Noake's Worcestershire Page 63

BRETFORTON AND BADSEY. 63

principal employment of the parishioners is agriculture, and the labourers generally have allotments, which furnish them with partial employment and maintenance. Some of the women are partly employed in gloving. Many of the farms in the neighbourhood are occupied by their owners.

Badsey, with its hamlet of Aldington, has an acreage of 1,145, and a population of 546. There were thirty families in the time of Elizabeth. The Rev. T. H. Hunt is the perpetual curate, and the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, are patrons. Value of the living, £228; church accommodation, 209; free, 153. The church, dedicated to St. James, was, in the olden time, served by one of the monks of Evesham Abbey ; and in this village, it is said, was an infirmary for the retirement of sick monks - a class of men always judicious in their selection of locality. If the mediaeval masons who carved the gargoyles on the church tower had in view at the time the portraits of these sick monks they could not have succeeded better, the heads being represented as in that state usually experienced by persons when they first go to sea. The church, which has a chancel, nave, north chapel, and western tower, presents Early English and Perpendicular work, with Norman doorway. In the village are substantial old stone houses, with gables and mullioned windows. There are Sunday and day schools, and the Wesleyans have for some years obtained a settlement in the parish - the fruit of former inefficiency in the Church. It is a fact which we churchmen cannot deny, that many of our rural parishes would have relapsed into heathenism ere this had it not been for the efforts of Dissenters.