The Shakespearean tourist will not be pleased with Grafton, for the squire of the adjoining Grafton Court practically rebuilt the whole village some forty years ago. It is true that was not a heroic undertaking, for it is a small village, but the doing of it very effectually quenches the traveller’s enthusiasm. Even the church was rebuilt in 1875: a peculiarly unfortunate thing, because the old building was one of those for which claim was made for having been the scene of Shakespeare’s marriage, that elusive ceremony of which no register survives to bear witness. It is only in practical, unsentimental England that these things are at all possible. A furious desire to obliterate every possible Shakespearean landmark would almost seem to have possessed the people of the locality, until quite recent years. Grafton, whose “Temple” prefix derives from the manor having anciently been one of the possessions of the Knights Templar, stands on a hill. The site is thought to have been covered in olden times with scrub-woods, “Grafton” or “Greveton,” taking its name from “greves”; a word signifying underwoods. Similar place-names are found in Northamptonshire, in Grafton Regis and Grafton Underwood, situated in Whittlebury Forest.
The only possible picture in “Hungry” Grafton is that sketched here, from below the ridge, where a brook runs beneath the road, beside a group of red-brick cottages. If you ascend the road indicated here and pass the highly uninteresting church and schools, you come to the hamlet of Ardens Grafton, a very much more gracious and picturesque place, although in extremely tumbledown and dilapidated circumstances. It is very much of a woodland hamlet, and appears to owe the first part of its name rather to that circumstance than to ownership at any time by the Arden family: Ardens in this case signifying a height overlooking a wooded Vale.
The situation of the place does in fact most aptly illustrate the derivation, for it stands upon a very remarkable ridge, which must needs be descended by a steep and sudden hill if we want to reach Exhall. Descending the almost precipitous and narrow road with surprise, the nearly cliff-like escarpment is seen trending away most strikingly to the north.
We are now in the valley of the river Arrow. On the way to Exhall we come—not led by Caliban—to “where crabs grow,” for the hedgerows here are remarkable for the number of crab-apple trees. Shakespeare must have had them in mind when he wrote The Tempest. Exhall lies in a beautiful country, on somewhat obscure byways that may have given the place that elusive character with strangers to which it owes its nickname of “Dodging”: although, to be sure there are the other readings of “Dadging,” whose meaning no one seems to comprehend; and “Drudging,” which it is held is the true epithet, given in allusion to the heavy ploughlands of the vale. Yet another choice has been found, in “Dudging,” supposed to mean “sulky”; but the ingenuity of commentators in these things is endless. There is, at any rate, in coming from Ardens Grafton, no modern difficulty in finding Exhall. It is a little village of large farms, with a small aisle-less Early English and Decorated church whose interest has been almost wholly destroyed by the so-called “restoration” of 1863. A window with the ball-flower moulding characteristic of the Decorated period remains in the south wall, and there are brasses to John Walsingham, 1566, and his wife; but for the rest, the stranger within these gates need not regret the church being locked, in common with most others in Shakespeare land. The hollow road at Exhall, with high, grassy banks and the group of charming old half-timbered cottages illustrated here is a delight. The builder who built them—they are certainly at least a century older than Shakespeare—built more picturesquely than he knew, with those sturdy chimney-stacks and the long flight of stairs ascending from the road.
There are orchards at Exhall where I think the “leather-coats” such as Davy put before Shallow’s guests yet grow: they are a russet apple, and, like the “bitter-sweeting,” own a local name which Shakespeare, the Warwickshire countryman, knew well enough, but of whose existence Bacon could have known nothing. What says Mercutio to Romeo? “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting: it is a most sharp sauce.” And if you, tempted by the beautiful yellow of that apple, pick one and taste it, you will find the bitterness of it bite to the very bone.