242 LEIGH AND BRADFORD.

in the Teme-side meadows; and grain, roots, green crops, hops, with apples and pears, are the produce of the district. Population chiefly engaged in agricultural pursuits, but glove-sewing is also extensively carried on among the women. Mr. J. Burrows has a small manufactory for agricultural implements. There was formerly a snuff mill, and also a cloth factory, by the Teme at Bransford, but now only a flour mill there. Major Norbury, of Sherridge, is the only resident landowner of any extent, but at the Link there are the Rev. T. King, a magistrate, Mr. Holland, Mr. B. Bright, Rev. F. Peel, and Dr. Weir. A school, with small endowment, is successfully carried on in the parish.

Traditions and superstitions abound in the neighbourhood. When the late Mr. Spooner kept a pack of hounds, whenever they passed through a certain field in Leigh Sinton the hounds invariably ran after something which nobody could see until they came to the cottage of an old woman named Cofield, when they would turn back, the old witch having then got safely into her own "sanctum." Then the ghost of "Old Coles" would occasionally at dead of night drive a coach and four over the great barn at Leigh Court, and not pull up till the whole of his equipage was in the Teme! A "power of clergy" at length "laid" his perturbed spirit in the waters Of that river -

" And peaceful ever after slept Old Coles' shade."

Keeping St. Catharine's Day (Nov. 25), or "Cattering," by the young people going round to the houses and asking for apples and beer, using a doggerel rhyme on the occasion, used to be observed at Leigh. The churchwardens of this parish were the chief cause of the abandonment of the claim of "Whitsun farthings," payable to the Dean and Chapter of Worcester from time immemorial. In 1825 a lawsuit between these parties occasioned a bill of expenses which led the capitular body to decide that the collection of the "farthings" was more expensive than profitable.

Old names in the parish:- Luckall's Orchard, Dead Loons,