FROM spring to late summer the Common Hill Nature Reserve above the cider press memorial at Rudge End is a constantly changing tapestry of colours as different plants flower and set seed. Common Spotted Orchid, butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, crickets and beetles feature among the old, undisturbed grassland and ant-hills; watch out especially for the Adder’s Tongue Fern whose spores grow on a spike resembling a snake’s tongue and was once much prized by herbalists and thought to be a cure for snakebite.

Contrast this tranquil setting with the seething cauldron, where nearly 40,000 fight fans were baying for blood at the bare-knuckle boxing championship of all England in May, 1823. The venue was a field outside Andover, and one combatant is commemorated in the midst of this month’s Fownhope circuit at the place where he was born in 1795, Witchen Farm as it was then.

From Winter to Spring had been the marketing change to the butcher boy’s surname by his London promoters, and by the time he stepped into the ring for his tilt at the title he could number Lord Byron and John Keats among his admirers. Neat was the name of his muscular, hard-punching opponent and it was with near footwork that Tom Spring was able to cause the Bristolian to break his arm and retire in the eighth round. But this was really a rather cordial encounter for the elegant pugilist compared with his two successful defences of the national crown.

In the following year at Pitchcroft, Worcester, and on Epsom Racecourse, he took on the challenge of the former mercenary John Langan. It took a bloody 77 and 76 rounds respectively for Spring to re-arrange the handsome features of his durable Irish opponent before he was proclaimed the victor.

Tom, an usher at the opulent coronation of King George IV in the year of his marriage to Hereford girl Elizabeth Griffiths, had come a long way from his beginnings. Playing on Malthouse Meadow at the start of our walk (1) or Whiterdine, the next one over behind the theatre of The Green Man inn, his schooling took place twice a week at the Malt House, which remains where we turn into Capler Lane. Though his father was a boxer at heart and his early inspiration, young Tom kept himself fit partly by helping with the family butchery business as a delivery boy. among his destinations were Fownhope Court, and Nash Farm on the southern land overlooking Fownhope between (5) and (6).

More significantly, on this part of the walk, it is possible to see Holme Lacy House on the other side of the River, where Tom Winter not only delivered meat but also took his first steps into the public arena of boxing. The 11th Duke of Norfolk, a bon viveur, was the lord of the manor, and in pursuit of entertaining his endless stream of guests, would stage sparring contests on the well-manicured lawns. Tom would take the ferry, a few yards from the family home, and usually steal the show with his nimble dancing footwork and relentless jabbing; before long he was the star attraction and able to enhance his earnings with the reward of a purse for seeing off his opponents.

As the champion after his 11 professional fights, Spring took over The Booth Hall Motel in Hereford where he staged cockfighting. But he returned to London where he ventured into boxing management and also took charge of The Castle Tavern in Holborn which was a hotbed of the noble art.

From the autumn years of his life to the end, spring was comfortably off and left land in Hawkers Lane in his will. Largely forgotten until the centenary of his death, in 1951, the memorial in our eclectic Fownhope walk was unveiled in 1954.