Luddington—Welford—Weston-on-Avon—Cleeve Priors—Salford Priors.
THE way from Stratford to Evesham is a main road, the road through
Bidford, that already described in the chapters on the “Eight Villages,”
and hardly to be mentioned again except that by making some variations
here and there, two or three villages not otherwise to be visited may be
included. The first is Luddington, two and a half miles from the town,
on a duly sign-posted road to the left, an excellent road, although not
marked so on the maps. Luddington, besides being a village of one long
row of old thatched cottages close to the Avon, is of some mild interest
as being the place of which Thomas Hunt, one of Shakespeare’s
schoolmasters, became curate-in-charge, and where, some say, Shakespeare
was married. But the old church was burnt down many years ago and
rebuilt in 1872, and the register, supposed to have been destroyed at the
same time, was long kept in private hands, finally disappearing
altogether. The late Mr. C. E. Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, stated
that, in his younger days, “no one dreamed of disputing the assertion
that Shakespeare was married at Luddington old church”; and many others
declared that they had seen the entry in the book.
The way through Luddington crosses over the railway and rejoins the main
road half a mile short of Binton station. Welford lies away to the left.
Welford is a kind of show place in the Stratford district. “Ah! if you
want to see a pretty place, you should go to Welford.” The experienced
traveller and amateur of rural beauty hears this with a certain amount of
misgiving, for the popular suffrages might mean tea-gardens and all the
materials towards making a happy day for those very many people who think
nature unadorned to be a dull affair at the best. But Welford is quite
as good as it is represented to be. One might almost style it the most
picturesque village in the neighbourhood.
There is a good deal of Welford in the aggregate, but it is so scattered
that it has the appearance of half a dozen hamlets. It is best reached
by turning off the road to Bidford just short of Binton railway station.
A few yards bring you to what are called “Binton bridges,” across the
Avon, here running in overgrown channels, thick with “the vagabond flag,”
and shaded by willows that recall the lines in _Hamlet_—
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.”
You may notice, when the wind ruffles the leaves of the willow, that the
description is exact; the underside of a willow-leaf being different from
the upper, and of a hoary, grey-white tint.
“Binton bridges” are not, as might perhaps be assumed, bridges side by
side, but are continuations, across the two channels of the river.
Immediately across them the sign of the “Four Alls” inn attracts notice.
It is a picture-sign showing the King, “I rule all”; a bishop, “I pray
for all”; a guardsman, “I fight for all”; and a mournful-looking person,
seated, wearing a suit of black clothes and a thoughtful expression of
countenance: “I pay for all.” It is a sign to be matched in other parts
of the country, and was invented long ago by some sardonic person who had
pondered deeply upon the functions of the Monarchy, the Church, the Army,
and the tax-payer. But he lacked the savage, saturnine humour of the
person who thought of the “Five Alls,” another sign not unknown in the
length and breadth of the land. The Fifth All being the Devil: “I take
all!”
The first part of Welford soon appears, on the right. It might be styled
the chief part, because here, among the scattered groups of cottages, the
church is found. The church itself is only mildly interesting, but the
old lych-gate is a quaint survival, as weather-worn and rustic and
untouched as Welford itself; its rude timbers seamed and bleached with
the weather of over four centuries. Past the church you come down Boat
Lane to the river, where the weir can be heard roaring. There are some
particularly sketchable cottages in this lane, as will be seen by the
illustration over-leaf.
Returning, and proceeding southwards, other ancient thatched cottages are
passed, and then we come to the maypole, doubtless regarded as the centre
of the village. It is still dressed on May Day every year, and stands
here all the year on its mound, a thing for the stranger to wonder at,
gaily painted in bands of red, white and blue. It is not, of course, the
only existing maypole in England. I myself, _moi que vous parle_, know
about a dozen; but they are sufficiently unusual to attract attention.
The rest of Welford straggles along a broad street to the left, and
presently ends obscurely in meadows leading to the river. Across
field-paths one comes in this direction to the very out-of-the-world
little village of Weston-on-Avon. The explorer who finds Weston feels
like some member of the Geographical Society who has wandered in strange,
outlandish parts and comes back to read a paper on the subject; but I
dare say it is similarly discovered very frequently. Meanwhile, I have
no travellers’ tales to tell of the manners and customs of the people,
who are, as commonly elsewhere, of two sexes and walk upright on their
hind legs, and some are old and some young, and others yet middle-aged.
And there is the railway station of Milcote, only a mile away, situated
in a field. No one seems ever to go to it, or come from it; “Milcote”
being a species of dream place represented only by two remote houses. I
believe the station must have been set down there by some railway manager
suffering from strong delusions.
[Picture: Boat Lane, Welford]
Weston-on-Avon is really a very charming little place, with a small
aisle-less Late Perpendicular church, remarkable for the continuous range
of windows high up in the north wall, giving the interior an unusual
brightness and grace. The tower is furnished at its angles with
gargoyles of an unusual size and imaginative quality.
Returning to Welford, a by-road leads by the meadows called “Welford
Pastures” to Barton, and across the Roman road, the Ryknield Street, to
the hamlet of Marlcliff, below Bidford, where the Avon becomes broader
and navigable and lined with beautifully wooded cliffs, densely covered
with foliage to the water’s edge. A mile further is the village of
Cleeve Priors, where the picturesque old “King’s Arms” inn, with its
horseman’s upping-block in front, dates from 1691. Here, too, is a small
seventeenth-century manor-house, with heavily-barred and grated door,
breathing old-time distrust and suspicion.
Returning through the village to the waterside, the river may be crossed
here, by the long plank footbridge, only one plank wide, at Cleeve Mill
and lock; and Abbot’s Salford reached, on the Evesham main road, just
missing Salford Priors, where, if we wish to see it, there is a fine old
church. Salford Priors was anciently the property of the Priory of
Kenilworth, and Salford Abbots that of Evesham Abbey. Here, enclosed
within a jealous high wall, is the old Hall, generally called “the
Nunnery,” because of a Roman Catholic sisterhood having been established
here in modern times. It is a small Jacobean mansion, very tall in
proportion to its size, and curiously huddled together. Quaint curved
and re-curved gables of a bygone fashion, deeply set windows, and lofty
stone chimney-stacks, give the place a reticent look; the look of a house
with a history and secrets of its own. There are so many amateurs of the
quaint and historic nowadays that the occupiers of Salford Hall have
grown a little tired of showing strangers the genuine old hiding-hole in
the garret; behind a quite innocent-looking cupboard. You open the
cupboard and see a commonplace row of shelves. No one would suspect a
secret there. But when a wooden peg is removed, the shelves, together
with the back of the cupboard, push back on hinges, admitting to a
hiding-hole for priest or cavalier, or any whose necessities led him to
store himself uncomfortably away here. Once inside, the fugitive could
fix the door with a peg, so that it could not be moved from without.
Harvington, which comes next on our way to Evesham, is a delightful
cluster of old timbered houses, with a church whose Norman tower has been
given a modern spire. The village is at least half a mile from the
river, but it takes its name, originally “Herefordtun,” from an ancient
paved ford still there, a most charming and interesting scene. The ford
is practically a submerged paved road, such as those by which the Romans
crossed rivers, and is broad enough for wagons to pass. The roads on
either side are, however, only byways, leading to the Littleton villages
and the Lenches.
Norton, whose full name is Abbot’s Norton, comes next. It was for some
years, until the beginning of 1912, the property of the Orleans family,
one of the exiled Royal houses of France; but the Duc d’Orléans has now
sold his estates and his residence at Wood Norton, close by, to Mr.
Justice Swinfen Eady. Norton has yet more, and very fine timbered
houses, and in its church lie a number of the Rigg family, in effigy on
altar-tombs emblazoned to wonderment with their heraldic honours and
those of their wives. The marble lectern is a relic from Evesham Abbey.
From Norton the road enters Evesham along Greenhill, where the battle was
fought in 1265, and where the suburbs now chiefly extend.