The rooms and public receptacles for company, it should be the business of some party to see closed, at all events on Sunday, and particularly on Sunday morning, against those errant gamblers, that will eventually be the bane of Cheltenham.
Libraries and Banks are numerous, as are conveyances to London through Oxford, and to Bristol through Gloucester: here likewise are conveyances to Hereford, Worcester, Birmingham, &c., and by that route to North Wales; but this is not to be depended upon: but to South Wales, through Gloucester and Hereford, the conveyance by coach and waggon for passengers or baggage is ready and convenient.
For further particulars relative to this splendid modern establishment, for such Cheltenham certainly may with propriety be designated, I must refer the reader to the Cheltenham Guide; the information derived from which will amply repay him for its trifling cost. From hence to Gloucester, eight miles one furlong, the road is excellent; and if time allows, Tewkesbury is worthy of a visit, being only nine miles from Cheltenham, and ten miles and a half from Gloucester.
Its ancient abbey is a venerable building, founded in 715, by two brothers, Odo and Dodo, who endowed it with the manor of Stanway in Gloucestershire, &c. &c. sufficient to maintain a prior and four monks of the order of Benedictines: this priory was afterwards, about the year 980, subjected to the priory of Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, but being subsequently rebuilt in 1102, by Robert Fitz-Hamon, and its endowments greatly enlarged, Girald, the Abbot of Cranbourne, on account of the fruitfulness of the soil, and superiority of its situation, removed his establishment to it, leaving only a prior and two monks at Cranbourne. From this period it appears to have risen in consequence as a town.
The ashes of many noble characters are here deposited; and amongst the rest, amidst the mingled heap of slain and murdered at and after the battle of Tewkesbury, those of the accomplished and lamented Edward, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry the Sixth; Edmund, Duke of Somerset; his brother John de Somerset, the Earl of Devonshire; Lord Wenlock, Master of the Horse to the Prince, with numerous others. Here likewise rest in peace, where all animosities are forgotten, the remains of false, fleeting, perjured Clarence; as also those of Isabel his wife, who was buried with great pomp and solemnity.
Further particulars of this ancient town the reader will obtain by reference to a small but interesting historical work, on the Antiquities of Tewkesbury, by W. Dyde of that place; who, after giving a very full and explicit account of the contest betwixt the houses of York and Lancaster, concludes by saying, “The local memorials of this very decisive battle are but few. The principal scenes of the action are the meadow, which has received the appellation of Bloody Meadow, and the Vineyard. The former lies between two gently descending banks, about half a mile south-west of the town, and was the spot where the slaughter was the greatest. The latter was the place where Queen Margaret lay, and where some intrenchments are still to be traced.”
Stebbing says, “to the monastery and convent of Tewkesbury, King Henry the Seventh granted the parochial church of Towton to pray for the soul of Edmund, Duke of Somerset, his brother John, and others, who lost their lives in the quarrel of the house of Lancaster.”
The entrance to Tewkesbury from Worcester, or Hereford and Malvern, after a heavy fall of rain, presents to the eye the largest moveable body of inland water I have witnessed in England; the junction of the Severn, and the Warwickshire Avon, each overflowing their banks, rushing down two beautiful vales to join their currents opposite the town, and augmenting their volume by the two tributary streams of the Carron and the Swilgate, impress you with the idea of the vicinity of the sea, and the power of the tide, to collect so large a body of that fluid element in such overpowering currents. The drive or ride from Tewkesbury to Upton, and from thence to Malvern hills, is beautiful; indeed, not one inch of this delightful country should be missed or slighted, by travelling over it in the dark or in bad weather: the view from Malvern hills over Worcester, and the rich vale through which the Severn’s current rolls, is perhaps as fine a one as the eye of the painter could wish to be indulged with. Winding round the Malvern hills by a good turnpike road, you gain the Herefordshire view, with the mountains of Wales in the back ground, having Ross on the left, and Bromyard, Leominster, and Salop on the right; descending the hill, you soon reach Ledbury, scarcely remarkable for any thing but the antiquity of its houses, and the fine quality of the cider and perry made in its vicinity. Malvern is about an equal distance from Ledbury and Upton, and those places are nearly equi-distant from
GLOUCESTER.
The pin manufactory was established here by John Tisley, in the year 1626, and the business is now become so extensive that the returns from London alone are estimated at near twenty thousand pounds per annum. Before the introduction of pins into England, anno 1548, skewers of brass, silver, and gold, and likewise thorns curiously scraped, called by the Welch women pindraen, were used. Though the pins themselves are apparently simple, yet their manufacture is not a little curious and complex. The wire in its most rough state is brought from a wire company in the neighbourhood of Bristol: till the year 1563 English iron wire was drawn out by manual strength. The first operation attending this curious process is the fixing the circular roll of wire to the circumference of a wheel, which in its rotation throwing the wire against a board, with great violence, takes off the black external coat: vitriol is next applied to bring the brass to its common colour. The brass wire being too thick for the purpose of being cut into pins, is reduced to any dimension the workman pleases, by forcibly drawing it through an orifice in a steel plate, of a similar diameter. The wire being thus reduced to its proper dimensions, is next straightened: it is then cut into portions of six inches in length, and afterwards to the size of the pin, and each piece respectively sharpened on a grinding-stone, turned by a wheel. We now come to a distinct branch of the manufactory; the forming the heads, or, as the workmen term it, head spinning: this is accomplished by means of a spinning-wheel, which, with astonishing rapidity, winds the wire round a small rod: this, when drawn out, leaves a hollow tube between the circumvolutions: every two circumvolutions, or turns, being cut with shears, form one head. The heads thus formed are distributed to children, who, with great dexterity, by the assistance of an anvil, or hammer, worked by the foot, fix the point and the head together. The pins, thus formed, are boiled in a copper, containing a solution of block-tin pulverized, and the lees of port; and by this last process it changes its yellow brassy colour, and assumes the appearance of silver or tin. The labourers are all paid according to the weight of their work.