It is red brick such as that of Hampton Court: a lovely mellow red, further toned by more than four hundred and fifty years. The remains of a moat, and some beautiful gardens, form an exquisite setting. Little has ever been done to alter the mansion. It is built around a quadrangle, and is entered by the original brick porch with the Royal arms of the Tudor period above. Within is the Great Hall, panelled in oak, with timbered roof and minstrel-gallery. The adjoining dining-room, oak-panelled and with richly-decorated plaster ceiling, displaying the heraldic devices of the Comptons, is next the domestic chapel. On the door above are the withdrawing-rooms communicating with the chapel-gallery. Here is “Henry the Eighth’s Bedchamber,” afterwards used by Queen Elizabeth when she visited Henry Compton, grandson of Sir William, in 1572, shortly after creating him Baron Compton. His son William is the hero of that Compton romance which brought the family great wealth. He fell in love with the daughter and heiress of the enormously rich Sir John Spencer, alderman of London, but the father did not approve of it and refused to allow his daughter to hold any converse with her lover, who then had recourse to an ingenious stratagem. He enlisted the Spencer’s family baker upon his side, bribing him to be allowed to carry the domestic bread to the house, and duly disguised appeared one morning with his load. He was so early that the alderman gave him sixpence and a homily on the virtues of diligence and punctuality. But when the loaves had been delivered, the lady herself took her place in the basket and was carried away in it and promptly married. Her father, cheated of the better match he had looked for, disinherited her, and the Spencer wealth would have gone other ways but for Queen Elizabeth, who when the first child of these enterprising lovers was born asked Sir John Spencer to be sponsor with her at the baptism of a child she was interested in, and to adopt it. He unsuspectingly agreed and thus became godfather and guardian of his grandson, who inherited the riches so nearly lost. The resourceful lover and husband, father of this fortunate boy, Spencer Compton, was created Earl of Northampton by James the First. Spencer, the second Earl, fought for King Charles at Edge Hill, October 23rd, 1642, and was slain at Hopton Heath the following March. In June 1644, the Royalist garrison of Compton Wynyates was besieged, and the house was captured in two days, and held throughout the war by the Roundheads, in spite of the bold moonlight attack in December, when the two brothers, Sir Charles and Sir William Compton, at the head of a daring party from Banbury, surprised the outposts, rushed the drawbridge which then crossed the moat, and fought a long hand to hand fight in the stables, before they were driven back.
The long wooden gallery under the roof on one side of the house is known as “the Barracks.” Here the garrison lay during those times. A panelled room in the tower is known as the “Council Chamber.” Above it is the “Priest’s Room,” apparently at some time used as a secret chapel, for on the wooden window-shelf may be seen the five rudely-cut crosses for an altar.
The church destroyed in the troubles of the civil war was rebuilt in 1663 by the third Earl of Northampton, and contains the battered monuments of Sir William Compton, builder of the mansion, and his wife; and of Henry, first Baron Compton; retrieved from the moat, into which, after being broken up, they had been thrown.
CHAPTER XIX
Luddington—Welford—Weston-on-Avon—Cleeve Priors—Salford Priors.
The way from Stratford to Evesham is a main road, the road through Bidford, that already described in the chapters on the “Eight Villages,” and hardly to be mentioned again except that by making some variations here and there, two or three villages not otherwise to be visited may be included. The first is Luddington, two and a half miles from the town, on a duly sign-posted road to the left, an excellent road, although not marked so on the maps. Luddington, besides being a village of one long row of old thatched cottages close to the Avon, is of some mild interest as being the place of which Thomas Hunt, one of Shakespeare’s schoolmasters, became curate-in-charge, and where, some say, Shakespeare was married. But the old church was burnt down many years ago and rebuilt in 1872, and the register, supposed to have been destroyed at the same time, was long kept in private hands, finally disappearing altogether. The late Mr. C. E. Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, stated that, in his younger days, “no one dreamed of disputing the assertion that Shakespeare was married at Luddington old church”; and many others declared that they had seen the entry in the book.
The way through Luddington crosses over the railway and rejoins the main road half a mile short of Binton station. Welford lies away to the left.
Welford is a kind of show place in the Stratford district. “Ah! if you want to see a pretty place, you should go to Welford.” The experienced traveller and amateur of rural beauty hears this with a certain amount of misgiving, for the popular suffrages might mean tea-gardens and all the materials towards making a happy day for those very many people who think nature unadorned to be a dull affair at the best. But Welford is quite as good as it is represented to be. One might almost style it the most picturesque village in the neighbourhood.
There is a good deal of Welford in the aggregate, but it is so scattered that it has the appearance of half a dozen hamlets. It is best reached by turning off the road to Bidford just short of Binton railway station. A few yards bring you to what are called “Binton bridges,” across the Avon, here running in overgrown channels, thick with “the vagabond flag,” and shaded by willows that recall the lines in Hamlet—
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.”