OFFICERS

PresidentNick Lechmere

Tel: 07771 644927

ChairJenny McGowran

Tel: 311820

TreasurerJohn Boardman

Tel: 311748

Secretary & NewsletterEditor

Malcolm FareTel: 311994

Programme SecretaryDavid Thomas

Tel: 310437

FORTHCOMINGACTIVITIES

19 January 2016Talk by Enid Loynes onher childhood at Uptonrailway station - she wasthe daughter of the laststation master; with adisplay of photographsand railway memorabilia.Village Hall, 7.30 pm

23 March 2018The Story of MorrisDancing, a talk byRichard Hannah.Village Hall, 7.30 pm

SOME OF HANLEY’SHISTORIC HOUSES

Following the AGM in September,Malcolm Fare took members on abrisk metaphorical walk around theparish looking at some of the olderhouses and the people who havelived in them. His starting point wasthe Village Stores which began as acoaching inn in 1838 before beingtransformed by Sir EdmundLechmere into a working men’sinstitute with accommodation for 32single men. By 1881 it had beenconverted into a grocer’s shop,acquiring the role of post office inthe 1890s.

In the south-west corner of theparish lies Berry Lodge, built in 1832by the farmer Thomas Berry andowned 40 years later by a formergamekeeper at Madresfield Court,William Burgess, who invented ahumane vermin killer and an alarmgun for catching poachers.

The route followed the footpathalong Meerbrook and down GilbertsEnd past Hanley Hall, whose originscan be traced back to the 11thcentury, to the Regency villa stillcalled The Villa, with its ornate cast-iron verandah, and then on a pathpast Lodge Farm, the centre ofHanley Park in medieval times, downto Castle Mill, which was last usedby the Wheildon brothers in 1966.

In the south-east corner of theparish is Pool House of 16th centuryorigins but rebuilt as a farmhouse inthe early 18th century. 100 yearslater it was the home of a vicarwhose horse stumbled into a floodedsawpit one dark night, drowningboth steed and rider. Moving up theroad to Quay Lane, we reachedHerberts Farm, rebuilt in the 17th

century on earlier remains by thelawyer William Herbert. Bonner’sCottage at the bottom of the lane issaid to be the birthplace of EdmundBonner, Bishop of London at thetime of Queen Mary and notoriousfor persecuting protestants.

Church End contains many 17thcentury or earlier cottages, includingGlebe Cottage, which may havebeen used as a court room forenforcing forest law in medievaltimes, the Almshouses and Hobbits,which was the site of the ThreeKings pub at the time of the 1795enclosure act.

Back on the main road, there arethree houses where vicars ofHanley Castle used to live: The OldVicarage, Whittemere and PyndarHouse. But there is space here onlyto mention an occupant of one ofthese, William Moore, tenant farmerat The Cottage (now Whittemere)from 1845 to 1860. He bred prize-winning short-horn cattle andShropshire Down sheep, designed ahighly acclaimed silver medal for theWorcestershire Agricultural Societyand introduced the first reapingmachine in the county. Tragicallystruck down at the early age of 40 byheart disease, he was held in suchhigh esteem that his friends raised40 guineas (equivalent to around£4000 today) to install a stainedglass window in his memory in thenorth aisle of St Mary's church.

Many of the larger houses inRoberts End date from the first halfof the 19th century when there wasan influx of wealthy people seekingthe health-giving qualities of Malvernspring water. These properties andtheir inhabitants will be included in aforthcoming book looking atHanley’s historic houses.

Issue No. 42

Winter

2017

HANLEY MATTERSthe newsletter of

The Hanleys’ Village Society

STANBROOK ABBEY

In November Pamela Hurle talked to us about the history of thatwell-known local landmark, Stanbrook Abbey. First sheexplained that, although Stanbrook was only built as an abbeyin 1838, the Benedictine nuns who lived there until recentlybelonged to an order founded in 1625 in Cambrai, Flanders, by17-year-old Helen More, the great-great-granddaughter of SirThomas More.

The life of these nuns involved seven services a day, singing,reading and learning how to be economically independent. By thelate 18th century, they had become quite wealthy. But in 1793the French Revolution abolished abbeys and the 22 nuns wereimprisoned. They were joined by a group of Carmelite nuns whowere guillotined and a similar fate for the original communitywas only avoided when Robespierre was executed and thereign of terror came to an end. Supporters in England rescuedthem and in 1807 they settled in Salford Hall, Evesham.

In 1835 the Benedictine priest at Little Malvern, DomAugustine Lawson, bought an old manor house at Callow Endfor them and by 1838 it had been rebuilt as Stanbrook Abbey. Inthe late 19th century, a church, cloisters and chapel wereadded, designed by the half-brothers Edward and Peter Pugin,sons of the famous architect Augustus Pugin, who introducedthe neo-Gothic style.

The former Pugin church, now Callow Great Hall

Stanbrook became celebrated for its traditions of Gregorianchant, devotional literature and printing. The Stanbrook AbbeyPress, which started printing in 1876, was at one time the oldest

private press in England, andacquired an internationalreputation for fine printing.

One of its most influentialabbesses was DameLaurentia McLachlan (1866-1953), a pioneer in therestoration of the Gregorianchant in England and aleading authority on music andmedieval manuscripts. Herfriendship with Sir SydneyCockerell, curator of theFitzwilliam Museum inCambridge, and the playwrightGeorge Bernard Shaw wasthe subject of a play by HughWhitemore, The Best ofFriends, which was based ona book by Dame FelicitasCorrigan recording more than800 letters from such notablefigures as Siegfried Sassoon,Iris Murdoch and AlecGuinness. Shaw once said toher “You are an enclosed nunwith an unenclosed mind”.

Stanbrook Abbey was builtfor 100 nuns, but there wereonly 20 when they relocated toWass in the North Yorkshiremoors in 2009. In 2010 theGrade II-listed Callow Endproperty was sold to Clarencoand is now an events venueand 55-room hotel.

ACQUISITIONSRecent Society acquisitionsinclude an interesting vellumdocument dated 1774 wherebyEdmund Lechmere (1710-1805) received five shillingsand one pepper corn forleasing the lordship of themanor of Oxenton inGloucestershire for a year toJohn Parsons of Kemertonand John Darke of Bredon.Edmund had inherited theestate from his uncle, NicholasLechmere, Baron of Evesham.This is a 50-word summary ofwhat the document takes 1000words to say, but then lawyersused to be paid by the word.