The ‘Eight Villages’ (concluded).

‘Haunted’ Hillborough, ‘Hungry’ Grafton,

‘Dodging’ Exhall, ‘Papist’ Wixford,

‘Beggarly’ Broom, and ‘Drunken’ Bidford.

“Haunted Hillborough,” which comes next in order in this rhymed survey, is geographically remote from Long Marston, not so much in mere mileage, for it is not quite three miles distant, measured in a straight line, but it is situated on the other, and Warwickshire, side of the Avon, at a point where the river is not bridged. In short, the traveller from Long Marston to Hillborough will scarcely perform the journey under six miles, going by way of Dorsington and Barton, always along crooked roads, and thence through Bidford. Dorsington is an entirely pretty and extremely small village with a church noticeable only for the whimsical smallness of its red-brick Georgian tower. Why, in a lesser-known local rhyme, which does not find celebrity upon postcards and fancy articles at Stratford-on-Avon, Dorsington should be known as “Daft” is more than I can say; unless it be that the facile alliteration is irresistible. There are reasons sufficient for this lack of popularity, in the lines in which Dorsington’s name occurs—

“Daft Dorsington, Lousy Luddington,
Welford for witches, Hinton for bitches,
An’ Weston at th’ end of th’ ’orld.”

Barton, through which we come into Bidford, is, as might perhaps be suspected from its name, merely a rustic hamlet, for “barton” is but the old English word for a cow-byre or a barn. It is that “Burton Heath” mentioned in the Taming of the Shrew, of which Christopher Sly, “old Sly’s son,” “by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker,” was a native.

From Barton we cross the Avon into Bidford over an ancient bridge of eight arches built in 1482 by the brethren of Alcester priory to replace the ford by which travellers along the Ryknield Street had up to that time crossed the river. The eight arches of Bidford achieve the rather difficult feat of being each of a different shape and size, and the heavy stonework itself has been extensively patched with brick. Here the Avon is encumbered with eyots and rushes, very destructive to the navigation, but affording very useful foregrounds for the illustrator.

Bidford is wholly on the further, or Warwickshire, side of the river, and is a rather urban-looking place of one very long and narrow street. It has a population of over a thousand, and thus, I believe, comes under the official definition of a “populous place,” whose inns and public-houses are permitted to remain open until 11 p.m., which may or may not be a consideration here. The inns of Bidford are numerous, but they do not appear to enjoy their former prosperity. I adventured into one of them one thirsty summer day, for the purpose of sampling some of the “perry” advertised for sale within. There was no joy in the sour sorry stuff it proved to be. You get quite a quantity of it for three-halfpence; but it is odds against your drinking half of it. The landlady dolefully spoke of the state of trade. She had not taken half-a-crown that day. Truly, the glories of Bidford have departed!

“Drunken Bidford”The old “Falcon” inn, an inn no longer, nor for many years past, stands in the midst of this very considerable village, close by the parish church, whose odd and not beautiful tower forms a prominent object in the view from the bridge. It is not in the least worth while to enter that church, for it has been almost wholly rebuilt. The nave has a ceiling, and there are deal doors, painted and grained to resemble oak. The chancel, reconstructed in the more florid and unrestrained period of the Gothic revival, is a lamentable specimen of architectural zeal not according to discretion.

The “Falcon,” Bidford

It is nearly a century since the “Falcon” ceased to be an inn. It then became a workhouse, and thus many a boozy old reprobate whose courses at the “Falcon” had brought him to poverty ended his days under the same roof. Cynic Fortune, turned moralist and temperance lecturer, surely was never in a more saturnine humour!

“Haunted Hillborough”The old sign of the inn eventually found its way to Shakespeare’s birthplace. It pictured a golden falcon on a red ground, and bore additionally the arms of the Skipwith family, the chief landowners in Bidford. With the sign went an old chair in which Shakespeare is traditionally said to have sat. To-day the “Falcon” is let in tenements, and also houses the village reading-room and library. The building deserves a better fate, for, as will be noted from the accompanying illustration, it has that quality, as admirable in architecture as in men, character. It is of two distinct styles: the half-timbered gable noted along the street being doubtless the oldest portion, apparently of the mid-fifteenth century. This would seem to be the original inn. The main block seems to be about a century later, and would thus have been a recent building in Shakespeare’s youth. It was added apparently at a period of unbounded prosperity and is wholly of stone. The stone is of that very markedly striated blue lias much used in this district, and is set in a traditional fashion once greatly followed, that is to say, in alternate narrow and broad hands or courses.

Proceeding from Bidford along the Stratford road for Hillborough the haunted, the site of the ancient crab-apple tree is found, where the defeated Stratfordians slept off the effects of their carouse. The road is hedged now and the fields enclosed and cultivated, but in Shakespeare’s time the way was open. The spot is marked on Ordnance maps as “Shakespeare’s Crab,” and although the ancient tree finally disappeared in a venerable age on December 4th, 1824, when its remains, shattered in storms and hacked by relic-hunters, were carted off to Bidford Grange, a younger tree of the same genus has been planted on the identical site. We may note the spot, interested and unashamed, because although the rhymes upon the eight villages are almost certainly not Shakespeare’s—though probably quite as old as his period—that is no reason for doubting the poet’s taking part in the drinking contest. “Because thou art virtuous, shall there be no cakes and ale?” and because we do not follow the customs of our ancestors shall we think them in their generation—and Shakespeare with them—disreputable? I think not, although, with these things in mind, I live in daily expectation of an article in some popular journal, asking, “Was Shakespeare Respectable?” I think the poet was, apart from his literary genius, an average man, with the weaknesses of such; and all the more lovable for it.

“Haunted Hillborough”

Hillborough is reached by turning in a further mile to the right, off the high road, at a point where a meadow is situated locally known as “Palmer’s Piece.” Palmer, it appears, was a farmer who drowned his wife in the Avon, and was gibbeted on this spot for the crime.

A mile’s journey along narrow roads, down towards the river, brings the pilgrim to Hillborough. Now Hillborough is not a village: it is not even a hamlet, and is indeed nothing but the remaining wing of an old manor-house, now a farm, and in a very solitary situation. It will thunder and lighten, and rain heavily when you go to Hillborough—it always does when you seek interesting places in remote spots—but these conditions seem only the more appropriate to the haunted reputation of the scene; although what was the nature of the hauntings has eluded every possible inquiry. It is thus curiously and wholly in keeping that the old manor-house and its surroundings should look so eerie. Noble trees romantically overhang the house; remains of old buildings whose disappearance mournful ghosts might grieve over, lend a dilapidated air of the Has Been to the place; and an ancient circular stone pigeon-house, a relic of the former manor, stands beside a dismal pond. But the ghosts have ceased to walk.

“Hungry Grafton”

A mile and a half across the Stratford road, is situated the fourth of these eight villages, “Hungry” Grafton. The real name of the place is Temple Grafton. “Hungry” is said to be an allusion to a supposed poverty of the soil, but farmers of this neighbourhood, although fully as dissatisfied as you expect a farmer to be, do not lend much help to the stranger seeking information. “I’ve varmed wuss land an’ I’ve varmed better,” was the eminently non-committal reply of one; while another was of the opinion that “it ’on’t break us, nor yet it ’on’t make us.”

The Shakespearean tourist will not be pleased with Grafton, for the squire of the adjoining Grafton Court practically rebuilt the whole village some forty years ago. It is true that was not a heroic undertaking, for it is a small village, but the doing of it very effectually quenches the traveller’s enthusiasm. Even the church was rebuilt in 1875: a peculiarly unfortunate thing, because the old building was one of those for which claim was made for having been the scene of Shakespeare’s marriage, that elusive ceremony of which no register survives to bear witness. It is only in practical, unsentimental England that these things are at all possible. A furious desire to obliterate every possible Shakespearean landmark would almost seem to have possessed the people of the locality, until quite recent years. Grafton, whose “Temple” prefix derives from the manor having anciently been one of the possessions of the Knights Templar, stands on a hill. The site is thought to have been covered in olden times with scrub-woods, “Grafton” or “Greveton,” taking its name from “greves”; a word signifying underwoods. Similar place-names are found in Northamptonshire, in Grafton Regis and Grafton Underwood, situated in Whittlebury Forest.

The only possible picture in “Hungry” Grafton is that sketched here, from below the ridge, where a brook runs beneath the road, beside a group of red-brick cottages. If you ascend the road indicated here and pass the highly uninteresting church and schools, you come to the hamlet of Ardens Grafton, a very much more gracious and picturesque place, although in extremely tumbledown and dilapidated circumstances. It is very much of a woodland hamlet, and appears to owe the first part of its name rather to that circumstance than to ownership at any time by the Arden family: Ardens in this case signifying a height overlooking a wooded Vale.

The Hollow Road, Exhall

The situation of the place does in fact most aptly illustrate the derivation, for it stands upon a very remarkable ridge, which must needs be descended by a steep and sudden hill if we want to reach Exhall. Descending the almost precipitous and narrow road with surprise, the nearly cliff-like escarpment is seen trending away most strikingly to the north.

“Papist Wixford”We are now in the valley of the river Arrow. On the way to Exhall we come—not led by Caliban—to “where crabs grow,” for the hedgerows here are remarkable for the number of crab-apple trees. Shakespeare must have had them in mind when he wrote The Tempest. Exhall lies in a beautiful country, on somewhat obscure byways that may have given the place that elusive character with strangers to which it owes its nickname of “Dodging”: although, to be sure there are the other readings of “Dadging,” whose meaning no one seems to comprehend; and “Drudging,” which it is held is the true epithet, given in allusion to the heavy ploughlands of the vale. Yet another choice has been found, in “Dudging,” supposed to mean “sulky”; but the ingenuity of commentators in these things is endless. There is, at any rate, in coming from Ardens Grafton, no modern difficulty in finding Exhall. It is a little village of large farms, with a small aisle-less Early English and Decorated church whose interest has been almost wholly destroyed by the so-called “restoration” of 1863. A window with the ball-flower moulding characteristic of the Decorated period remains in the south wall, and there are brasses to John Walsingham, 1566, and his wife; but for the rest, the stranger within these gates need not regret the church being locked, in common with most others in Shakespeare land. The hollow road at Exhall, with high, grassy banks and the group of charming old half-timbered cottages illustrated here is a delight. The builder who built them—they are certainly at least a century older than Shakespeare—built more picturesquely than he knew, with those sturdy chimney-stacks and the long flight of stairs ascending from the road.

Brass to Thomas de Cruwe and Wife, WixfordThere are orchards at Exhall where I think the “leather-coats” such as Davy put before Shallow’s guests yet grow: they are a russet apple, and, like the “bitter-sweeting,” own a local name which Shakespeare, the Warwickshire countryman, knew well enough, but of whose existence Bacon could have known nothing. What says Mercutio to Romeo? “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting: it is a most sharp sauce.” And if you, tempted by the beautiful yellow of that apple, pick one and taste it, you will find the bitterness of it bite to the very bone.

Exhall takes the first part of its name, “ex,” from the Celtic word uisg, for water: a word which has given the river Exe its name, and masquerades elsewhere as Ouse, Exe, Usk, Esk, and so forth. But the river Arrow is a mile distant, and Wixford, which comes next, whose boundaries extend to that stream, is much better entitled to its name, which was originally “uisg-ford,” meaning “water-ford.”

“Papist” Wixford is said to have derived its nickname from the Throckmortons, staunch Roman Catholics, who once owned property here. The Arrow runs close by the scattered cottages of this tiny place, which might be styled merely a hamlet, except that it has a parish church of its own. A delightful little church it is, too, placed on a ridge and neighboured only by some timber-framed cottages. Luxuriant elms group nobly with it, and in the churchyard is a very large and handsome yew-tree, whose spreading branches, perhaps more symmetrical than those of any other yew of its size in this country, are supported at regular intervals by timber struts, forming a curious and notable sight. There are monumental brasses in the little church; by far the best of them, however, is the noble brass to Thomas de Cruwe and his wife Juliana, appropriately placed in the south chapel that was founded by him. Thomas de Cruwe—whose name was really “Crewe,” only our ancestors were used to spell phonetically—was scarcely the warlike knight he would, from his plate-armour and mighty sword, appear to be. He was, in fact, chief steward to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and attorney to the Countess Margaret, widow of his predecessor. He was, further, a “Knight of the Shire,” or member of Parliament, in 1404, and Justice of the Peace; and having filled these various professional and official positions, let us hope with as much satisfaction to his employers and others as obviously to his own advantage, he died at last in his bed, as all good lawyers, even of his date, the beginning of the fifteenth century, ought to do, in the year 1418. The date of his death is, however, not mentioned on the brass, the blanks in the inscription, left for the purpose, having never been filled. His wife Juliana, who had been the widow of one of the Cloptons, predeceased him, in 1411, and Thomas de Cruwe caused this beautiful and costly brass to be engraved in his own lifetime. The incomplete inscription is by no means unusual, numerous brasses throughout the country displaying similar unfilled spaces; pointing to the indifference with which the date of departure of the dear departed was all too often regarded by their more or less sorrowing heirs, executors, and assigns.

“Beggarly Broom”

This splendidly-engraved brass, which ranks among the largest and finest in England, is mounted on a raised slab measuring nine by four feet; the effigies five feet in height. A curious error of the engraver of this monument is to be noted, in the omission of Thomas de Cruwe’s sword-belt or baldrick, by which the sword hanging from his waist has no visible means of support. The odd badge—apparently unique in heraldry—of a naked human left foot is seen many times repeated on the brass. No explanation of it seems ever to have been offered. We might have expected a cock in the act of crowing, for “Crewe,” for our ancestors dearly loved puns upon family names and were never daunted by the vapidity or appalling stupidity of them; but in this case they forbore.

The penultimate village of these rhymes, “Beggarly” Broom, also stands upon the Arrow. Marston, as we have seen, dances no more, nor does Pebworth pipe; the supernatural no longer vexes Hillborough, and Grafton is not so hungry as you might suppose. Exhall is not difficult to find, and there are not any Roman Catholics at Wixford; while Bidford is not obviously drunken. But Broom is just as beggarly as ever.

Broom was originally a hamlet of squatters on a gorsy, or broom-covered heath, and a hamlet it yet remains. Modern times have brought Broom a railway junction and a bridge across the Arrow, where was until recently only a ford; but Broom is not to be moved into activity by these things, or anything. Anglers come by cheap tickets from Birmingham and fish in the Arrow, and swap lies at the “Hollybush” and “Broom” inns about what they have caught, but there still is that poverty-stricken air about the place which originally attracted the notice of the rhymester, centuries ago. A flour-mill, still actively at work by the river, and a new house being built, do little to qualify this ancient aspect of squalid decay, which seems to extend even to the inhabitants, who may be observed sitting stolidly and abstractedly, as though contemplating the immensities. They are probably only wondering whence to-morrow’s dinner is coming, a branch of philosophical inquiry of poignant interest.