Ledbury: Poetry in Architecture

At Hagley the train slowed, halting amongst the laden Horse Chestnuts. The russet tones are embers of a dying summer cut all too short. Sweet railway embankments are natures dream... I’m in no doubt these carpeted slopes provide dens for skulks of fox’s and numerous badger setts. The idyll surroundings are cut all too short as Kidderminster encroaches with its dominating towers of red-brick carpet factories puncturing the sky.

I’m forced to switch train at Droitwich Spa, a transaction which leaves the traveller with fifty minutes to roam. At first glance, Droitwich consists mostly of mini-roundabouts and a tired shopping precinct although an old High Street elicits a more charitable age to charm. This curved, spine-like street, leads to the relic of St Andrew’s parish church. This is a strange gem on the eye with its squat tower and clues which indicate to a once important past. Droitwich’s mother church is perched on a cliff ledge away from the town - occupying a once pagan site. Back to the station and its coffee kiosk (Snax on Trax) for a polystyrene cup of coffee and Kit Kat for under £2 and I board the train heading into the Malvern Hills and beyond.

This train trundles through Great Malvern and its 'Spa-era Victoriana' as I travel onwards through the hills, tunnelled to Colwall. Here stands the noble 'British Camp'; A Geological layer-cake of antiquity and Iron-Age ramparts, surrounded by a sea of harvested golden bale-rolls casting long shadows.

I turn out of Ledbury Station. The first turn on the left is 'Masefield Avenue', the location of new Neo-Georgian starter homes. I’m left uncertain as to what our hero poet would make of this endorsement. Let’s not worry; it’s only a minor blemish on this otherwise lovely town. Ledbury’s main street is wide and gracious. Glimpses through gaps provide long vistas towards the slopes of Herefordshire & the Frome Valley. A High Street Antiquarian book-dealer sells the arses off Ledbury’s poets: Browning & Masefield and a claim to Piers Plowman, too. The shops frontage panging the heart with its fluttering of weathered, aged OS & Bartholomews maps on its  stalls.

Glass: Kempes' wheatsheaf motif: St Michael and All Angels, Ledbury.

Ledbury (St Michaels - Mediaeval glass fragments salvaged in the North Chancel Chapel)

I head directly to the delicious Church Street. This is one of England’s most prized views, probably having graced many a jigsaw puzzle. I had chosen the wrong day to visit the Church. I ventured in sandwiched between several big-hatted society weddings. The wide brimmed and feathered heads barely able to pass through the arched mediaeval north door. They had paid for the bells to be rung though and a pleasing course of 'Grandsire Triples' radiated from louvers of the beautiful detached campanile along with the old wedding favourites of called changes: "Tittums & Queens". The church is an eclectic affair. A lofty, bold Norman chancel is surrounded by later gothic. The north chancel chapel boats rescued fragmented glass windows by the much under-rated Chistopher Whall (1849-1924) and pieces of architectural stone. A mediaeval wooden rood screen has found its home behind some equally enticing iron-gates.

I exit the wedding party stunned as a highly polished Steinway piano hammers its play and a string quartet strike-up. Could an even more pretentious wedding exist? I leave the church briskly into the churchyard and sit upon a sun-warmed Georgian Tomb, the final resting place of Mr Thomas Blake, Parish Clerk; a beautiful place to be hemmed in by copious Hornbeams and ancient Yews. There is also a rather grand Pear tree, gently reminding me that I am indeed in the midst of Hops & Cider country.

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