Even the Matting Factory is tucked away out of sight. So is the church. You can see its tower everywhere but you have to look through an arch under a house in the High Street to glimpse the porch and lime-shaded churchyard.The church has a fine painted Royal Arms, a huge parish chest with three padlocks, some Norman work and much later work and much too much late-Victorian work.
Highworth is on the border of the West Country and the Midlands, and to me it is the centre of some of the loveliest country round its feet—Coleshill House in Berkshire, that four-square masterpiece of stone built in Charles II’s reign with its lantern and moulded chimneys rising mightily from surrounding elms; Great Coxwell barn, the oldest and grandest tithe barn in Britain, beating, in my opinion, those at Abbotsbury in Dorset and Harmondsworth in Middlesex; Inglesham church down by the Thames, the church which William Morris saved from so-called restoration—there it is, clear glass, box pews, old screens and wall paintings, a stoney, lichen-crusted country church among the whispering grasses. These are some of the sights of the country round Highworth. Countless unknown lanes lead up the hill to Highworth.
When I am abroad and want to recall a typically English town, I think of Highworth. It is the sort of town read about in novels from Cranford to Miss MacNaughten. Ah, Highworth as a whole! Churches and chapels, doctors’ houses, Vicarage, walled gardens with pears and plums, railway station, inns and distant cemetery, old shops and winding streets. We walked down one of those narrow lanes, between garden walls, that lead under archways into the High Street. (The only way to see a town is to go down every alley and see the backs of the houses.) Ivy-leaved toadflax with its little purple flowers hung over the stone, an uneven line of stone-tiled roofs and slate roofs, stone and brick chimney stacks, leaded windows under eaves, all these formed a base for the church tower. There was a sound of tea being cleared away in a cottage just near us. And suddenly with a burst the bells of Highworth church rang out for Evening Service. As though called by the bells, the late sun burst out and bathed the varied roofs with gold and scooped itself into the uneven panes of old windows. Sun and stone and old brick and garden flowers and church bells. That was Sunday evening in Highworth.That was England.
1 The following pieces were written for the wireless and were performed on the Western Region, the happiest of all broadcasting places. They were written to read aloud, a sort of prose lyric to convey the picture and atmosphere of a place. They passed the test of Mr. Rupert Annand their producer, who altered with unerring ear the awkward-sounding sentences.
INDEX
Index
A
Aberdeen, Scottish architecture and classic architects, 1;
granite, 1;
three periods of architecture, 1
Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts, 1, 2
Adam brothers, The, 1
Adam, Robert, 1
Aidé, Hamilton, 1
Albert, Prince, 1;
Memorial, 1, 2, 3
Aldersgate Station, 1
Alexandra Palace Exhibition, 1873, 1
Allingham, William, 1
All Saints’ Church, Basingstoke, 1;
Margaret Street, London, 1, 2;
Notting Hill, 1;
Tooting, 1
Alum Bay, Isle of Wight, 1
Annand, Rupert, 1 n.
Architecture, Scottish and classic architects 1;
author’s preference for first quarter of 19th century, 1;
antiquarian prejudice and domestic, 1, 2;
ecclesiastical, 1;
monumental, 1, 2;
planning, 1, 2;
U.S.S.R., 1;
jazz modern reaction, 1;
champions of antiquity, experts, 1;
research worker, 1;
authority given to antiquarian research, 1;
position of modern architect, 1;
entertainment buildings, impermanence of, 1, 2;
“battle of the styles,” 1, 2, 3, 4;
Georgian, 1, 2, 3;
comparison between domestic of 18th and 19th centuries, 1;
classic survival, 1, 2;
Gothic revival, 1, 2, 3;
“hards,” 1, 2;
Ruskinian Gothic, 1;
see also Boggleton, Nonconformist and Victorian
Art Nouveau movement, 1 & n., 2, 3
Arts and Crafts, see Morris Movement
Ashbee, 1
Ashmolean, Oxford, 1
Assembly Rooms, Cheltenham, 1
Assize Courts, Manchester, 1
B
Bailey’s New Hand–Book for Cheltenham, 1 & n.
Baillie Scott, H., 1, 2, 3, 4
Baker Street Station, 1
Balliol College, Oxford, 1
Balmoral, 1
Bank of England, 1
Baptist chapel architecture, 1, 2, 3
Barlow, P. W., 1, 2
Barry, Sir Charles, 1, 2, 3
Barry, Edward Middleton, 1, 2
Battersea Power Station, 1
Bedford Park Garden Suburb, Hostelry, 1;
Shaw’s church at, 1
Belgelley Chapel, Pembrokeshire, 1
Bentley, J. F., 1, 2
Billings, T., 1
Bishopstone, 1
Blacking, R., 1
Blackwall Station, 1
Blaenconin Chapel, Wales, 1
Blisland village, 1;
St. Protus and St. Hyacinth, 1
Blockley Chapel, Gloucestershire, 1
Blomfield, Sir Reginald, 1, 2
Bodleian, New, Oxford, 1
Bodley, G. F., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Bodmin Moor, 1
Boggleton, architecture of (1837), 1;
(1867), 1;
(1907), 1;
reaction from machines, 1;
Morris Movement, 1;
(1937), 1
Bournemouth,layoutandlarger villas, 1;
churches, 1, 2, 3, 4
Bradfield Church, Berks, 1
Bradshaw’s Railway Companion for 1841 1
Brandon brothers, The, 1, 2
Brandon, Raphael, 1, 2
Bricklayers’ Arms Station, 1
Brisbane Cathedral, 1
Bristol Cathedral Restoration, 1
B.B.C. Western Region, 1 n.
Broad Street Station, 1
Broad Town Chapel, Wilts, 1
Brodrick, Cuthbert, 1, 2, 3
Brooks, James, 1, 2, 3
Brown, “Capability,” 1
Brown, T. E., 1
Brunel, 1
Burges, William, 1, 2, 3, 4
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 1
Butler and Sons of Leeds, 1
Butterfield, William, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
C
Caius College, Cambridge, 1
Camden Society, 1
Campbell, Colin, 1
Cannon Street Station, 1, 2, 3
Cardiff Castle, Burges’ drawings for, 1
Carlisle Cathedral, 1
Caröe, 1
Carpenter, R. C. and R. H., 1, 2
Carrington, N. T., My Native Village, 1 & n.
Castletown, Isle of Man, 1
Castle Mona Hotel, Isle of Man, 1
Catholic Apostolic Church, Gordon Square, 1, 2, 3, 4;
Paddington, 1, 2
Chambers, Sir W., 1
Champneys, Basil, 1
Charing
