Pershore
Pershore is a lovely old-fashioned town on the Avon in Worcestershire. The excuse for its inclusion on the site is that the drover David Jonathan passed through it many times on his way to Banbury and Northampton. Here is one example in his account book of 1860 – the date's a guess – where he spells the town as “Parsia” (#1); but the subsequent spellings are almost as bad.
The only one we found hard was “Logh”, the item above Banbury. Then my clever partner found “Lodge Farm” (SP 373351) and of course it all made sense. It used to be called “Hook Norton Lodge” and was for use by Welsh drovers “in the summertime”. There are fields and a pond behind the house. (So why just in the summertime?) It also has a spurious relationship with Dick Turpin…
Back to Pershore.
I suppose the most famous building is The Abbey, but we couldn’t go round it properly because it was a Saturday – Wedding Day! One w. was in full swing, but another two were coming up so we had to make do with The Angel (#2), the famous inn on the High St. The “posting house” next to the Angel was there to show that post horses (used to carry mail) were stabled there. (The original mail system was set up in the 16th Century and used by Royalty; then Charles 1 introduced its use for the general public in 1635. At first, the receiver of the mail had to pay for its cost, not the sender.)
Now to the bridge (#3). Probably built in the late 15th century, the central arch was enlarged when the Avon was made navigable from Tewkesbury to Stratford in around 1640. It’s a gem. And if you walk the other side of the modern bridge, next to the old one and built in 1936, you’ll see acres of grazing land (probably not for drovers!) with the Abbey in the distance to the north (#4).
Finally, there’s the inevitable tollhouse the town-side of the bridge (#5).
Finally, finally, I repeat: it’s an utterly lovely town, famous for its plums! Go there, do.
