THE UPPER OR WARWICKSHIRE AVON.
The Watershed of Central England--Naseby--Rugby--The
Swift--Lutterworth and Wiclif--Stoneleigh Abbey and
Kenilworth Castle--Guy's Cliff--The Leam--Warwick and
its Castle--Stratford-on-Avon and its Shakespeare
Associations--Evesham--Pershore--Tewkesbury.
The Avon is a typical river of the English lowlands, and it is
surpassed by few in the quiet beauty of its scenery or in the
places of interest on its banks. It rises in the northern part of
Northamptonshire, on an elevated plateau, the highest spot on which is
nearly 700 feet above sea-level. This forms the watershed of Central
England, for on it also the Welland and the Nen begin their courses
to the Wash. But it is not only the source of an historic stream, it
is also the scene of an historic event. Almost on the highest ground
is Naseby Church, and to the north of that, quite in the corner of
the county, is the fatal "field" where the forces of Charles and of
Cromwell met in a death-grip and the King's cause was hopelessly lost.
It was more than a defeat, it was an utter rout. Henceforth Charles was
"like a hunted partridge, flitting from one castle to another."
From this upland country--pleasantly varied by cornfield, pasture, and
copses--the Avon makes its way to the northern margin of the county,
and then, working round to the south-west, forms for a while the
boundary between it and Leicestershire. Entering Warwickshire, the Avon
passes near Rugby. All know the great railway junction, immortalised
by Charles Dickens, and the famous school, with its memories of old
Laurence Sheriffe the founder, and Dr. Arnold, its great headmaster.
Then the river is joined by the tributary Swift, which, while hardly
more than a brook, has rippled by the little town of Lutterworth.
There, higher up the slope, is the church where Wiclif ministered, the
pulpit from which he preached. There, spanning the stream, is a little
bridge, the successor of that from which the ashes, after his bones
had been dug up and burnt by order of the Council of Constance, were
flung into the water. So the Swift bore them to the Avon, and the Avon
to the Severn, and that to the sea, to be dispersed abroad into all
lands--"which things are an allegory."
[Illustration: THE UPPER OR WARWICKSHIRE AVON.]
The Avon flows on through the pretty, restful scenery of Warwickshire,
which has been rendered classic by the authoress of "Adam Bede,"
twisting in great curves gradually more and more to the south. It
leaves, some three miles away from its right bank, the spires and
ancient mansions of Coventry--once noted for its ribbons, now busy in
making cycles; it sweeps round Stoneleigh Abbey, with its beautiful
park and fine old oaks, where a comparatively modern mansion has
replaced a Cistercian monastery. On the opposite side, half a league
away, are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, with their memories of
Leicester and Queen Elizabeth. It glides beneath Guy's Cliff, where
the famous Earl, the slayer of the Dun Cow, after his return from the
Holy Land, dwelt in a cave as a hermit, unrecognised, till the hour of
his death, by his own wife, though she daily gave him alms. A little
further, and a short distance away on the left, on the tributary Leam,
is the modern town of Leamington, which began a career of prosperity
just a century ago on the discovery of sundry mineral springs. Then the
Avon sweeps by the foot of the hill on which stands the old town of
Warwick. The site is an ideal one--a hill for a fortress, a river for
a moat--and has thus been occupied from a distant antiquity. Briton,
Roman, Saxon--all are said to have held in turn the settlement, till
the Norman came and built a castle. The town retains two of its gates
and several old timbered houses, one of which, the Leicester Hospital,
founded in 1571, is perhaps the finest in the Midlands; and on the top
of the hill, set so that "it cannot be hid," is the great church of St.
Mary. It is in the Perpendicular style, more or less, for the tower
and nave were rebuilt after a great fire in 1694, the choir escaping
with little injury. Two fine tombs of the Earls of Warwick are in this
part, but the glory of the church is the Beauchamp Chapel, with its
far-famed altar-tomb and effigy of Richard Beauchamp, the founder. He
died in 1439; and near him lie the Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's
favourite, and other members of the house of Dudley.
[Illustration: WARWICK CASTLE.]
Warwick Castle is one of the most picturesquely situated mansions
in England. It stands on a rocky headland, which descends almost
precipitously to the Avon. One of our illustrations (p. 111) may give
some notion of the beauty of the view over the rich river-plain; the
other (p. 109) indicates the aspect of the castle itself. A mediæval
fortress has been gradually transformed into a modern mansion, yet it
retains an air of antiquity and not a little of the original structure.
It incorporates portions of almost all dates, from the Norman Conquest
to the present day. The oldest part is the lofty tower, called Cæsar's
tower, which must have been erected not many years after the victory
at Hastings. The residential part mostly belongs to the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, though alterations and additions have been
made, especially during the restoration, which was rendered necessary
by a lamentable fire in 1871. We must leave it to the guide-books to
describe the pictures, antiquities, and curiosities which the castle
contains--relics of the Civil War, when it was in vain besieged by the
king's forces, the sword and porridge-pot of the legendary Guy, and
the famous Warwick Vase, dug up near Tivoli at Hadrian's Villa. But
the view from the windows is so beautiful that the visitor will often
find a difficulty in looking at pictures on the walls; he will be well
rewarded if afterwards he stroll down towards the old mill by the
riverside.
After leaving Warwick the Avon keeps winding towards the south-western
boundary of the county till, before reaching this, it arrives at
another and yet more noted town. Stratford-on-Avon is a household word
wherever the English tongue is spoken. No American thinks his visit to
the country of his ancestors is complete till he has made a pilgrimage
to the birthplace and the grave of Shakespeare--nay, even our distant
kinsmen in Germany are not seldom drawn thither by the same magnetic
force. The town, till the days of railways, was a quietly prosperous,
old-fashioned place, in harmony with the scenery of the neighbourhood.
This is thoroughly characteristic of the Midlands, and exhibits one
of their most attractive types. "The Avon, a fairly broad bright
stream, sweeps silently along on its way to the Severn, through level
meadows, where the grass grows green and deep. The higher ground on
either side rolls gently down, descending sometimes to the margin of
the stream, but elsewhere parted from it by broad stretches of level
valley. The slopes are dotted with cornfields, and varied by clumps
of trees and lines of hedgerow timber. It is a peaceful, unexciting
land, where hurry would seem out of place."[4] The little house where
Shakespeare was born--in 1564, on the 23rd of April, as they say--after
many vicissitudes has been saved to the nation, and perhaps a little
over-restored. It is a parcel-timbered dwelling without enrichment--one
of those common in the Midlands--such as would be inhabited by an
ordinary burgess of a country town.
[Illustration: THE AVON FROM WARWICK CASTLE (_p. 110_).]
When Shakespeare returned, a prosperous man, to his birthplace, he
lived in a much better house near the church, which he purchased in
1597. This, however, was pulled down by an ill-tempered clerical
vandal in the middle of the last century. Shottery, where we can still
see the cottage of Anne Hathaway, whom Shakespeare loved not wisely
but too well, is a mile away; and about four times that distance is
the picturesque old brick and stone mansion of Charlecote, with its
beautiful park. Here dwelt Sir Thomas Lucy, with whose deer the youth
made too free, and on account of whose anger he ran away to London. The
dramatist, it is said, took his revenge on the knight in the portrait
of Justice Shallow, but when he looked back on the ultimate results of
his flight from Stratford he might have justly said, "All's well that
ends well!"
[Illustration: STRATFORD-ON-AVON CHURCH.]
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE (_p. 111_).]
In the month of his birth, 1616, Stratford Church received the body
of William Shakespeare. "Church and churchyard are worthy of being
connected with so great a memory. The former is a fine cruciform
structure, crowned with a central spire; the latter a spacious tract,
planted with aged trees. An avenue of limes leads up to the church
porch, between which, perhaps, the poet often passed to worship, and
whose quivering shadows may one sad day have fallen upon his coffin.
But there is a part of the God's acre where, perhaps, more than any
other, we may think of him, for it is one which can hardly have
failed to tempt him to musing. The Avon bounds the churchyard, and
by its brink is a terraced walk, beneath a row of fine old elms. On
the one hand, through the green screens of summer foliage, or through
the chequered lattice-work of winter boughs, we see the grey stones
of the church--here the tracery of a window, there a weather-beaten
pinnacle--then, through some wider gap, the spire itself. On the other
hand, beneath the terrace wall, the Avon slowly and silently glides
along by bridge and town, by water-meadows, bright with celandine in
spring and thick with lush grass in June."[5]
The church, once collegiate, is an unusually fine one, partly Early
English, partly Decorated, but mostly Perpendicular in style. To the
last belongs the chancel, where Shakespeare is buried, with his wife,
daughter, and other relations. His monument, with the bust, is on the
north wall, and his grave with the quaint inscription is near at hand,
both too well known to need description; but though this one great
memory pervades the place, almost to the exclusion of all beside, there
are other tombs of interest, and the church of itself is well worth a
visit.
About a league below Stratford, the Avon becomes a county boundary,
separating Warwickshire from the north of Gloucestershire. Then it
returns to the former county, and lastly enters Worcestershire. Its
valley becomes more and more definitely marked as the river cuts its
way through the upland, which forms the eastern limit of the broad Vale
of Severn. On a peninsula of Worcestershire made by a southward sweep
of the stream, near the boundary of the two other counties, stands an
historic town, Evesham, which gives its name to the beautiful vale.
A ruined archway and a noble tower are the sole relics of its once
famous abbey. This was founded early in the eighth century, on a spot
where they said both a swineherd and a bishop had seen a vision of the
Virgin. Ultimately it was attached to the Benedictine order, became
one of the most wealthy monasteries, with one of the grandest churches
in the West. It was exceptionally rich in relics and ornaments. The
shrine of the founder was a superb specimen of the goldsmith's work;
the forms of worship were unusually sumptuous. But at last the crash
came, and the spoiler's hand fell with exceptional weight on the abbey
of Evesham. "The estates were confiscated and parcelled out, and the
abbey was dismantled and given away to Sir Philip Hoby, a gentleman of
Worcestershire, who shortly afterwards seems to have leased out the
magnificent buildings of abbey and monastery as a quarry for stone,
and thus it continued to be for many a day." So now "it can hardly be
called a ruin";[6] but the beautiful tower still remains, which stood
at the entrance of the cemetery, and was meant for clock and bells.
This was only completed just before the surrender of the abbey. Near it
are two churches, each of fair size, each with its own steeple, chapels
founded by the monks for the use of the townsfolk. The three, as shown
in our illustration (p. 117), form a very striking group.
But this quiet town in a peaceful valley was once disturbed by the
noise of battle, and witnessed a crisis in English history. Prince
Edward, son of Henry III., had contrived by masterly generalship to
prevent the junction of the armies of Simon de Montfort and his son.
The former was encamped at Evesham. The Prince's army blocked his
one outlet by land; a detachment of it had cut off a retreat by the
bridges over the river. The fight from the first was hopeless; De
Montfort's troops were inferior: "The Welsh fled at the first onset
like sheep, and were cut ruthlessly down in the cornfields and gardens
where they had sought refuge. The little group of knights around Simon
fought desperately, falling one by one till the Earl was left alone.
So terrible were his sword-strokes that he had all but gained the
hill-top when a lance-thrust brought his horse to the ground; but Simon
still rejected the summons to yield, till a blow from behind felled
him, mortally wounded, to the ground. Then with a last cry of 'It is
God's grace,' the soul of the great patriot passed away."[7]
The beauty and richness of the Vale of Evesham are proverbial; it is
a land of corn and orchards, and it widens out as the Avon winds on
in rounding the northern extremity of the Cotswolds. After a time the
stream makes a great undulating sweep to the northward, as if to avoid
the outlying mass of Dundry Hill, and brings us to another country
town and another fragment of a grand church of olden time. Pershore
was founded in the tenth century, as was Evesham, and only a few years
afterwards; it too passed under the rule of the Benedictines, and
was richly endowed by a pious Saxon noble, not only with lands, but
also with relics. Pershore, however, was less uniformly prosperous
than Evesham. Edward the Confessor gave of its lands to his new abbey
at Westminster. William the Conqueror took of them for himself or
his courtiers. For all that, money was found for rebuilding, and for
rearing a glorious structure, resembling those at Gloucester and
Tewkesbury, in the latter part of the eleventh century. The choir was
again re-built in the thirteenth; the central tower dates from the
middle of the fourteenth. The Reformation here, as elsewhere, was
a time of plunder and destruction--nave, lady-chapel, and monastic
buildings were pulled down; the people of Pershore, to their honour,
purchased the rest of the church, and thus saved it from annihilation.
The north transept fell down at a later date; but what is left has been
carefully repaired and restored, and this fragment has been justly
called one of the noblest specimens of Norman and Early English work
that our country possesses.
Though the foreground scenery, as the two valleys merge, becomes less
striking, the more distant views are always attractive; for the scarp
bounding the limestone uplands of the Cotswolds forms a pleasant
feature, and the range of the Malverns is beautiful in its outline.
At last, just before its confluence with the Severn, the Avon brings
us to another interesting town--Tewkesbury, on the left bank of the
latter river, and within half a mile of the former one. Tewkesbury
has an abbey church, not so magnificent, but hardly less interesting
than that of Worcester, while it is not less rich than Shrewsbury in
black-timbered houses. Here the course of the Severn is interrupted by
a weir and a lock, constructed in order to make the river navigable
to Worcester for vessels of larger tonnage, and is crossed by a fine
bridge of iron. It receives the Avon, by the side of which the town
is built, and this stream is spanned by another and ancient bridge of
stone. The streets, with their old timbered houses, are a delight to
the antiquary: they usually have bay windows carried the whole height
of the front, the "Wheatsheaf Inn" being one of the best specimens.
The abbey, however, is the glory of the town, and in ancient days,
before Tewkesbury mustard became a proverb, made its name known all
over England. It claims as its founder two kings of Mercia, rather
more than eleven and a half centuries ago, and in any case appears to
carry back its history almost to this time. But the greater part of
the present church was erected early in the twelfth century, though
the choir was re-constructed about two centuries afterwards. Yet this,
though graceful Decorated work in the upper part, maintains the massive
Norman piers below, the combination producing a rather unusual effect.
But not only so, the choir terminates in an apse, a feature not very
common in our English churches, and certainly not the least among the
attractions of Tewkesbury. Central tower, transept, and nave are mainly
Norman; and the west end is peculiar, for it terminates in a huge arch,
which occupies almost the whole of the façade, and in which a great
Perpendicular window has been inserted. It has a curiously incomplete
look, so, possibly, the architect contemplated the addition of a façade
with towers. The church also is unusually rich in chantries and ancient
monuments, secular and ecclesiastical.
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvey Barton, Bristol._
THE AVON AT STRATFORD (_p. 110_).]
[Illustration: _Photo: Harvey Barton, Bristol._
EVESHAM (_p. 114_).]
Tewkesbury, too, has a place in English history, for on the meadows
south of the abbey was fought the last battle between the houses of
Lancaster and York, and the Red Rose was trampled in the mire. Margaret
of Anjou was taken prisoner; her only son, Edward, was stabbed by the
Yorkists--it is said after the Duke of York had struck him in the
face with his gauntlet; and a large number of the chief men on the
losing side were killed or were executed after the battle. Some of
them fled to the abbey for sanctuary. Edward and his soldiers came
in hot pursuit, but a priest, bearing the Host, confronted them on
the threshold, nor would he move until the victor promised to spare
the lives of the fugitives. But on the third day afterwards a troop
of soldiers broke into the building, dragged out the refugees, and
promptly struck off their heads. Revenge proved stronger than religion!
[Illustration: THE AVON AT TEWKESBURY.]
The young prince lies in a nameless grave beneath the central tower
of the abbey; and other illustrious victims of the battle were
buried within its walls. The building itself has had more than one
narrow escape from destruction: it was seriously injured by a fire
in the later part of the twelfth century; at the suppression of the
monasteries it was placed on the list of "superfluous" buildings and
doomed to be pulled down by the greedy vandals of that age. But the
good folk of Tewkesbury bought it for themselves, and thus preserved
one of the finest and most interesting ecclesiastical buildings in
the West Country. They have well earned the gratitude of posterity.
The monastic buildings, however, to a great extent have disappeared.
The cloisters, which seem to have resembled those at Gloucester, are
unfortunately gone, but the monks' infirmary, with some adjacent
buildings, has been incorporated into a mansion called Abbey House, and
the principal gateway still remains. Tewkesbury, in short, is to the
lover of architecture far the most interesting town of its size in the
valley of the Severn.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF TEWKESBURY.]
THE SEVERN.