HAMLET WITH A LONG HISTORY
Draw a triangle with the three points at Bengeworth, Badsey and Offenham and almost in the centre you find the hamlet of Aldington nestling at the foot of a small hill.
In area it actually extends much further than one would imagine because its boundaries stretch far over the summit of the hill and across the market garden holdings way down to the Avon. Buts its communal life is centre around the varied collection of dwellings clustered about the old Manor House.
Aldington is a hamlet with a history – and a fate. Its little colony of some 100 souls carry on today a rural activity that was begun by their forefathers many centuries back in history for Aldington was mentioned in the Domesday Book?
A LOSING BATTLE?
But the present day tenants of the hamlet’s trim cottages and age-old dwellings appear to have fought a losing battle. They are proud of Aldington and want to see it grow; they want more houses and a bigger population. But their desire is unfortunately not shared by those who in these days of modern planning create and design from afar. In short the Government guillotine has fallen – Aldington may not expand. Such would be a crime against the principles of good town planning. That is the official view in 1947.
Ironic it is then that peering down from the northern slope of the little hill, eight red and cream bricked Council houses stand sentinel over all that is old and historic in the hamlet. They were built between the two great wars at a time when planning was thought of in different terms and when apparently the gentlemen at Whitehall were of different mind.
SURVIVED FOR CENTURIES
Since the cease-fire sounded in the late summer of ’45, the good men of Aldington have many times met and sent out the pleas for more houses and new, and their cause has been championed by William Butler, their chose representative on the local District Council. But their pleadings have been in vain – the Ministries of the Government do not want the hamlet to grow; instead, prospective tenants must “pitch their tents” in the neighbouring village of Badsey.
What of Aldington? It has survived from the earliest centuries. How much longer? Till its aged dwellings crumble and decay and the residents join their forefathers? As I walked down the narrow main street I pondered somewhat sadly, whether the fate of Aldington and a thousand other hamlets scattered across the countryside, could so ruthlessly be decreed.
My thoughts I felt were shared by the majority of the residents whose families for genearations had been linked with Aldington – old Mr & Mrs James Reeves, who not long ago celebrated 60 happy married years, Miss Heath whose 90th birthday has been left behind. Mr Victor Wasley, whose father before him was proud to be a son of Aldington, and the Bells and the Fields, other very old families.
Besides, Aldington has so much that, like most villages, tells the story of bygone days. An old Manor House, for the past century in the ownership of “Squire” Ashwin of Bretforton, and tenanted by William Butler. Previously there lived there one A H Savory, who farmed 500 acres away to the east and grew hops where now the neighbouring village of Badsey is building houses.
Mr Savory left Aldington early in the present century but he had a deep love for the hamlet which was perpetuated n a minor classic which he wrote round about 1920. Entitled “Grain and Chaff from an English Manor”, it painted a comprehensive picture of the hamlet with reference to the old mill pulled down these last 20 years and which stood by the swift running brook at the rear of the Manor. Its last tenant, I believe, was the present John Sharp, District Councillor of Offenham, whose father milled there before him.
In the vicinity other old buildings once were closely associated with the Manor around which the life of the little community centred. Behind the picturesque houses where Edward Bell and William Stewart now live, was carried on a prosperous cider mill. In another rambling old Georgian house nearby lives another talented resident – C H Gardiner, Clerk to the Evesham District Council, author and broadcaster.
HOPS WERE GROWN
In bygone days hops were grown in Aldington but now its residents till the land to grow vegetables. There are plum orchards, too, where just now growers are discussing the prospects of the coming cop.
The houses around the old Manor are cosmopolitan yet picturesque with jasmines spreading their branches over many a wall; here a thatched roof stretching almost to the ground with alongside a black and white bricked dwelling that appeared in sharp contrast and nearby a typical Cotswold stone dwelling.
The quietitude of Aldington may not remain what it was in days gone by. Like most rural centres the hand of the modern is today in evidence for today it “houses” both a factory and a transport depot.
The sons and daughters of Aldington may remain a small community; they may remain a hamlet without a church, school, hostelry or shop, but they have the knowledge that they have been and today remain a separate civil parish for Local Government administration, the baby of the Evesham rural district. Not unnaturally they have a strong parochial pride with which they resent being told they must become a satellite of a larger neighbour. Today Aldington lives – a hamlet with a history. Tomorrow – who knows? Fate decrees …..
EAC