THE MALVERN HILLS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 88, 13 April 1935, Page 6

THE MALVERN HILLS

MR, BALDWIN'S HINT

TWO VULNERABLE POINTS

A HISTOEIC MNGE

Recently Mr. Stanley Baldwin, at the Worcestershire dinner, made two remarks about the Malvern Hills, one of them clear and open as the day, in which he praised them as possessing "the most beautiful silhouette in England," the other obscurer, hinting at a mystery, as the people of Malvern think, which has not yet been disclosed to the eye, by saying that there was some prospect that if sufficient money could be obtained an arrangement might be made which would secure for ever the whole range of. the Malvern Hills from being b,uilt upon. In the course of this reference he mentioned the National Trust and the Pilgrim Trust (says a writer in the • "Manchester Guardian"). THE CONSERVATORS. There is a third body' whose name one would have expected to hear in the course of this reference—that of the Malvern Hills Conservators. In the past fifty years four Acts of Parliament have been passed to give the Conservators power to stop all building and quarrying and encroachment upon the hills, from their most northern point to a point called The Gullet, nearly six miles south. North Hill is 1307 feet high; Swinyard Hill, above The Gullet, is about 780 feet high. Between them, tightly ridged between east and west, runs the main height of the range, with the Worcestershire Beacon, of 1395 feet, over the northern end, and the Herefordshire Beacon, of just over 1000 feet, over the southern. In all this 1500 acres of skyline and hillside there are now only two vulnerable places, the quarries at the north end at The Wyche,'arid at both, the damage has been limited. Elsewhere the range is well protected. The people of Malvern and about it pay a flvepenny rate to.the Conservators for this purpose. The rate brings in £3270 a year. » This protected course of the hills is not their whole course. South of The Gullet they continue, with diminishing summits, a mile and a half further, to Chase End, from whose summit of 626 feet they decline gently into the surrounding undulations. This tail of the mass does not seem to be in any great danger of pillage and devastation. It is out of the ordinary way, beautiful but not conspicuous. Part of it, the twenty-six acres of Midsummer Hill, was given by the Rev. H. L. and Mrs. Somers-Cocks to the National Trust. Much of it is the property of Lord Somers, whose park is on the western side; and there are two quarries upon it, one in The Gullet, the other at Hollybush. It may be that the Pilgrim Trust and the National Trust would like to see this land secured against any harm not evident at present and that in Mr. Baldwin's reference to^the range one should read a special emphasis upon the qualifying word "whole." Or it may be that he hopes the two bodies can. hasten the occasional purchases of land or rights which the Conservators wish to make, particularly on the west side. They already control roadside wastes and strips of commons running as far east as the Severn, and westward several miles also. THE HILLS IN HISTORY. The history of these Malvern Hills is one of repeated litigation. During a quarrel in the' thirteenth century the Bishop of Hereford had a champion ready to fight Gilbert de Clare's champion over possession, but the law stepped in and saw the Earl's Ditch dug above The Gullet. "Chase End" names the end of the royal chase, and Henry VII, when he regained possession of it, gave his foresters power to arrest any felon or murderer and bring him to the chief forester "at the Sweetoaks, and there his head could be struck ofE\with a certain axe and then the dead body shall be carried up to Malvern Hill to a certain place called Baldyatt, there to be hanged upon a gallows." Leland.said the chase was twenty miles long. In 1631 Ctiarles I, harassed by the claims of commoners, divided the chase into thirds, keeping one, which he sold to Sir Cornelius Vermuyden for £5000,. and Vermuyden theii became a trouble to the King, so ; that a declaration had to be made the following year that his share was not to be "all of the best sort of land, but good and bad proportionally, so as the two parts to be left to the county shall be of the like goodness." Also,, out of the Kings third, "where .occasion requireth. there be good and liberal., allowances of ground made ior the. King's ways, to. the end his Majesty's subjects may use. them with' the; more ease and commodity." No new1 cottage was to be built. \/' ';,'■ ", ' v ; : . '■■.'■■ '■• < - SQUATTERS. v 1 •>- :' Before the' 1884 Act, which established the Conservators, there -• 'was much agitation..about the encroachment of squatters upon common, land, who were permitted to stay, particularly by one manor, provided' they acknowledged that the lord •■ of the manor owned the land and that they paid a nominal rent. By paying rent lor a long; enough time the squatters establishedtthe manor's title \6 ownership. The 1884 Act allowed the Con-, servators to levy a halfpenny rate. . The area needed the constant service, of a ranger to watch against encroachr ment, arid in the first year the Con-, servator3 took action of one kind' or.another against about <& . hundred: people. la 1909 another Act. was passed permitting the;levy to ibe, a penny rate over a larger district. Soon after this an increased activity was seen, at the quarries.' ' Koads were being made and motor transport increased the market for the stone. The 1924 Act .was designed to- finance the Conservators better and permit them to borrow so that they.could buy. out. manorial rights which controlled the creation of quarries. They could levy, a rate of 3d, The 1930 Act- 'gave them pow,er to grant easements of land for roads and parking-places and to demand an inquiry for the purpose of levying.a rate of 6d. This they did, but the rate is now sd. ' (fUARRIES BOUGHT. .'Silica .the 1924 Act.was passed, the Conservators have employed1 two rangers constantly, and they have, spent .over £56,000 in.buying out mineral rights and quarries. The-West oj England Quarries, on the west side pi the hills, cost-£24,654. The rights of Little Malvern Quarry cost ,£10,132. The Fbley Manor cost £16,092.. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners sold their ; manorial rights in a large tract for £1035, and closed a quarry for' the ] Conservators., Two quarries were left, working. One, whose lease .Was too expensive to buy, was limited to 22 • acres, below the 900-foot contour line. ' This is the North Quarry. The- other • was on freehold land by The Wyche. : To- prevent it from eating away into i the skyline the Conservators bought one acre on the top, and that acre cost • £900.- The workings oj the quarry, i however, caused a landslide, and the • Conservators eventually. obtained -an ' injunction and £500 damages,l which is '. to be used probably for the purchase •of land on the west side. In eleven years the Conservators have spent £61,000. They have borrowed £55,000

and repaid about £3600. The balance comes from the rate levied, from parking fees, which amount to about £470 a year, from quarry royalties, and from rents.

A good deal has been done to secure the Malvern Hills, and they may deserve more. They are remarkable not only as possessing the shapeliness which persuaded Mr. Baldwin to say they had ''the most beautiful silhouette that exists in England." They have [also about them,'particularly in the southern half and western side, hamlets, houses, hedges, and brooks whose positions and shapes, and habits perhaps, can have changed 'little for hundreds of years, and which thus convey more readily than anything else the perpetuation and steadfastness of English rural life. The perry and cider of Mathon were famous m Camden's time. Dick Whittington, it seems, had land at Rue Green; he could find his arms still in Eldersfield Church, and look without finding much change at the road to Chase End, three miles away. PIERS PLOWMAN. How deep such things go has been shown again within the last few years by Mr. Allan H. Bright, who, searching for the association between the author of the "Vision of Piers Plowman" and i the Malvern Hills, came upon evidence land theories which Professor H. W. I Chambers approved. And the traveller now may, find perhaps that Piece of land which William Langland Ploughed six hundred years ago and the field-lull of folk and the slope "under a brode banke, bi a bornes side," where ne "slombered in a slepying it sweyued so rherye" and from which he woke "meteless and moneless on Maluerne hulles." The "tower on a toft' was the Herefordshire Beacon, the dungeon was the departed castle; .the ,fair field lies between, the water is Pewtress Spring, once the Primeswell; and near to them is the ..Wellington Inn, where once stood-the ale-house from which the people would not come-but sang "Hey- trolly lolly!" ' There upon the land is the background of that wonderful dream, scarcely disturbed in six centuries of life- ' j