BLACKLOW HILL AND GUY’S CLIFF
In the course of the drive from Warwick to Stratford (either way) the traveler passes Ganerslie Heath and Blacklow Hill, places said to be haunted. On Blacklow Hill the corrupt Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, unworthy favorite of that weak king, Edward II, was beheaded, June 20, 1312, by order of Guy, tenth Earl of Warwick, whom he had opposed and maligned, calling him “the Black Dog of Arden,” and some of the peasantry of the neighborhood entertain to this day an old superstitious notion that dismal bells have been heard to toll from that hill at midnight. The scene of Gaveston’s decapitation is marked by a monument. Another place of interest to be seen in the course of the drive is Guy’s Cliff, a secluded residence, beside the Avon, traditionally associated with an ancient, fabled Guy, Earl of Warwick, who, after performing prodigies of valor, retired to that place and lived and died a hermit. Camden, the antiquary, Shakespeare’s contemporary, whose “Britannia” (1586) he probably knew, thus happily describes it:
“There have ye a shady little wood, cleere and cristall springs, mossy bottomes and caves, medowes alwaies fresh and greene, the river rumbling here and there among the stones with his streame making a mild noise and gentle whispering, and besides all this, solitary and still quietnesse, things most grateful to the Muses.”
CHARLECOTE HOUSE
STONELEIGH ABBEY
This fine mansion, the seat of Lord Leigh, was erected in the eighteenth century, and occupies the site of a Cistercian Abbey, of which a gateway still remains