Down Your Way

Pretty village that had to go flat out

Planners pitched in with orders over Bosbury’s new shop says Ross Reyburn

Flat roofs are a rain-gathering menace and they look awful, but planners have forced the Herefordshire village of Bosbury to have a flat roof on the new village post office.
Although 1960s architecture is hardly worth getting excited about Malvern Hills District Council has ordained the new post office must match the parish hall it is being added to. What makes the whole episode even more bizarre is the hall built in the 1960s has a low pitched roof itself “
    I can’t understand it” says village builder Michael Jones who, working with his son Douglas, has nearly completed the project “Over £2,000-worth of felt has gone on this flat roof and they give you a ten-year guarantee.
    “It could cost £3,000 to replace. There’s just no benefit”
    Born in Oak Cottage, just across the road from where he is working, he later lived on the parish hall site – his father Jack was caretaker of the old parish hall housed in the former village vicarage.
    “It was the best parish hall round this area,” he recalls. “It had Georgian sash windows and a fantastic oak floor. It should never have been knocked down. The only thing wrong with it was the guttering had a slight leak”
    Its demolition broke up a large bees’ nest lodged within its stone walls.
    “The honey was running down the drive” he recalls “The village went black with bees – the digger driver was running over that field over there”
    In an era when villages are losing their post offices what is happening in Bosbury is a welcome reversal of current trends. The £50,000 project is being funded mainly by European money through the Southern Marches Partnership. The 10,000 red bricks laid include a rear extension to the parish hall that will give the Bosbury Players a 200-seat theatre space and room for a new stage if their Lottery application succeeds.
    “About two years ago the postmaster Ray Orton retired and didn’t want to leave the village so we were without premises” says parish councillor Brian Clutterbuck, a retired landscape surveyor whose projects included Redditch New Town.
    “We got criticised over the design of the post office. Unfortunately it is in a Conservation Area and the local planning authority are anxious good or bad architecture from each period is preserved We had to build a flat-roof extension”
    Bosbury has an attractive village centre. A long line of period buildings decorate its main street while opposite the picturesque Church of the Holy Trinity with its separate 13th century tower offers an attractive landmark next to the parish hall site.
    Its many old buildings include two picturesque black and white cottages at 1 & 2 The Cross belonging to the Bosbury Education Foundation, providing homes for young village couples, The Bell Inn run by Liverpudlian landlord Eddie Kerr and the Old Grammar School at the rear of the churchyard. And its main street also has a mock-Tudor house curiously named The Village and even Michael Jones knows not why.
    A superb leaflet with line drawings by Nigel Wass offers an interesting guide to the church, highlighting main features such as The Morton Chapel –- an attractive chantry chapel endowed by Sir Rowland Morton in 1528 after the death of his wife – and the Renaissance-style Harford Memorials.
    “It is a happy village” says the Vicar of Bosbury, Mrs Sue Strutt, a former youth worker who came to the village in October 1996.
    “People pull together. For instance my son had a road accident quite late the other night but as soon as the pub heard about it, several people were up there helping”
    As well as its pleasant cricket field, Bosbury has a football pitch in a farmer’s field beyond what used to be the village pound. Behind the parish hall there is the old institute building where the youth club meets, and also bowls, badminton and tennis facilities.
    Near the bridge over the little River Leadon is the bakery business run by Michael Howe. Outside the village, striking period farmhouses dating from medieval to Georgian decorate a landscape that remains hop-growing country. You don’t have to look far to spot hop poles or old hop kilns.
    Thomas Hawkins, Europe&rsdquo;s largest independent hop-grower, has his main farm in the parish around his Georgian farmhouse called The Farm.
    At Temple Court Farm, Gerald Blandford lives in a Georgian farmhouse on the site of a refectory built by the Knights Templar.
    His 150 acres of farmland include his herd of pedigree Hereford cattle, 50 acres of cider fruit, including a new 12-acre orchard of bush cider fruit eventually destined for cider makers H P Bulmer.
    The current upbeat mood of the village is reflected in the success of the village primary school, Bosbury Voluntary Controlled School.
    Handily located down a cul-de-sac by the village cricket ground, the school, run by Mrs Mary Sutton, has grown rapidly helped by housing developments in the nearby town of Ludlow [Ledbury?] and also village school closures elsewhere.
    “Three or four years ago there were only 40 children there” says Mrs Strutt. “Now there are 100.
    It is an attractive school and the head teacher works very hard.”
    At the moment Bosbury may well have the only “High Street” in the country without a shop.
    Locals were amused the district council grandly listed projects that include putting overhead telephone lines underground as “High Street Improvements, Bosbury”

Retaining an old chair craft

Bosbury has retained an interesting link to the Arts and Crafts Movement. At the end of the last century local chair bodger Philip Clissett was adopted by the movement.
    “He made country chairs in a country way from local materials” says Brian Clutterbuck, pictured with one of his Clissett chairs outside the house where the craftsman lived and worked.