September 18, 2019 Broadway, U.K.

First thing this morning, as is our wont, we headed for the major church in Winchcombe, St. Peter’s. It is a large church with a square tower, built about 1460 by the masons left over from the building of Sudeley Castle.

And he is grotesque, isn’t he?

Its most remarkable feature is the more than 40 grotesques sticking out of every corner of the exterior. I have photographs of them all. Time and aging have left them no less grotesque.

Well, across the fields and over the stiles.

Then it was hi!-ho! and off across the fields we go! (again!). The first major stop was at Hailes where there are the ruins of Hailes Abbey. It was very rich and drew the attention of Henry VIII’s reformers, resulting in its destruction. We did not have the time to do it justice but turned our attention to the tiny Hailes Church, adjacent.

The basic fabric dates from 1175,and has been little modified since. It was just a parish church, not associated with the Abbey, and so escaped Henry’s Dissolution. It’s stucco walls still have 12th century paintings, however very faded after some 800 years.

St. Catherine

There are monumental stones set in the floor from the early 1600s. There are headstones in the yard that you can read into family stories.

Walked through the Stanway Estate. The meadows had huge oak trees and other huge trees as yet to be identified. We have some nuts from one of the trees that we will try to identified.

The trail continued, passing the imposing gatehouse of Stanway House, a magnificent Jacobean manor owned for the last 500 years by the Earls of Wemyss. The large church adjacent was locked as it is essentially the private chapel of the Earl.

In Stanton.

Our walking destination for the day was Stanton. We were due to be picked up at the pub at the local inn at four to be transferred to our accomodation in Broadway. The pub turned out to be not only at the far end of Stanton, but a long way up a steep hill. It also turned out that it closed at three, and we just got there in time to get a drink. Who closes a pub at three in the afternoon? And it is the only establishment in Stanton. I bet that town is a riot on Saturday night. So we sat on the patio of a vacant inn until our ride showed up, accompanied only by the inn’s cat.

In Stanton, interesting features the thatched roof.

Here we are in Broadway at another b&b – our room adjacent to the front door in what I’m sure was the parlour in the original design, judging by our bow window.