326 STOCK AND BRADLEY.

servation, dated 1508, in memory of one William Parker and his wives. There are about eighty sittings in the church, of which forty are appropriate and the rest free. There is also a fine yew tree in the churchyard, supposed to be coeval with the church, and well worthy of notice. The Rector supports a Sunday school.

Stock and Bradley.

FORMERLY a chapelry to Fladbury, but now merged into the parish of Bradley, being a rectory, value £270 ; patron, the Bishop ; rector, Rev. J. Home, The Ecclesiastical Commissioners are lords of the manor, and Mr. Vernon, M.P., and successors of the late Rev. C. Turner Farley, are the chief landowners. Population in 1861, 310, employed in glove-sewing and agriculture. Wheat and beans chiefly grown ; acreage, 1,140 ; drainage and cultivation good.

A new church in the Early Decorated style, and containing 204 sittings, all free, was erected here in 1865, by Mr. Hopkins, of Worcester; it cost £1,500, and is a good specimen of what a small village church may be made for so reasonable a sum ; but the rector has still a deficiency of £300 to make good, and requires help and sympathy, not only in this matter, but in the suppression of the Sunday wake. Two ancient sepulchral slabs are preserved, having been discovered during the demolition of the old chapel.