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The Malvern concert was a strenuous undertaking; Badsey being a long way from Malvern, it was necessary to interest the inhabitants and to some extent to plead in forma pauperis, for we were really a poor parish without any large resident landowners.
At Badsey objections were soon heard to the innovation of the surpliced choir and improved music in the restored church; one old villager, living close by, expressed himself as follows concerning the entry of the Vicar and choir, in procession, from the new vestry: "They come in with them boys all dressed up like a lot of little parsons, and the parson behind 'em just like the old Pope hisself.
Those splendid asparagus "sticks" or "buds," as they are called, tied with osier or withy twigs, which may be seen in Covent Garden Market and the large fruiterers' shops in Regent Street, are grown in and around the parishes of Badsey and Aldington.
An old house at Badsey, once a hospitium or sanatorium for sick monks from Evesham Abbey in pre-Reformation days, was reported to be haunted, and people told tales of "the old fellows rattling about again" of a night.
One evening, after service, when some strangers from Evesham attended for Badsey was a pleasant walk on a summer evening the clerk announced to the Vicar, with great jubilation, that "the gentleman with the party from Evesham expressed himself as very well satisfied with the service." No doubt the clerk had received a practical proof of the satisfaction.
The Vicar of Badsey told me that at the neighbouring church of Wickhamford, then also in his jurisdiction, that when he first came, in the early fifties, it was customary, as the men entered the church by the chancel door, to pitch their hats in a heap on the altar.
There was no vestry before the restoration of Badsey Church; the Vicar's surplice might be seen hanging over the side of one of the square pews which obstructed the chancel, and when the Vicar appeared he was followed by the clerk, who assisted at the public ceremony of robing.
Our old parish clerk too, at the time over eighty years of age, who walked three miles to Evesham Station in the morning, ascended the Worcestershire Beacon nearly 1,500 feet and finally walked back from Evesham to Badsey at night, was much struck by the recitations of Miss Isabel Bateman at the concert.
Richard Hoby, youngest brother of Sir Philip, as churchwarden in 1602, and a monument, much dilapidated, is to be seen in the chancel of Badsey Church, erected to the memory of his wife and that of her first husband by Margaret Newman, their daughter, who married Richard Delabere of Southam, Warwickshire, in 1608.
The Show is held as nearly as possible on the day of the ancient Badsey wake, in most parishes still celebrated on the day of the patron saint. As a wake Badsey's observance is a thing of the past; it was formerly a time of much cider-drinking, a meeting-day for friends and relations, and for various trials of strength and skill, though I believe the carousals outlasted the sports by many years.
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