Eckington, Worcestershire

Crossing place 

Bredon Hill, made famous by a poem in A. E. Housman’s collection A Shropshire Lad, is actually in the poet’s native Worcestershire and is an outlier of the Cotswolds. The country round about is flat, and through it snakes the River Avon, the Worcestershire Avon that is (for there are several Avons), which flows to join the Severn at Tewkesbury. The Avon is bridged at numerous points, here between Eckington and Birlingham, where Eckington Bridge looks the epitome of the medieval packhorse bridge – narrow, stone-built, weathered. Actually it’s not quite as old as it looks. There was a bridge here by at least the 14th century, but by the early 1700s it was so damaged and decayed that it needed to be replaced. What we see now is the replacement, built in 1728 by a pair of Worcester masons, Robert Taylor and Thomas Wilkinson.

The 18th-century masons are said to have reused the foundations of the earlier bridge, and the paler stone of the lower parts of the pointed cutwaters that protrude into the water may be part of this original structure. It is hard to get an impression of the stone of the lower sections of the arches because this has been patched up over the years with both stone and brick. The parapet is yet another colour, a grey as opposed to red coloured sandstone. The bulk of the bridge is built from stone quarried in the Ombersley area, where both red and grey stone are found.

The kind of traffic the bridge was taking in the 18th century was not so different from that of the medieval period: horses, carts, cattle, pedestrians. Even in the 18th century when there would have been more carts than packhorses, it must have been easy for the slow-moving traffic of that era to make its way across as oncoming carts or horses waited their turn. Nowadays the traffic moves more quickly and is controlled by lights. Let’s hope today’s technology makes yesterday’s bridge good for another century or two.

Seven Springs, Gloucestershire

Silent springs

There’s not a lot at Seven Springs, in the parish of Cobberley not far from Cheltenham: a largish mid-19th century house now a school, and the tiny parcel office in my previous post, and, well, seven springs. The springs are a contender for the ultimate source of the River Thames, although Thames Head, near, Kemble, is more usually cited as the source. Seven Springs is strictly the source of a small river, the Churn, which flows into the Thames at Cricklade.

As I was looking at the parcel office I decided to walk a few yards further along the road and visit the springs. They were bubbling away quietly, sending water from the subterranean rocks out through seven small holes. But it wasn’t really the right time of year for a photograph. The place was looking muddy and dark and, apart from a fetching clump of snowdrops, rather dingy. So I had a look at the stone tablet, which asserts the place’s claim in bold Latin – ‘Here, Father Thames, is your sevenfold spring’ – and resolved to return to Seven Springs when the weather is better and the ground less muddy.

Saul, Gloucestershire

Peace be with you

Wandering around the Gloucestershire village of Saul at the weekend, I noticed that several of the houses bore carved or plaster figures. Some, apparently depict the masters of ships who settled here, mostly in the middle decades of the 19th century, and built houses for themselves, according to the Victoria County History, with their own hands. Gloucestershire, one of England’s inland counties, has a venerable maritime history because it contains the tidal stretch of the River Severn, enabling the port of Gloucester, far from the sea though it is, to welcome sea-going ships in its docks. The Sharpness Canal was built to cut out the Severn’s big bend and some difficult stretches of the river, and Saul is close to the canal. Hence the ships’ masters’ presence here.

So I was all set to write a light-hearted post about houses called Dunsailin (although the houses mostly have much more decorous names), jolly jack tars and replacement windows, when I came across this pair above the entrance porch of a house in the main street. They’re said to represent twin brothers who married a pair of sisters, but who both drowned in the Severn. No jokes today, then. Just a respectful recognition that the Severn, with its enormous tidal range, treacherous mudflats, and sudden variations between depths and shallows, can be a very dangerous place. Peace be with you, twins of Saul.