History of Worcestershire (eBook)

Chapter 1

The Size and Shape of Worcestershire, and its Physical Features

Worcestershire is one of the smaller counties of England. Before the merger with Herefordshire in 1974 it was 33rd in size of the 41 counties. It was only an eighth of the area of Yorkshire, a quarter that of Lincolnshire and not quite as large as each of its neighbours: Herefordshire to the west, Gloucestershire to the south, Warwickshire to the east, Staffordshire to the north and Shropshire to the north-west.

Measured by population, Worcestershire ranked a little higher than it did by area. In 1801, the year of the first national census, the county had a population of 146,000, the 21st largest in England. It had more people than Herefordshire, though less than each of its other neighbours. By 1951, the population had risen to 523,000, but its rank order had dropped to 24th.

Worcestershire is generally considered to be part of the English Midlands. The county town is roughly equidistant from London, Exeter, Holyhead and York. For many administrative purposes Worcestershire is grouped with other Midland counties, as in the Heart of England Tourist Board. Yet it also has something of the air of the west country. The Hwicce, who settled the county in the sixth and seventh centuries, came up the Severn valley from the south-west, while in later periods the River Severn took much of the county’s trade to Bristol. There are also historic links with Wales. The north-west of the county is only 15 miles from the Welsh border, and in the 16th and early 17th century Worcestershire was one of the border counties that were administered jointly with the Principality.

4 Map of England and Wales, showing the position of Worcestershire

E  Exeter

H  Holyhead

L  London

Y  York

and the distribution of wealth in England and Wales in 1334

In the Middle Ages, Worcestershire was transitional between the richer south-east and the poorer north-west. Assessments of lay and clerical wealth show it as only the 30th county in 1334, though it was relatively richer by 1514. After 1600, particularly, Worcestershire benefited from the use made of the Severn as a busy commercial routeway while parts of the county had the resources for great industrial development. In the 19th century the north-east was part of the Black Country conurbation, a grim contrast to rural Worcestershire, which for many seemed the very heart of the English countryside. The M5 has now replaced the Severn as the major north to south routeway through the county and each day thousands who drive along it have glimpses of well-known landmarks like Bredon Hill, the Malverns or the tower of Worcester Cathedral.

5 The changing shape of Worcestershire, showing parishes ceded, parishes gained and ‘special case’ parishes

The County Boundary

Few counties have experienced so many boundary changes as Worcestershire. Like Staffordshire and Warwickshire, the county was created in 918 as an administrative and defensive unit to resist the threat of Danish conquest from the east. The new boundary took account of the huge estates already held by the Bishop of Worcester and the great religious houses, many of which formed detached blocks to the south and east. One such block, some six miles east of the present county boundary, consisted of the parishes of Shipston-on-Stour and Tredington, which were held by the bishop, and Alderminster, of Pershore Abbey. Blockley, Cutsdean, Evenlode and Daylesford were other detached parishes to the south-east, as was Dudley in the north. The main body of the county itself had many protruding spurs, like the narrow parish of Oldberrow which reached south-eastwards into Warwickshire from Beoley, or the more solid shape of Mathon to the west, driving a wedge into Herefordshire. Neighbouring counties drove their own spurs into Worcestershire, while from the end of the 11th century until 1844 part of Halesowen was an enigmatic outlier of Shropshire, due to ownership of the manor by the powerful Earl of Shrewsbury, who annexed it to his county of residence. The greatest anomaly was Bewdley, which became a sanctuary for criminals in the late Middle Ages because of uncertainty whether it belonged to Worcestershire or Shropshire. Incidents such as that of Thomas Tye, priest, who ‘preached sedition, but the justices being here in the shire ground could not proceed’, finally led to an Act of Parliament in 1544, which settled for Worcestershire.

6 St Egburgha’s church and the Old Grammar School, Yardley, which was ceded to Birmingham in 1911

There were no further adjustments until 1844, when a number of changes followed the Reform Act of 1832. Further rationalisation took place in the 1890s, after the new county councils had been established in 1889, but the most sweeping changes did not occur until the 20th century. These began with the transfer of the north-east spur of the county—Yardley, Northfield and most of King’s Norton—to the City of Birmingham, the suburbs of which had been creeping outwards since the early 19th century, especially after the coming of the railways. There were further changes in the 1920s. The ragged edge along the south of the county was straightened when six parishes between Bredon and Broadway were absorbed into Worcestershire. In compensation, two parishes in the extreme south-west were ceded to Gloucestershire. All the outlying blocks were also transferred to other authorities, including Dudley, which became a county borough in 1929.

The last and most radical changes occurred in 1974, as part of a wide sweeping Local Government Act. There were adjustments in the north, where Halesowen and Stourbridge were absorbed into the new West Midlands Metropolitan District. At the same time, Worcestershire and Herefordshire were amalgamated to create the new county of Hereford and Worcester. This was divided up into a number of new administrative districts, two of which, Leominster and Malvern Hills, absorbed parts of both former counties. A map of the post-1974 administrative districts is shown on p.l18, as part of Chapter 10.

These boundary changes pose problems for the historian. This book concentrates on the county as it was immediately before 1974, but some reference is also made to former parts of the county, particularly to Dudley, which was the second largest town in Worcestershire for most of the 19th century. The frequent alterations of area do mean, however, that statistical comparisons are rarely precise, and that distributional maps may have to be approximated near the county boundaries.

Topography and Drainage

Worcestershire has been compared to a shallow basin, surrounded by an indented rim of upland. The central part of the county, sometimes called the plain of Worcestershire, is an undulating lowland on either side of the Severn. This merges south-eastwards with the lower Avon valley, commonly called the Vale of Evesham and long known for its fertility. In 1585 the antiquarian William Camden in his Britannia wrote that this region ‘... well deserved to be called the Granary of All these counties, so good and plentiful is the grounde in yieldinge the best corn abundantly ... ’. Near the confluence of the two rivers the land drops to under 10 metres, but much of the lowland is between 20 and 60 metres high, with occasional knolls standing above it. It rises to low hills to the east of the Severn in the far north of the county.

The north-west uplands, stretching to the county border, are a dissected upland, much of which lies between 120 and 200 metres. The Severn and the Teme divide this up into blocks which have their own local names such as the Kyre Uplands or Wyre Forest. Blackstone and Redstone Rocks, both with caves used as hermitages until the 19th century, are among several scenic features along the Severn valley, while the historian Habington ‘noted the bountifil dowre of fruytfull ground’ lying along the Teme.

7a The main physical features of Worcestershire

7b The drainage network of Worcestershire

The north-east uplands are part of the Birmingham plateau, which culminates in the Clents and the Lickeys, both about 984 ft. high. These are now public amenity areas and have been nicknamed ‘the playground of Birmingham’. In the Middle Ages the plateau was poorly developed but during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries it became the most densely populated part of Worcestershire. Access to the plateau from the lowlands was then a problem, overcome by engineering feats like the 30-lock staircase at Tardebigge.

To the south-west the Malverns form a long, whale-backed ridge rising to 1,404 ft. at the Worcestershire Beacon. John Leland, passing here in 1540, put it succinctly when he wrote: ‘Malverne hills ly a greate way in lengthe from southe to northe ...’. The range continues northwards to the Abberley Hills, marked by the very high clock tower which was added to Abberley Hall in 1883.

From the Malverns there are extensive views across the Severn and Avon valleys to the scarp edge of the Cotswolds. These are only inside the county boundary in the far south-east, where a salient pushing into Gloucestershire takes in Broadway Hill at just over 300 metres. The summit is crowned by Broadway Tower, a folly built in 1800 by Lord Coventry, allegedly so that his wife...