8 Chapel Street

Present-day address: Vine Cottage, 8 Chapel Street, Badsey

It is believed that Vine Cottage began its life in Evesham and was then transported to Badsey in the 1850s and reconstructed next to Rose Cottage. The reason for believing this is because of an article in The Evesham Journal in 1955 which records that the late Arthur Jones (1863-1950), a responsible antiquary who lived at The Stone House, Badsey, had written twenty years previously to E A B Barnard, an expert on Vale of Evesham history, saying: “My father told me many years ago that Muzio Clementi [the composer] died in a cottage opposite The Elm, where is now the shrubbery belonging to Prospect House. This cottage was afterwards sold to be demolished as being unsightly, and was bought by Mr Robert Knight, of Badsey, who took it down, rebuilt it at Badsey, and lived in it …. ” The article then goes on to say: “Vine Cottage, Chapel Street, Badsey, is distinguished externally from its attached neighbours by a more steeply pitched roof, bricks of odd shapes and sizes, and two windows which cannot be opened. Internally, there are several structural oddities: like the dissatisfied divorcée, it is ‘all mixed up inside’; walls do not square, and the old oak beams show meaningless mortices. On the parlour wall hangs a well-used fiddle. It belongs to Mr Bertram Jones.”

Photographer: Mark Morrey, May 2008