Emma's Blog: Spa and walk at Donnington, plus some history

Friday 24 August

Ray has been a member for a while at the health club at the Donnington Valley Hotel just outside Newbury – or I should say, Donnington & Co, as it appears to have rebranded itself. He has signed me in as a guest a few times now, which is a pleasant way to spend a morning and I’ve booked in a 25-minute spa treatment each time, mostly the Scalp Ritual so far. A couple of Fridays ago we spent a morning there, had lunch (food is pretty good) and then went for a walk.

The area is of some interest to old/disused road and path geeks. The address of the hotel is Old Oxford Road. The hotel is now the main destination on this road, which carries on more or less parallel with the A339 as far as J13 of the M4, where it ends at a roundabout. There used to be a pub, the Fox & Hounds, further up from the hotel, but this is now closed as of earlier this year. It probably lost most of its passing trade a long time ago when the M4 was built and a new connecting road was built from Newbury to junction 13. Indeed, ChatGPT tells me that its fortunes were shaped by changes to the road network around Newbury:

The Street View image below shows the pub in 2024. I have a memory of it driving past it some years back (OK, a lot of years back) and it seeming in rather an out of the way place. In the late 1990s the Newbury bypass was constructed near the pub (that’s the road bridge in the distance in the Street View image), presumably adding to its difficulties by making it both out of the way and much less peaceful than it was before.

2024 Street View image of the Fox & Hounds, Donnington

Back to our walk. Ray wanted to start off by calling in at the golf club Pro Shop. So we started by walking up the road a short way and turning in by this sign to follow a road up to the golf club. He told me that Donnington Valley golf club used to be a private members’ club, but is now pay and play and is owned by the hotel.

A vibrant green tee

There’s some sort of party barn there, which was hosting a wedding that day – in fact we may have wandered through somewhere we weren’t supposed to. There’s a golfers’ bar at the back of Snelsmore House, and the pro shop is nearby, though Ray only popped in briefly in the end. The golf course was looking pretty brown and crispy, except for the greens and tees which had been kept a vibrant green.

Golfers' bar at the back of Snelsmore House

From Snelsmore House, we retraced our steps to the road and followed a footpath up behind some buildings and through some woods, to come out on the B4494 Wantage Road. The OS map appeared to show a footpath going off the other side of the road, but we could see no evidence of this on the ground. I came up with a cunning theory that the path had probably been re-routed post-Newbury bypass construction – the clues being the presence of the bypass a matter of metres away, and the green dashes on the map appearing to lead straight towards it. We crossed over the road bridge and walked a little way and there was indeed a relatively new-looking footpath sign going in to the left. We followed this, initially down a road past some houses, and then met up with what was clearly the former path, as we could see a fence some distance off with the bypass just beyond it.

Newish footpath sign off the B4494

Former footpath, now fenced off

Relevant area of the OS map

On the map snip, 'CH' (Clubhouse) marks Snelsmore House.

We turned left at a T-junction of paths and followed the path past a property called Beau House and along the road. The road crosses over the A34. There’s another golf club, Donnington Grove, in this area.

We past a couple of houses and a deserted barn from the former Castle Farm. The sign about the Limousin herd now seems to have gone from the end of the building, but I photographed it on a previous walk in 2021.

Donnington Castle

This path passes Donnington Castle. We made our way down to Donnington village and then turned left onto another footpath leading back up northwards towards a spot marked on the map as Nothing Hill.

Path leading towards Nothing Hill

This passes an interesting feature on the left: some land which Ray reckons was originally a 9-hole golf course. It sounds from Chat GPT as though this original 9-hole course was taken out of use when the course east of Wantage Road was expanded on that side of the road to be a full 18 holes. It's not the best photograph, but it shows some high fencing on the left and the ground in the right half of the picture was a raised flat area in manner of a tee or green.

Possible former golf course land at Nothing Hill

There’s some quite interesting history, if assorted AI queries are to be believed:

The golf course at Donnington Valley began as a family venture in the late 1980s. According to this 2001 Golf Business News piece, the Cox family built the course themselves on land they owned and turned part of their home into a bar and committee room.
The home in question appears to have been Fairfield Farm Donnington, which a local Facebook group tells me was owned by S L Cox and his two brothers, was sold and redeveloped as Donnington Valley Hotel and golf course.
The hotel’s website confirms that Nothing Hill used to be part of the golf course.
Businessman Sir Peter Michael bought the Cox family's golf course around 1990 and it was extended to 18 holes. ChatGPT located a 1991 ad for a Head Greenkeeper for a "recently extended" 18 hole course.
The hotel was built on the site of the original clubhouse, with golf facilities initially incorporated into the hotel.
Sir Peter then acquired the neighbouring Snelsmore House estate in the mid-1990s. The golf course was redesigned and Snelsmore House became the clubhouse. It sounds as though the holes west of the B4494 might have been abandoned at this point and additional holes built on the newly-acquired land.