The ‘Swan’s Nest’—Haunted?—Clifford Chambers—Wincot—Quinton, and its club day.

Twelve miles south of Stratford, across the level lands of the Feldon, you come to Chipping Campden, perched upon the outlying hills of the Cotswold country. The inevitable way southward out of Stratford town lies over the Clopton Bridge, and then, having crossed the Avon, the roads diverge. To the left you proceed for Charlecote and Kineton; straight ahead for Banbury and London; and to the right for Chipping Campden or for Shipston-on-Stour. The point where these roads branch and go their several ways was until recently a very charming exit from or entrance to the town. Here stands the old inn, the “Swan’s Nest,” ex “Shoulder of Mutton,” by the waterside, and opposite are the grounds of the old manor-house, enclosed behind lofty and massive brick walls.

The “Swan’s Nest” is a red-brick house of good design, built in 1677, when an excellent taste in architecture prevailed. The sign was then the “Bear,” a very usual name in these marches of the Warwick influence. It arose upon the site of a hermitage and Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene that had long subsisted upon the alms of travellers this way, generations before Sir William Clopton built his bridge, and remained for some time afterwards, until the Reformation swept all such things away.

The manor-house opposite is now to let, and long has been. They say it is haunted—but “they”? Who then are they? No very reliable folk, be sure: only those irresponsible gossips who scent mysteries behind every board announcing “This Desirable Mansion to Let.” The more desirable the mansion, the more inexplicable that it should not be desired of some one and become let. As the months go by and lengthen into years and the house-agents’ boards begin themselves to show some evidences of antiquity, the mystery deepens and the ghost is born. I think this especial ghost was born in the bar-parlour of the “Swan’s Nest.” But it is difficult to get any exact information about this spirit. It would be: it invariably is. Whether the midnight spook be some mournful White Lady who looks from the dust-grimed windows of yonder gazebo upon the road, or some horrific spectre who like the ghost of Hamlet’s father “could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul” and make

“Each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine,”

I cannot say. But the local gossip will not lessen as time goes on and the place remains unlet. There could not, for one thing, be a much better setting for ghostly manifestations. It is true that the road is one much used by traffic, and by motorists in especial, whose dust and horrid odours might well disgust any but the hardiest of wraiths; but here is the old garden-pavilion or gazebo on the wall at the fork of roads, with its quaint roof and the windows from which the people of the manor would look out upon the traffic when it was not so dusty and did not stink so much, and here are still the trunks of the magnificent elms that until recently cast a grateful shade upon the road and made the bridge-end so beautiful a scene. But the elms have been lopped and show cruelly amputated limbs, and no one looks any more from the gazebo: it is an eloquent picture of the Past.

Clopton Bridge, and the “Swan’s Nest”

Beyond this spot we leave the Shipston road and turn to the right, coming in two miles to Clifford Chambers, which is not the block of offices or residential flats its name would seem to the Londoner to imply, but a picturesque village, taking the first part of its name from an olden ford on the Stour, and the second part from the manor having formerly been the property of the house-stewards, or “Chamberers,” of the great Abbey of Gloucester.

The village street of Clifford Chambers stands at an angle from the road, and so keeps its ancient character the better, for the way through it down to the Stour is only a rustic track. Clifford Chambers is therefore entirely unspoiled. Here is the church, grouping beautifully with the ancient parsonage, now a farmhouse again, as it was during the time of the plague at Stratford, in the year when William Shakespeare was born, and when a mysterious John Shakespeare was living here. “Mysterious” because nothing more is known of him, and because the question arises in some minds, “Was the John Shakespeare then living at Clifford Chambers identical with the John Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, father of William? Was William Shakespeare, in fact, born here, instead of at ‘the Birthplace’ in Henley Street, or did John Shakespeare remove his wife and infant son hither when the plague broke out in the summer of 1564?” Any question of this being the birthplace would seem to be at once disposed of by the undoubted baptism of William Shakespeare at the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon; but the summer retreat of the Shakespeares to this place may yet be a field for interesting speculation.

Clifford Chambers

There is not a more charming old black-and-white house in the neighbourhood than this, with its long range of perpendicular timbers, roughly-split in the old English fashion, which might well show some “restorers” how to do it; and the odd outside stairway at the gable-end, roofed over with its little penthouse roof. It comes well enough in black and white, but forms a feast of mellow colour, in the rich but subdued tints that the lichens and the stains of time and weather have given.

Facing up the rustic street, more like a village green than street, is another and a statelier house: the manor-house, enclosed within its garden-walls. It is of stone, in the early years of the eighteenth century, when Queen Anne reigned.

“Anna, whom three realms obey,
Who sometimes counsel takes, and sometimes tay.”

The view through the gates, flanked with imposing masonry piers crested with what the country folk call “gentility balls,” shows a delightful picture of old-world stateliness. Time within this enclosure seems to have stood still. You can imagine people living here who still take “a dish of tay,” who are “vastly obleeged” when you ask them how they do, and protest they are “mighty well,” or have “the vapours,” as the case may be, instead of being, as they would be in other surroundings and in the vile phrases of to-day, “awfully fit,” or “feeling rotten.”

You can imagine, I say, the owners of this fine old manor-house drinking their dish of tay out of fine old “chancy,” as they used to call it; still speaking in the fashion that went out of date with the death of the great Duke of Wellington, who was among the last, I believe, to say “obleeged” and to call a chair a “cheer.” Now only the most rustic of rustics talk in this manner, and when they say “cowcumber,” and “laylock,” and speak of “going fust” they are thought vulgar and reproved by their children. But such was the pronunciation used by the best in the land in years gone by.

There are the loveliest gardens in the rear of this old manor-house, with orchards of apples and pears and wall-fruit beyond, and an older wing by a century or so.

The main road goes straight ahead for some miles, with Long Marston rather more than a mile on the right. It is fully described in these pages, in the first of the two chapters on the “Eight Villages.” On the left is the old farm-house which is all that is left of the hamlet of Wincot, the place where “Marian Hacket, the fat alewife,” mentioned by Christopher Sly in the induction to the Taming of the Shrew, had her alehouse, at which that drunken tinker had run up a score. Many of the hamlets round about are “cotts,” “cotes,” or “cots”; Grimscote, Foxcote, Hidcote, Idlicote, Darlingscott, and others. Wincot as a hamlet of Quinton finds mention in the registers of that church, and in them, November 21st, 1591, is still to be found the entry recording the baptism of Sara Hacket, daughter of Robert Hacket. The fat Marian, therefore, who allowed drunken undesirables to run up scores, was probably a real person.

As we make for Quinton the tree-crowned height of Meon Hill, an outpost of the Cotswolds, forms a striking landmark in this vale. It is, according to the Ordnance Survey, 637 feet high, and its position gives it an appearance of even greater eminence. At its foothills lies the village of Quinton, in a district very little disturbed by strangers, and in summer days one of quiet delights. Coming over to Quinton one afternoon, from a day of hospitable entertainment at King’s Lodge, Long Marston, I cycled along the quiet sunlit road, past the old tollhouse with its little strip of wayside garden, and silently came upon a black cat, appreciatively and with much evident enjoyment smelling the wall-flowers growing there. One never before credited cats with a liking for sweet scents.

Only one event during the year disturbs the serenity of Quinton. At other times it drowses, like all its fellow villages of the vale; but this one occasion is like that in Tennyson’s May Queen, the “maddest, merriest day.” It is the day when Quinton Club holds high revel. I do not know what is the purpose of Quinton Club, but the occasion of its merry-making is like that of a village fair, and all those travelling proprietors of steam roundabouts, cocoa-nut shies, shooting-galleries and popular entertainments of that kind who attend fairs make a point of visiting this celebration. And indeed I do not know what Quinton would do without them and the many stall-keepers who come in their train.

To say merely that Quinton is not a large place would be to leave some sort of impression that, if not a little town, it was at least a considerable village. It is, as a matter of fact, a very small one, but to it on this day of days resort the people of those neighbouring places unfortunate enough to have neither club nor fair of their own, and you may see them trudging from all directions; driving in on farm-wagons seated with kitchen-chairs for this purpose, or cycling. Towards evening, when most of the countryside has arrived, the strident tones of the steam organ that forms not the least important part of the roundabout, the thuds of the heavy mallets on the “try-your-strength” machines, the shouting of the cocoa-nut shy proprietors, and the general hum and buzz of the fair astonish the stranger afar off. Near at hand, the scent of fried fish is heavy on the air and gingerbread is hot i’ the mouth, and in the centre of the hurly-burly the steam roundabout blares and glares, presided over by a very highly-coloured full-length portrait of no less a person than Lord Roberts, in the full equipment of Field Marshal; the surest test of a soldier’s popularity. Lord Kitchener has never yet become the presiding hero over the galloping horses of the steam roundabout: he is perhaps something too grim for these occasions.

I think, beneath the pictured face of Lord Roberts there lurks the countenance of he who was the popular favourite immediately before him; Lord Wolseley, who for twenty years or more was in the shrewd opinion of the showmen, the most attractive personality to preside over the steam-trumpets, the odious “kist o’ whustles,” the mirrors and the circulating wooden horses. The showmen know best, they are in touch with popular sentiment; and be sure that if you scraped off Lord Roberts, you would find the face of Lord Wolseley there. Indeed, the possibility of a real stratum of military heroes is only limited by the age of the machine itself; and if it were only old enough one might penetrate beyond Lord Wolseley to Lord Raglan, and even back to that ancient hero of the inn signs, the Marquis of Granby.The fine church of Quinton looks across the road to the village inn, the “College Arms.” The arms are those of Magdalen College, Oxford, owner of the manor.

The church is a Decorated building, with fine spire, and contains some interesting monuments; chief among them an altar-tomb with a very fine brass to Joan Clopton, widow of Sir William Clopton, who died in 1419. An effigy, on another altar-tomb, seen in the church, is said by some to be that of her husband; others declare it to be that of one Thomas le Roos. She survived her husband several years, dying about 1430, in the habit of a religious recluse, or “vowess.” She lived probably in a cell or anchoress’s hold built on to the church and commanding a view of the altar, and must have had a singularly poor time of it in all those eleven years. No trace remains of her uncomfortable and singularly dull habitation. This misguided lady was by birth a Besford of Besford in Worcestershire, and her coat of arms, displayed separately and also impaled with that of her husband, has six golden pears on a red ground, by way of a painfully farfetched pun on “Besford.” Not even the most desolating punster of our own time could or would torture “Besford” into “Pearsford,” but our remote ancestors were capable of the greatest enormities in this way.

Some of the red enamel still remains in the heraldic shields on this fine brass, which, including its canopy, is six feet four inches long. The figure of Joan Clopton, and the brass in general, is in excellent condition, perhaps because the descendants of the family took care of it. One of them, a certain “T. Lingen,” whose name appears upon the tomb, repaired it in 1739. A Latin verse occupies the margin of the brass, with little figures of pears repeated at intervals. The verse has been translated as follows—

“Vowed to a holy life when ceased her knightly husband’s breath,
Joan Clopton here, Anne’s grandchild dear, implores Thy grace in death;
O! Christ, for Thee, O! Jesu blest, how largely hath she shed
Her bounteous gifts on poor and sick—how hath she garnished
Thy stately shrines with splendour meet—how hath she sent before
Her earthly wealth to Thee above, to swell her heavenly store,
For such blest fruits of faith, O grant, in Thine own house her home:
Soft lies an earthly tomb on those to whom these heavenly blessings come.”

A scroll above her head is inscribed with the words—

“Complaceat tibi due eripias me
Due ad adiuuand’ me respice”

an appeal that may be rendered, “Be good and loving to me, O Lord.”

A striking instance of the affection inspired by Queen Elizabeth is to be noticed in the Royal arms of her period over the chancel arch, bearing, in addition to “that glorious ‘Semper Eadem’” alluded to by Macaulay in his ballad on the Armada, the inscription “God love our noble Queen.”

Resuming the way to Chipping Campden, the road passes the spot marked on the maps “Lower Clopton.” This, or the other tiny hamlet away on the left, called “Upper Clopton,” was the home of that first Shakespeare recorded in history, who was hanged in 1248 for robbery. Through Mickleton, a more considerable village than its neighbours, and deriving its original name of “Mycclantune,” the “larger town,” from that fact, up climbs the highway to Campden.

It is in some ways difficult to imagine Campden the busy and prosperous place it once unquestionably was; but the quiet old streets, lined with houses almost every one of good architectural character; and the old market-house, and the fine church give full assurance of the commercial activity and the wealth that have departed.