280 NEWLAND. *

by a little cross-timbered church (now destroyed) the only specimen, with one exception, of such a building in the county. It is now chiefly distinguished for one of the most munificent charitable institutions in this part of the kingdom.

Earl Beauchamp, who died in 1853, left by will £60,000 for the erection and endowment of almshouses. Some difficulties attended the administration, and the matter went before the Court of Chancery, which Court in 1859 sanctioned a scheme for the management of the charity by trustees. The establishment consists of a chaplain, twenty-four or more alms-people, clerk, porter, and matron. The trustees had power to enlarge or rebuild the parish church so as to make it available for the charity; and the parish being without burial ground (their dead being previously buried at the mother church of Malvern) the trustees conveyed for this purpose the site of the old church and a portion of the ground vested in them, the whole to be a burial ground; they also purchased the advowson of the living, so that the incumbent of Newland parish and the chaplain of the alms-houses is now one and the same person. The institution stands on eight acres of land, and forms three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth being open to the south and to a glorious view of the entire Malvern range. A gorgeous church and the parsonage occupy one of the three sides. With the cold winds thus excluded, and the still chillier blasts of poverty - with a noble landscape in front, and the abodes of comfort all around - the house of God with its spire directing the mind to heaven, and the manse, where spiritual advice and consolation may be obtained in the hour of need - all this in one charmed little circle forms in the imagination a retreat so Paradisiacal that the visitor almost wishes his last days might be spent in such scenes as these. Pity 'tis that the new church (which cost £5,000) should have occasioned the destruction of the old one - an humble little structure, but very rare. A colossal stone cross now marks the spot where the chancel stood, and the only relic transferred to the new church is a small circular Norman font,