VILLAGES ROUND STRATFORD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21180, 29 October 1938, Page 20

VILLAGES ROUND STRATFORD

CHARMING NAMES AND PLACES Every village round Stratford lays claim to some Shakespearian frolic, but frankly, they are pretty enough to get on well without him, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” If he did

steal a deer at Charlescote there are enough left to prove that he did little harm. It was the first time I have even seen so many deer together, and they were a magnificent sight. Just to show what we can do in our time there was a batch of aeroplanes overhead in formation flight. Yet the bucks made no attempt to raise their splendid antlers, nor did the young deer show any timidity. What lovely names these Warwickshires and Cotswold villages have! Hampton Lucy, Chipping Campden, Bidford, Shottery, Welsford, Wilmcote, Henley-in-Arden, Snltterfield and many others whose syllables could be rapped out on a ducimer. Most of them look unconcerned about the passing of time since they wei j first thought of, and all of them are good to look at.

I am wondering If Chippen Campden and Broadway would be insulted if I called them villages, but they are hardly big enough to be classified as towns. They are both Cotswold gems, but of the two Chipping Campden pleased me the more. Its houses are so varied in their loveliness and it is so much unconcerned about its charms.

Tire church is worth a visit if only to see the brasses and the ancient embroidered altar frontals which Westminster Abbey was not too proud to copy for the Coronation. There is one blot in the village. At one end a small row of cottages has been allowed which might have been dragged bodily from the worst of Lancashire’s industrial area. It is a grievous error of taste.

Broadway is prettier, I think, than Chipping Campden, but it is so selfconscious. It spreads itself out to be admired like some lovely spoiled child. I must go there again, for I dare say its prettiness grows upon one.

The lesser-known villages I also hope to meet again. A young actor-artist who lived in a cottage at Shottery came two mornings to Stratford to draw my portrait. Then he had to finish rapidly, for his young wife wanted the drawingboard as she was making pastry. It was a good drawing in the circumstances, and I was glad to meet two such happy Bohemians. Life should be sweet in the early twenties with a cottage at Shottery and a flat in London.