Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 5, 2024
There are, or were, two lovely old Chippendale chairs with the characteristic backs and legs inside the altar-rails of Badsey Church; they are valuable and no doubt duly appreciated, not only for their own sake, but because they were the gift of dear old Barnard, the clerk, who spent fifty years of his life in the service of the church.
The men of Badsey felt aggrieved, they knew better, and at a meeting he held in the village they gave him a rather noisy hearing, with interruptions such as, "Keep off them steel farks," "Mind them steel farks, Sir Richard," and so on. Sir Richard came to ask for my support and assistance in our village, and, as I was not at home, my wife entertained him in my absence, with tea and wedding-cake.
Our postman, though not a villager, was quite an institution; he walked a matter of ten miles a day from Evesham to Bretforton, taking Aldington and Badsey on the way, and back at night. He filled up the interval between the incoming and outgoing posts at Bretforton, working at his trade as tailor.
The Vicar succeeded quite unexpectedly to a large inheritance; the news reached him and his wife, who was away from home at the time, simultaneously. The letters they wrote to each other on their good fortune crossed in the post, and characteristically each wrote "Badsey Church must now be restored."
Among them a bazaar at Badsey realized £130; another, later, at Aldington in one of my old barns, £80; and two concerts afternoon and evening at Malvern, organized by my wife and her sister, Miss Poulton, £100. The Vicar received a notable letter from the late Lord Salisbury, the Premier; they had been at Eton and Christ Church together, and Lord Salisbury was godfather to the Vicar's eldest son.
I saw a good deal of my three successive Vicars, for I was Vicar's churchwarden for a period of nearly twenty years, and was treasurer of the fund for the restoration and enlargement of Badsey Church.
I had the constant and intimate co-operation of my co-warden, Mr. Julius Sladden, of Badsey, and I may say that no two people ever worked together with greater harmony.
As the neighbouring parish of Wickhamford is referred to in connection with Badsey and Aldington several times in these pages, it may not be out of place to give the following inscription on the tombstone of a member of the Washington family.
An old man told me that, in walking by the brook-side footpath from Aldington to Badsey, he once encountered one of these armies; they looked so threatening and were in such numbers, that he had to turn aside to allow them to pass, as they showed no signs of giving way for him.
I notice in the local papers that in spite of the interruption of the war they are now again thriving and earning new laurels. Our most important fête day was that upon which the Badsey, Aldington, and Wickhamford Flower Show was held.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking