Marie Kreft,
Between the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills lies a land of orchards, rolling pastures and pretty villages, perfect for exploring in the golden season, says Marie Kreft
“Landlocked Worcestershire, where the Midlands meets the West Country, is run through with rivers whose plains yield apples, plums, pears and cherries.”
Climb Broadway Tower – a quirky castle folly dreamed up by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown – on a clear autumn day and you can see for more than 60 miles. You’re at the top of England’s treasured Cotswolds – a region for which everyone can close their eyes and conjure a film-set schema of striped lawns and honeyed stone. But you’re also at the foot of a county many people will cheerfully admit to knowing little about: Worcestershire.
It’s a “pie-crust” landscape, as writer Arthur Mee described it, with a “somewhat indeterminate, undulating centre, but turned up all round with a ridge of guardian hills”. This landlocked place, where the Midlands meets the West Country, is run through with the rivers Severn, Avon and Teme, their verdant plains yielding pears, apples, plums, cherries and hops.
But this gentle landscape also conceals a few latter-day surprises. Less than 200 metres from Broadway Tower is a lateCold-War relic: a once-secret underground bunker built around 1959 for the Royal Observer Corps to study the effects of possible nuclear explosions
Croome Court is a good place to begin an autumn tour of Worcestershire
(nationaltrust.org.uk/croome). This parkland and neo-Palladian mansion was Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s first landscape commission and major architectural project. It’s a blissful feeling when you round the National Trust footpath at the top of Church Hill and catch your first golden glimpse of the estate rolling out beneath you. A mid-autumn stroll brings further sensory joys: the lakeside swamp cypress ablaze in seasonal orange; horse chestnuts and fungi amid crunchy leaf litter. Croome Court lies east of the Malvern
Hills, an eight-mile spine through Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small part of northern Gloucestershire. Here are walking opportunities that range from quiet ambles along lower wooded slopes to the strenuous ‘end to end’ along the Malvern Ridge. Formed of Precambrian rocks over 680 million years old, these hills are fêted for their mineral water (take a bottle to fill from springs and spouts as you wander) and dramatic views across the Severn Valley into 12 English and Welsh counties. The 425m summit, open and exhilarating, is the
Worcestershire Beacon; here you’ll find a toposcope, installed in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.
Local lore says this region influenced CS Lewis’ descriptions of Narnia, especially the Victorian gas lamps of Malvern. This spa town by the Malvern Hills is packed with agreeable places for refreshment; try the charmingly eccentric Nag’s Head for hand-pulled cider and a delicious Sunday lunch (nagsheadmalvern.co.uk).
LANDSCAPES OF MUSIC
We’re in Edward Elgar country here, too. The composer was born in Lower Broadheath (you can visit his birthplace cottage, The Firs, nationaltrust.org.uk/ the-firs) and spent his final years in Marl Bank, a grand Worcester residence. He is buried with his wife Caroline Alice in the tucked-away churchyard of St Wulfstan’s.
Of this resting place, Elgar wrote of the “illimitable plain, with all the hills and churches in the distance which were [Caroline Alice’s] from childhood… inscrutable and unchanging”. Patriotic associations aside, it’s easy to see why people credit Elgar’s surroundings – through which he loved to cycle – with inspiring the intrinsic richness of his music.
“THE RIVERS’ VERDANT PLAINS YIELD PEARS, PLUMS, APPLES, CHERRIES AND HOPS”
Elgar is also remembered in Worcester, the county town by the Severn that saw the final battle of the English Civil War. (The first major skirmish was nearby, at Powick
Bridge. Learn more at The Commandery, a museum housed in a half-timbered Tudor building that was Charles II’s headquarters for a time; museumsworcestershire.org. uk/museums/the-commandery.) Gazed upon by Elgar’s statue from the high street,
Worcester Cathedral has an Elgar window in its north aisle, depicting a scene from The
Dream of Gerontius in stained glass. It’s an astonishing cathedral, with architectural styles spanning its 900-year existence. “Never Eat Danish Pastry” is the mnemonic given by tour guide Ian Clargo to describe its Gothic features: Norman, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular (worcestercathedral.co.uk).
The cathedral has regal celebrity. King John’s marble tomb is in the quire; his effigy from 1232 is considered not only a likeness (monarchs’ tombs are often flattering) but the oldest royal effigy in the country. Near the high altar is a grandiose raised chantry for the ‘forgotten prince’, Arthur, Henry VII’s eldest son, who died in Ludlow in 1502, aged 15. The chapel’s exterior is adorned with heraldic Tudor rose carvings symbolising the union of the houses of York and Lancaster.
TAKE THE STEAM TRAIN
North-west of Worcester lie the Abberley Hills. A popular way to see the landscape east of the river is from vintage carriage windows on the Severn Valley Railway (svr.co.uk), a heritage service rumbling for 25 kilometres between Kidderminster, the
Worcestershire town famed for carpets, and
Bridgnorth in Shropshire. A ‘Freedom of the Line’ ticket allows unlimited stops on your day of travel. Step out at Bewdley to enjoy a riverside Georgian town, or Arley where an autumn walk through the arboretum rewards you with the burnished reds and golds of Japanese maples (arleyarboretum.
co.uk). It’s a moment of wonder when the train winds through West Midlands Safari
Park (wmsp.co.uk), treating passengers to the sight of grazing elephants and rhinos.
A branch of the Severn Valley Railway – the Tenbury Line – once ran through the Wyre
Forest, an ancient woodland straddling the Worcestershire and Shropshire borders
(forestryengland.uk/wyre-forest). These days the track bed provides a walking route: another fruitful place for autumn rambling when the beech canopies turn reddish and buttery yellow. In mid-October, fallow deer begin their rutting ceremony in the forest heart. Look for the tell-tale signs of sapling bark stripped by bucks’ antlers – a scentmarking behaviour known as fraying.
North of Worcestershire lies Kinver, a well-heeled village with a hilltop church and burgage-plot high street, just over the border with Staffordshire. For Sunday
“LOOK FOR THE TELL-TALE SIGNS OF SAPLING BARK STRIPPED BY ANTLERS”
afternoon smiles, visit the Kinver & West Midlands Society of Model Engineers on the Marsh Playing Fields and ride a delightful scale loco around the multi-gauge track (kinvermodelengineers.org.uk). Southwest of the village is Kinver Edge, a heather and woodland escarpment nibbled over by longhorn cattle, with panoramic views to the Clent Hills, Malvern Hills, Wenlock Edge and Shropshire Hills. From the 1600s until the 1960s people lived in Kinver Edge, having hewn comfortable homes from the soft red sandstone dunes formed 250 million years ago by whirling sand (nationaltrust.org. uk/kinver-edge-and-the-rock-houses). From Compton Road, take the winding path up to the Rock Houses – like entering an enchanted village – and see the cosy homes reimagined by the National Trust. You won’t find a lovelier spot for tea and scones than the terrace by the Upper Houses.
Homes provide shelter; they can also conceal. Harvington Hall, a moated manor house south-east of Kidderminster, has the largest surviving collection of priest hides, dating from the late-16th century when being a Catholic priest in England was punishable by death (harvingtonhall. co.uk). Perhaps the county’s most elaborate stately home is Witley Court, or it would be had it not been ravaged by fire in 1937. The ruins are especially haunting on a misty autumn morning, set against a backdrop of mellowing trees. You’ll find seasonal colour in the berries of the wilderness garden and the fungi along the ornamental walk (english-heritage.org.uk).
FERTILE FLOODPLAIN
If Kent has laid claim to the Garden of England title, then perhaps Worcestershire – especially its south-east corner – should be known as England’s Market Garden. Vale of Evesham asparagus is a protected delicacy, while, until the early 20th century, Pershore plums were a staple of the English plum industry.
Agricultural stories spring from this fertile floodplain of the River Avon. According to legend, the lost abbey of Evesham was founded after a pig farmer named Eof beheld a vision of the Virgin Mary. A fraction of nearby Pershore Abbey still stands, the carved bosses in its ceiling vaults abundant with nature imagery: acorns, leaves and foliated heads (pershoreabbey.org.uk). Near the Gloucestershire border, St Mary’s Church in Ripple has a prized collection of 15th-century misericords, detailing countryside occupations from January to December. September depicts men reaping corn into sacks, while October shows a swineherd beating down acorns for pigfeed. Nearby you can visit lofty Bredon Barn (nationaltrust.org.uk/bredon-barn), a restored manorial barn built around 1350, a time when the Black Death was sweeping across Europe. Half the population of Bredon succumbed.
The ‘bre’ in Bredon comes from the old Celtic word for hill, and here we are – geologically speaking – back in the Cotswolds, at the foot of Bredon Hill. In AE Housman’s wistful poem of the same name, the narrator idles with his love at the top, overlooking “coloured counties”.
At Bredon Hill’s summit is Parsons’ Folly, a small stone tower thought to have inspired Capability Brown’s Broadway design. And so, like seasons in forests and the railway taking day-trippers back to Kidderminster, we return to where we began.
“THE COUNTY SHOULD BE KNOWN AS ENGLAND’S MARKET GARDEN”