198 HARVINGTON.

Harvington.

NEAR Evesham. It was presented to the Church of Worcester in the year 800, and at the Dissolution fell to the Dean and Chapter, who are still the patrons of the living, but the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have taken to the manor. The records of Worcester Monastery state that John Newman, of this parish, a tenant of the monastery in the sixteenth century, presented Prior Moore, on the first New Year's day of his official life, with a dish of roaches and two and a half dozen of larks; while John Prycke, another tenant, gave two capons. The mill here yielded to the monastery thirty sticks of eels. Among the ancient names of places in the parish are Green Street, Round Hill, Nurder, Hunningham Street, and the Bury Lenches. There is a curious old custom here of children going round to all the houses on St. Thomas's Day and Valentine's Day, repeating a doggrel rhyme, and asking for apples, which perhaps is another version of the Worcestershire version of "Going a gooding." Another notability connected with Harvington was Dr. James, master of Rugby, who, on his retirement from that school, was presented to a prebendal stall at Worcester, and instituted to the rectory of Harvington, where he died in 1804.

There were twenty families here in the time of Elizabeth, and now the population numbers 452. The acreage of the parish is 1,243. A sandy loamy soil, producing first-rate samples of wheat and barley. Agriculture the chief pursuit, but some of the unmarried females are gloveresses. Among the chief landowners H.R.H. le Duc d'Aumale owns the Manor Farm and Harvington Lodge Farm; Mr. G. Malins owns and occupies two farms; Rev. T. Charles one; the Rectory Farm is occupied by Mr. J.T, Cole; and Archdeacon Buckle owns another.