Noake's Worcestershire Page 267

MALVERN. 267

principal landowners are Earl Beauchamp, 'Squire Hornyold, and Mr. Oliver Mason. Mr. Berington owns nearly all the parish of Little Malvern. The crops around the hills consist of wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, hops, fruit, grass land, &c. In Great Malvern there is an acreage of 6,245. The living is worth but £300; Rev. G. Fisk vicar; Lady Foley patron. The incumbents of the other churches are : Trinity, Revs. P. C. M. Hoskin and H. L. Harkness; The Link, E. A. Davies; Little Malvern, T. King; The Wells, F. Hopkinson; West Malvern, E. C. Freeman; Cowleigh, F. Peel; Guarlford, (Barnard's Green), Rev. J. B. Wathen.

Would some of my readers like to be acquainted with the origin of this famous settlement of Malvern? Many proofs exist of the early occupation of the place by Druids and Britons, in the name of the hills, the roads in its neighbourhood, the very perfect encampment on the Herefordshire Beacon, the discovery of a gold coronet many years ago, &c. Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans - wave after wave followed, each leaving a few "footprints on the sands of time." But it is to the monks we are indebted for the first known settled habitation here. St. Werstan, driven by the Danes from the monastery of Deerhurst, fled to Malvern, at that time surrounded by a dense wood, and established a small religious house on the east side of the hill, not far from the present St. Ann's Well. There he suffered martyrdom; but the work which he had begun was followed up by Aldwin and some other monks from Worcester, whose monastery, then overflowing, was compelled to colonise. This was about the year 1083. A grand Norman church was built here, portions of which remain in the present structure; the rest is chiefly Perpendicular work. Nothing is gone of the old Priory Church but the south transept and the Lady chapel. The reason of this is that at the Dissolution the parishioners bought the building for £200 (worth £3,000 now, and a very large sum for so small a place as Malvern then was), and their old parish church, which stood at the north-west angle of the churchyard,