Jotted down on our map adjacent to the Tewkesbury road were blue crosses, indicating several seldom-visited nooks and corners we had learned of in our reading and which we determined to explore. No recollection of our wanderings comes back to us rosier with romance or more freighted with the spirit of rural England than that of our meanderings through the leafy byways of Worcestershire in search of Birtsmorton, Ripple, Stanton and Strensham. One will look long at the map before he finds them and a deal of inquiry was necessary before we reached Birtsmorton and its strange moated manor, Moreton Court. No better idea could be given of the somnolence and utter retirement of the little hamlet than the words of a local writer:
“Birtsmorton is remarkable for the almost total absence of the usual signs of trade and industry; even agriculture is prosecuted within such limits as consist with leaving an ample portion of its surface in the good feudal condition of extended sheep walks and open downs. Such Birtsmorton has ever been, such it still is—but, thanks to projected railroads, such we trust it will not always be.”
The projected railroad has not yet arrived and the lover of quietude and of the truly rural will hope that it will still be long delayed. No quainter old place did we find in our long quest for the quaint than Moreton Court. Fancy a huge, rambling house, a mixture of brick and half-timber, with a great gateway over which the ancient port-cullis still shows its teeth, surrounded closely on all sides by the waters of a very broad moat and connected with the outer world by a drawbridge. Once inside the court, for you gain admission easily, you pause to look at the strange assortment of gables, huge chimneys and mullioned windows, all indicative of ancient state. Not less interesting is the interior; one finds a staircase of solid black oak with a queer, twisted newelpost, dark corridors leading to massive oaken doors, chambers with ceilings intersected by heavy beams, and a state apartment of surpassing beauty. This is a spacious room, paneled to the ceiling with finely wrought dark oak, its mullioned oriel windows overhanging the moat, which on this side widens to a lake. A marvelous chimney-piece with the arms of the ancient owners attracts attention and the scutcheons of a dozen forgotten noblemen are ranged as a frieze around the walls.
We will not seek to learn the history of the old house, but some of its legends have a strange fascination. It is surely appropriate that Moreton Court should have its ghost—the “lily maid” who on winter nights kneels over the grave of her murdered lover in the adjoining churchyard. Her stern father had driven her from his home because of her constancy to her yeoman lover, whom he caused to be hung on the false charge of stealing a cow. The next morning the cruel sire found his daughter dead at his door, covered with the winter snow. But there is another grim old legend far better authenticated, which had its origin in a sad incident occurring at Moreton Court two or three centuries ago, and a sermon is still annually preached in the church against dueling. A pair of lovers were plighting their troth in the manor gardens when an unsuccessful rival of the happy youth chanced upon them and a quarrel ensued which led to a duel fatal to both of the combatants. The heart-broken maiden ended her days in sorrow at Moreton Court and left by will a fund to provide for this annual sermon. Another weird story they tell of the great Wolsey, in his youth chaplain to the lords of Moreton Court. A recalcitrant priest from Little Malvern Priory was condemned to crawl on all fours from his cell to the summit of Ragged-Stone Hill and in his rage cursed all upon whom the shadow of the hill should afterwards fall. Wolsey was one day reading in the manor grounds when to his horror he found that the fatal shadow of the hill-crest enveloped him.
But today, for all its history and legend, Moreton Court has degenerated into an ill-kept tenement farmhouse and the banquet hall with its richly moulded plaster roof is used as a storehouse for cheese. The stagnant waters of the moat and the uncleanly dairy yard directly in front of the house accord ill with its old-time state and with our modern notions of sanitation. The church near at hand is older and quite as unique as the manor; little restoration has interfered with its antique charm. Its bench ends still show the Tudor Rose and are undoubtedly those originally placed in the church. A “sanctuary ring” in the door and an odd circular alms-chest are very unusual and the altar tombs and screens are worthy of notice. In the church are buried the ancient lords of Moreton Court, who sleep their long sleep while church and manor degenerate into plebeian hands and gradually fall into ruin.
We found it practically impossible at the close of the day to trace on the map the maze of byways we threaded before reaching Worcester, and now our wanderings come back only as a general impression. We crossed the Severn at Tewkesbury but did not enter the town. A departure from the Worcester road into a narrow lane led us in a mile or two into Ripple, one of the quaintest and coziest of hamlets. Only a few thatched cottages clustered about the stone market cross of immemorial days—cottages overshadowed by no less immemorial elms, mantled with ivy and dashed with the color of rose vines. Near the cross, relics of days when there were rogues in Ripple—surely there are none now—are the oaken stocks and weather-beaten whipping-post. What a quiet, dreamy, secluded place it seems. It is hard indeed to imagine that within a circle of fifty miles is a country teeming with cities. If the village has any history we did not learn it—no great man is connected with Ripple as Tennyson with Somersby, though Ripple is not unlike Somersby. Ripple is worth a day’s journey just for itself. Only one lane leads to the village, but we left it over a wide common, passing many gates to regain the main road.
TOWN CROSS, STOCKS AND WHIPPING POST, RIPPLE.