewhere down there is Fort Park I thought we'd see the rollercoaster in the Fort Park, they must be just that way slightly but clearly in the middle of the scene, as I said it's a shame the camera hasn't peed out but I can see Terminal 5 at Heathrow and the control tower so that's the view you get if you do want to see it for yourself like I said do walk up here it's better than the camera's showing you but to give you an idea, so we were walking down there down that path, I zigzagged my way up got to here, as I said there's the beacon I'm going to now head that way hopefully find some more earthworks of the old Fort and then I'm going to make my way back down the hill back down to Chertsey and just, there's the sirens coming out on camera, there's just the M3 is literally just down there, so time to start making my way back down St Anne's Hill I'm now standing on a big log of a fallen cedar tree I believe this one is certainly a coniferous tree surrounded by elms everywhere, elm trees it's a lot of people believe that elm trees don't exist anymore well they do in this form they don't grow particularly high because the beetle attacks them they look at the leaves, you can just see these little lumps on them, well unfortunately I think that means the beetle has started to attack so these will never grow to be big trees like these oak trees there are still some parts of the UK where Dutch elm disease hasn't yet taken full effect, Brighton used to be good not so sure now Cornwall, Essex you might see elm trees so this is really, these are quite big these elm trees, so I'm quite pleased to see them, you often see elm trees in hedgerows but you don't so often see them out in the woods they might grow to, well actually there we are, is that one unfortunately this one here, that one's already died so that's done quite well to get that high but I don't think we'll ever see elm trees like these grand old oaks and there's a chestnut tree there as well, that's the tree I was just standing on there's somewhere around here it does say on the map that there's the remains of St Anne's Chapel now I'm not sure if that's the original one dating from around the 1300s or if this is the 1850s chapel but I've not seen any evidence of that so either it's there is no fragments left or I've completely missed it and I might be yet to find it if I have already missed it then do comment, tell me and maybe I'll have to come back another day missed some exciting ruins a lot more volunteers this way it's really nice that's the reservoir through that gate, so that's private so we can't go down there I think yes, yes we're back to I can see just over there that's where we look down into the dell which I then had to find my way down into so what I think I'll do if I head this way we might find some of the earthworks, so this earthwork here all of this must be part of the Iron Age fort, must have been a very big fort in its day the shape of the hill isn't really natural but it's been in this shape for so long that that's how it's kind of ended up as it is let's have a look just up here in front of us this must be, it looks like it's been layered at some point so I'm not entirely sure this is possibly the edge of the old hill fort I'm going to make my way along this path out of here and head back down to Chertsy I've come back down to the dell just to conclude my visit to St Anne's hill it's a very interesting place a bit mysterious I think there have been possible paranormal investigators coming here so it's a bit of a weird place but quite nice it's funny because when I was walking out there I kept seeing people, whenever I've come down here it's been completely deserted so a bit weird but that's probably just the timings anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video from Chertsy Abbey Chertsy and St Anne's hill thank you very much for watching please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment and from the dell, just below St Anne's hill thank you very much, goodbye