Cross at Bitterley.
At the farther end of the village we turn aside to examine an old, ruinous pile, rising forlorn and derelict in the midst of an adjacent meadow. Upon nearer acquaintance this proves to be an ancient, dilapidated edifice, in the last stages of decay. With its time-stained brick walls and crow-stepped gables smothered in untended ivy, the mullioned windows agape to every gale, and roof and chimneys tottering to their fall, the old place looks a haunted house, every inch of it, as our sketch will shew.
A solid oak newel staircase 'corkscrews' upwards in a projecting turret, but, save a few remnants of elaborate stucco ornamentation above the fireplace in one desolate chamber, there is little or nothing to repay the risk of a broken neck. So, remarking certain traces of a moat in the meadow hard by (restored by 'artist's license' in the sketch), we now hie away through lanes and fields to Bitterley church.
Bitterley church and the old Court-house, with some noble trees in the foreground and Titterstone towering behind, make a pleasing rural picture as we draw near; and, upon passing through the wicket and entering the green sanctuary, we come in sight of the beautiful churchyard Cross shewn in the adjoining sketch. It dates from the Decorated period, the slender shaft rising from a flight of worn, mossy steps, and bearing aloft the four-sided head, or finial, in whose crocketed niches some mouldering fragments of sculptured work may still be discerned. This Cross is one of the finest of its kind in England.
The church itself is of Norman origin, though much altered in later times. The best features of the interior are a fine arcaded Norman font, a curious old lectern and iron-bound muniment chest, and slight remains of a traceried oak roodscreen.
Beyond Bitterley church the country opens out towards the unenclosed flanks of Titterstone Glee Hill:
'Those mountains of commande
The Clees, like loving twins, and Stitterstone that stande
Transevered,'