196 HARTLEBURY.

erected in 1836-7, at a cost of £5,000. The Bishop patron of the living ; value £1,586 ; church accommodation, 800 ; free seats, 300; Rev. T. Baker rector. The Bishop is also the nominal lord of the manor, but the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Dr. Nash, Mrs. Bernard, Messrs. Harward and Lingen, are the chief landowners. Dr. Peel, the Dean of Worcester, has a handsome mansion at Waresley Green; and among the other resident gentry are John Watson, Esq., Miss Chellingworth, and T. Millichap, Esq. Three centuries ago there were some 500 people here; now there are 2,115; acreage of the parish, 5,474. Soil a rich loam or light sand (on the red), and generally fertile. Four-course system of cropping mainly adopted, and a great breadth of potatoes usually planted. Besides agricultural pursuits there are iron and tin-plate works at Wilden, carried on by Messrs. Baldwin, and a few persons find employment at Stourport carpet mills.

The neighbourhood is beautiful to a degree, and the Severn and Stour water its borders. Part of the common lands was enclosed in 1820, but there are still 200 acres unenclosed. There is an ancient hermit's cell cut in a rock in a secluded part of a meadow belonging to the glebe. Among the old names of places are Puck Hall Piece, Tin Fields, Great Hoos Head, Ell Meadow, Egg Lane, Hanging Close, Doles-in-Torton Meadow, &c.

Entering the village by turnpike road from Worcester - though you have no occasion to do so now, Hartlebury being a first-class station on the Great Western - after passing the " Mitre Oak," a venerable tree standing near an old hostelry, the said tree being declared, without any foundation whatever, to have been that under which St. Augustine first addressed the British Bishops, you descend a short but steep hill, and are struck with the rural beauty of the place - the parish church on the right and the old "White Hart" on the left. The Free Grammar School, so many years shut up in Chancery, is now again a living institution. This school was reopened in 1862, and has a revenue of £427. 12s. 9d. It is an ugly