Investigation required for the Part 3 of Travels with Pevsner. Jonathan Meades does a fine job of describing an impressive looking home, but fails to tell the viewer where it is. Thank the lord for Google Image Search, which informs me it is Wyke Manor, Wick.
Pevsner states;
This eminently picturesque large house just NW of the church is in fact entirely an evocation. It has all the motifs of genuine Worcestershire timber-framing and groups them suggestively, It was done in 1923 round a Georgian core.
1923 Wyke Manor, Wick
There's more to the story than Pevsner lets on. The house is privately owned by the Hudsons. During WWI, Aubrey Hudson wanted to marry a young local girl. His parents didn't approve and asked his CO to transfer him away. So they sent him to the front. He lasted two weeks.
The house contains and is a shrine to him.
My chosen walk appeared in a recent Country Walking Magazine. A figure of 8 loop with the focus point at the Pershore Bridges Picnic area.
20th Century meets 15th Century
The first loop to the hamlet of Pensham. All agricultural fields in the shadow of Bredon Hill.
First half walking
Bredon Hill
Then into Wick, where there is more to discover than just the manor house. A signed, and notice-boarded History Trail tells you all about Viking raids up the Avon and how to build cruck houses.
Alas, the FYI Geocaches are lost
Walk Details
Distance - 5 miles
Geocaches - 2
Walk Inspiration - Travels with Pevsner and Country Walking Magazine, June 2026, Walk 9
There was simply too much inspiration in section 2 of Jonathan Meades Travels with Pevsner. The main topic was Georgian Pershore but how could I ignore "the most momentous building in Worcestershire".
This is the Temple of Theseus. Built in 1758 by Lord Lyttleton, so he could look out over the Malvern Hills. It is the first example of neo-classical architecture in Europe.
There's a lot going on at Wychbury Hill. I have already told the tale of "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?". No need to repeat it here, but of course, there will be a photo of the obelisk. I also remembered that the Mysteries of Mercia Facebook page had discussed the yew trees at the iron-age hillfort. These were to be investigated.
A walk was easily fashioned, a variation of the "Rail Trail" between Hagley and Stourbridge.
The temple is not strictly on a footpath, but on the ground, there is a well trodden path - either caused by graffiti artists, drinkers who like a view or possibly even the new inhabitants, usurping Lord Lyttelton but getting the same views.
How we look after the county's most important architecture
Perfectly Proportioned by James Stuart - following a pilgrimage to measure the original
Cows had already trampled the fencing
Folly Views
Back to the proper footpaths, via the obelisk.
Obelisk
Bella - an unsolved 1940s murder victim
Next stop, the yew trees of Wychbury Hillfort and have spawned a number of legends. Was it the site of an ancient battle between the Romans and the natives? Is Wychbury Hill the final resting place of King Arthur? Are the yew trees a manifestation of fallen warriors? Probably not. Is the site use by local pagans during key calendar events? Yes. But why?
In pre-Christian pagan traditions across Britain and north-west Europe, the yew tree was revered as a symbol of death, rebirth and eternal life. Remarkably long-lived and capable of regenerating from ancient wood, it seemed to embody the endless cycle of nature, making it a powerful emblem of immortality and the passage between this world and the Otherworld. Yews were often associated with sacred sites, burial places and places of ritual, where they represented wisdom, protection and ancestral memory.
My favourite on-line resource is from the Ancient Yew Tree website. Someone went to the trouble of mapping the 23 trees, providing a summary and a description of each individual tree. You've got to love the Internet. Next, middle aged men will be writing about their walks and pints and hoping someone out there finds it of interest.
x marks SO9205581800 - a perfect place for lunch.
It's incredibly accurate and easy to follow. A circuit of the hillfort and most of the trees were identified.
One of the 23. We'll leave it there. No need for the other 22
30 minutes spent lunching in a Pagan worship spot, the GPS left on, explaining the random mess on the track recording.
Finally, a drop down to Stourbridge for one of the CAMRA's Heritage pubs. The Seven Stars.
Handy for the Station
Built for Mitchells & Butlers Brewery and opened in January 1905, the Seven Stars has an outstanding collection of M&B etched and painted windows plus much Maw & Co wall tiling.
The entrance hall has lots of light blue and cream dado tiling, which extends up the stairs and into the public bar. That room has its original counter and a superb four-bay, mirrored bar-back with a clock-adorned pediment. Below the pediment is a recently-reopened hatch to the smoke room behind. This is modernised but bell pushes remain above the benches, as do fine etched windows. The restaurant left of the hallway has nothing of historic interest bar a couple of windows.
Recently, it was closed down for a number of years, until resurrected by the Black Country Ales chain. Incredible really, they have changed nothing (apart from the drinks available) and it has gone from an unviable business to one that you are lucky to get a seat. As with all BCA Pubs, the drinks available are many, usually unheard of, a dedication to real cider and always well kept.
The second part of Jonathan Meades Travels with Pevsner details Pershore. A perfectly intact Georgian town.
A Walk Midlands Rail Trail from WalkMidlands has been on the to-do list for a while. Time to knock this off, and investigate Toyah-town with eyes afresh.
After a couple of city walks, it's good to be in the countryside again, even if this falls at the boring end of the walking scale. We have flat agricultural fields - burnt to a crisp, hard underfoot and with significant cracks in the soil ready to twist an unsuspecting ankle. The prize - Bredon Hill - is permanently in view - with only a couple of Northern Cotswold villages to break up the monotony.
Ashchurch, providing the only geocache of the day
Today's vista
Too early for Kemerton's Crown Inn - a mooch around the church instead
I'm unsure if I have approached Bredon Hill from this direction before but as with the routes I have taken, it's a gentle climb. Shady woodland at the top provides a fine location for a lunch break.
Pershore - identified by the Abbey below
The descent is via the Wychavon Way, familiar paths touching Great Comberton and the river Avon for a brief moment before more flat walking to the town.
Great Comberton Church
Pershore's old bridge declaring the walk is over
Pevsner dedicates many pages to the Abbey. I decide to only concentrate on Bridge Street - his text providing detail on design features otherwise missed, but I will spare you photos of doorways.
Bridge Street is also home to an ever dwindling number of pubs. The Brandy Cask now a private home.
The ones that remain hardly tear up any trees but after drinking increasingly warm water in a heatwave, the euro fizz available was more than welcome.
Cruzcampo and a riverside terrace
Millers Arms - former GBG and best in town (IMHO)
The Three Tuns in Pevsner's text - now a "not for Mappiman" hotel
For ladies who lunch and also a Championship Timothy Taylor outlet for cooler days
Convoluted inspiration for today's trip. A 2 mile jaunt across the plains below the Malvern Hills can hardly be described as a walk.
Today's Walking
The inspiration? I thought the Pevsner Guide to Worcestershire would help with my understanding of the county. As Jonathan Meades stated in an associated BBC documentary - Pevsner is really just a book of lists.
Madresfield Court piqued my interest. I have walked on the footpaths surrounding it many times but never visited. The documentary told me the house, and the family, was the inspiration for the Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited. I've unsuccessfully read Waugh before but gave the 1980s TV show and the 2008 film a watch. 10 hours vs. 2 hours but both entertaining enough.
Madresfield Court
The house is in private ownership - and has been for centuries - but they do have open days in the summer. £17 invested and a further £6 in takeaway cake. I am signed up for my latest early-retirement attempt at entertainment. Visiting Stately Homes.
Who would have predicted it?
It's a 90 minute tour of a house packed to the rafters with better quality tat than I have amassed over the years. They have gorilla skeletons, skinned tigers and tortoiseshell sideboards. I have the world's finest collection of walking books and Windows 6.1 Mobile phones.
Of all the rooms, it is the chapel that is most impressive. Access via the library (smelled wonderful), it is quite the spectacle of art and god's glory.
We can compare Waugh's description, delivered as Charles Ryder is shown around by the dipsomaniac, doomed homosexual, teddy-bear-carrying Sebastian Flyte, with Pevsner's characteristically matter-of-fact inventory;
One of these was the chapel. We entered it by the public porch (another door led direct to the house); Sebastian dipped his fingers in the water stoup, crossed himself, and genuflected; I copied him. ‘Why do you do that?’ he asked crossly.
‘Just good manners.’
‘Well, you needn’t on my account. You wanted to do sightseeing; how about this?’
The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses, flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic script, saints in armour, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, bright colours. There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it the peculiar property of seeming to have been moulded in Plasticine. The sanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, hand-beaten to the patina of a pock-marked skin; the altar steps had a carpet of grass-green, strewn with white and gold daisies.
‘Golly,’ I said.
Pevsner;
"An exceptionally complete piece of Arts and Crafts decoration of 1902.
The paintings are by A. Payne. The stained glass is by him and others. The triptych is by Charles Gere. The small crucifix and the candlesticks are by A. J. Gaskin... C. R. Ashbee's guild also did woodwork."
Sebastian was based on Hugo Lygon, represented as a child in the chapel. All that money and opportunity and he died at 36, falling off a kerb in Germany. The Lygons seem fully aware of the chance that fate plays in life. There is a huge portrait of the distant commoner from the Black Country, William Jennens. He died in his nineties, with a will that left all his money to his mother. The Lygons, after a court trial recorded by Charles Dickens, were the recipients of a third of his money due one married-in family member being a distant cousin. £800m in today's money.
Hugo, pulling the heads off flowers.
Since retirement, I have been posting a daily tweet of what I have enjoyed that day. Day 712 announced my upcoming visit and the watching of the film.
I think my followers want me to get back to documenting the rough pubs of Cannock.
