Much Marcle is a fascinating village that lies within the old borderlands between England and Wales, it's name quite literally meaning “big border field”. Within Herefordshire, yet close to Worcestershire and the Malvern Hills, while the Welsh border is a 30 minute drive away.
With so much talk of borders it might be fair to muse that Much Marcle could qualify as a “liminal space”, a place between borders where strange things are more likely to happen...we shall see.
The main landmark in any English village is it's church, with Much Marcle being no exception, but before entering it is impossible to miss the collosal yew tree that sprawls by the south door. This is one of the biggest and oldest in Britain, conservatively estimated to be around 1400 years old, with it's hollow trunk being so wide as to actually contain a set of benches inside. It's girth was last measured at 32 feet, and after six tons of dead wood was removed in 2006 it's almost certain that this giant will live on for a good few centuries more.
Dedicated to St Bartholemew the Apostle, the church itself dates back to the 1200s and retains much of its medieval architecture. One of the first things worth noticing is a grinning green man on a column that faces the yew tree outside. I'm not sure if this was done by design but it's a nice connection, intended or not. Behind him lies the most valuable jewel in the crown of memorials here at St Barts, a medieval wooden effigy of one Walter de Helyon. Yes, wooden. Brightly painted and varnished, the effigy is very striking to the eye and gives us a real window into the past regarding just how people dressed and groomed themselves in Walter's day.
He lies calmly staring up at the ceiling, clad in a brown hooded jerkin, wool stockings and pointed leather boots, a "ballock" dagger on his belt. His shoulder length brown hair and substantial beard could place him at any time in history, but Walter died around 1350. He was a landed nobleman and the owner of Hellens Hall just across the road from the church, which we shall visit presently. An unidentified animal lies under his feet, possibly a lamb.
This stunning effigy was restored in 1971, with paint colours and compounds carefully chosen to match what was already there and any dents and missing sections carefully filled. Poor Walter became the central figure in a strange local tradition starting from around the early 1700s, which involved the wooden statue being lifted up and out of the church to be carried at the head of any funeral taking place at St Bartholemews. I'm not sure why this was done, whether it was an echo of much earlier rites such as Rogationtide or Rush Bearing, or even a reconstruction of a “druidic” ceremony theorised by some Georgian era antiquarian, but in case the carrying of Walter de Helyon became a folk tradition specific to Much Marcle and a fascinating if mysterious part of it's heritage.
Elsewhere in the church we have more effigies, ranging from the incredibly detailed sculpture of Lady Blanche Mortimer to the equally impressive depictions in alabaster of Sir John Kyrle and his wife Sybil. Lady Blanche was a daughter of Joan de Geneville and Roger Mortimer, the infamous rebel against Edward II during the Despencer War who actually ruled England for almost two years as regent for Edward III. Her dress and wimple are beautifully sculpted, with every bead of her rosary looking like new. Sir John Kyrle, not to be confused with the same-named “Man of Ross”, was a baronet who lived at what is now Homme House, a grand 16th century mansion that stands near the church. His and his wife's effigies are incredibly detailed and feature a pair of bizarre heraldic devices at both their sets of feet. Lady Kyrle has a curled bear claw rising from her feet, the symbol of her Scudamore maiden family, while resting by Sir John's boots is...a hedgehog.
Heading out of the church and across the main street of Much Marcle a very long driveway beckons. This is the path to Hellens Manor, or simply “Hellens” as most locals refer to it. This manor house actually began as an Anglo-Saxon hall owned by none other than Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king. What we have today began to take shape during the 1300s when the aforementioned Roger Mortimer's sister Isolde had a fortified house built for her family, where Mortimer and Queen Isabella stayed for some time during their rebellion against Edward. Far from the family being condemned for this treason when the young Edward III came of age and took control of England, Isolde's widower Hugh Audley married the widow of Edward II's hated confidante and possible lover Piers Gaveston in 1337.
When Hugh died Hellens Manor was bequeathed to his nephew Sir James Audley. He became close friends with Edward junior – the future “Black Prince” - and had a stone fireplace built at Hellens with the three feathers of the Prince of Wales carved prominently into it. The history here becomes rather confusing as there were at least three aristocratic James Audleys living around this period, with one or two usually reliable sources falling foul of this uncertainty.
The Audley's steward Walter de Helyon, our wooden man from the church, took full control of the Hall when Sir James leased it to him while away fighting in France then his grand-son bought the lordship, officially naming it after his grandfather. Hellens stayed in the hands of the Walwyn family until 1930 when it was sold to a relative of Queen Victoria who then bequeathed it to the Munthe family who have owned it ever since.
A timeline of aristocratic ownership then, and surely there are some tales to tell of those knights and lords who made Hellens their home? Oh yes there are!
A considerable roster of ghosts and phantoms allegedly roam the rooms and corridors, beginning with the spectre of a priest who was battered to death by Parliamentarian soldiers during the Civil War. The Walwyns were recuscant Catholics, keeping a resident priest secreted within their house, but when the Roundheads made their way across Herefordshire after their victory at the Battle of Worcester they went renegade at Hellens. His “priest hole” was useless, he was chased around the hallways until being cornered in a bedroom where he died in a hail of club and musket butt strikes. His ghost has been encountered in the bedrooms, sometimes mistaken for a flesh and blood person wandering the hall in a confused state.
Staying with the Civil War, and the reason Hellens was left undefended was because of the mysterious absence of Fulke Walwyn, the hall owner at that time. When he heard that Charles junior had arrived at Worcester he prepared for battle, riding forth through the rear gates. The staff were instructed to close and lock those gates, never to open them again until his return. He never came back, and the gates have remained locked, exactly as they were in 1651.
Fulke Walwyn's granddaughter Hetty fell in love with a worker on the Hellens estates and, while her family probably knew all about the affair, they utterly refused to accept the pair as a couple. Hetty and the unnamed man eloped but they didn't get far, either through the match not being as perfect as she had hoped or the simple reality of them being paupers, in any case she returned to Hellens a couple of weeks later. Far from being welcomed back with open arms, Hetty was bundled into an upstairs bedroom and confined there under lock and key...for the rest of her life. Evidence of her pitiful life in that room is still visible today, she scratched a moving message into the glass of her window that read -
“It is part of virtue to abstain from what we love if it shall prove our bane.”
Hetty's ghost is also said to inhabit the room, with the bed sometimes being seen visibly squashed down.
Hellens boasts a modern stone circle in a meadow behind the house, its menhirs made from Welsh slate and engraved with quotes by the Argentinian poet Pablo Neruda. Not only that, but the pond nearby was the location where a bomb was dropped by a German aircraft during the Second World War.
A ridge is visible around 3 miles from Much Marcle which was the site of a bizarre natural disaster in 1575. “The Wonder” saw a colossal landslide occur, so powerful that trees were dragged up by their roots and cattle displaced, basically moving an entire field from one place to another over the course of three days! Little is visible of this phenomenon now, as with the two castles that also once stood in Much Marcle.
A dark cloud still casts its shadow over the history of Much Marcle, it is not something the local people would wish to talk about and I therefore do not recommend bringing it up in conversation. However, there is no escaping the fact that Fred West, probably Britain's worst ever serial killer, was born and bred in a cottage here. He spent most of the first 20 years of his life around the village, showing signs of what was to come when he assaulted girls at dances in nearby Ledbury then stood trial at Hereford on charges of molesting his own sister. He buried the remains of Rena Costello, Anne McFall and the latter's unborn child in fields adjacent to Much Marcle, demonstrating his knowledge of farms by interring Rena directly under a gate where the traffic of the passing cattle would be greatest and the disturbed ground not be apparent.
Moving to lighter themes then and if there's one industry that springs to mind when discussing Much Marcle then it has to be cider. The sprawling orchards and fermentation plant of Henry Westons lie directly across the road from the village, their brand names of “Vintage” and “Stowford Press” instantly recognisable to cider lovers up and down the country. Smaller craft cider is produced at Much Marcle too, notably at Hellens itself, Greg's Pit and Awnell's Farm. A “Big Apple” cider festival is held annually in the village around the beginning of October, so watch out for it this year.
Westons is the venue for the annual “Wassail”, usually held on the Saturday nearest to the date of the Epiphany. This ancient tradition has its roots in Anglo-Saxon paganism with the word wassail deriving from waes hal in Old English, while its early presence is suggested by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his retelling of the story of Rowena, daughter of Vortigern the king of the Britons. It is a lengthy ceremony played out after dark ostensibly to ensure a good apple harvest for the year, although it seems to me to be a revival of an old Twelfth Night custom observed around the area during the early 1800s to ensure general good fortune across the farm.
The Silurian Border Morris Side lead the proceedings, with their leader presiding as master of ceremonies. After a humorous welcome speech the Morris men lead the crowds in a torchlit procession towards the orchards, where a circle is formed around the very oldest apple tree. A Wassailing song is sung, cider is drunk, shotguns are occasionally fired, and offerings are made to the “Apple Tree Man”, a personification of the natural spirit of the orchards. What do they sacrifice? Toast! Slices are tied around the tree's trunk and impaled on it's branches, in return for the harvest obtained from the orchard. The torches, chanting and sense of being part of something bigger than oneself makes this an occasion I would recommend to anyone able to get to Much Marcle in January.
Much Marcle is something special, an idyllic English village with so much history, folklore, tradition and plain weirdness concentrated within its fields and paths that it lives up to one interpretation of its name. The Great Borderlands, a liminal space perhaps but not in the strict sense...this may be a strange place but it isn't empty, it is lived in and this is why the village lives too. A threshold for some, simply home for others. If the Midlands is a crown placed down in the centre of England, Much Marcle is its strange jewel.
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