THE SPELL OF ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE HEART OF ENGLAND T takes some little calculation to decide just where is the heart of England. But certain persons with mathematical temperaments have located the exact centre of England, and that topographical centre may well be accepted as the heart. The nearest comfortable large town to this heart of England, where stands a noble oak tree on the road just outside the town, is Leamington. And Leamington, besides being a comfortable and clean town in which to stay, is a splendid centre for the attractions of the surrounding country. It is very near Warwick, Kenilworth, and Stratford, and dozens of other fascinating spots well worth visiting. Leamington was at first just a small town known as Leamington Priors, being a dependency of the Priory of Kenilworth. In "Dombey and Son" it is recorded that Mr. Dombey stopped at the Royal Hotel. Are we justified in identifying this as the Regent? Possibly; but Leamington has another most attractive hotel, with a famous garden - the Manor House. I should never feel that I had quite seen Leamington without tea in the garden of the Manor. Leamington itself is now simply a modern town, with pleasant streets and a good parish church. Also, it has a noble park in which bands and illuminations render the summer evenings more sportive to those who enjoy such things, and its Pump Room and gardens are peaceful precincts by day. Like all uneventful places, however, Leamington is a fine place to get away from, and this one proceeds to do, day by day, visiting some new shrine on every occasion, and returning every night to comfortable sleep in a modern and civilized house. This is an ideal method of exploiting a neighbourhood so replete with interest as the heart of England, and we have done it several times. In the churchyard of the Parish church lies the shoemaker-poet, Richard Satchwell, of local fame. On the tombstone may be seen this temperate epitaph: ... Hail the unassuming tomb Of him who told where health and beauty bloomed; Driving is delightful and inexpensive in Warwickshire, and one can go through so many picturesque towns in this way that it is one of the best methods of combining physical rest with mental activity. Little Ufton Church is attractive, and there is a round stone wind-mill on a hill near Harbury which is almost exactly like the mysterious round tower at Newport, Rhode Island. This latter was very likely an adaptation of some English mill remembered by the early settlers. Then Whitnash, Offchurch, Radford, Cubbington, Lillington - all are within easy reach, and all are worth seeing. One drives through five or six such towns in a single afternoon. In Offchurch cemetery there is an eccentric decoration in the shape of an ivy plant trained to look like an elephant. It is quite weird to see the flexible green trunk waving in the breeze. It is a curious sepulchral monument. At Lillington there is a tombstone to one William Treen, in 1810, with the inscription: "I poorly lived and poorly died, Was poorly buried, and no one cried." The gentleman in question was a miser, who had secretly amassed quite a sum, and who wrote his own epitaph before the town suffered the shock of discovering that he was a rich man! Quite a grim little joke on his neighbours. The curfew is still tolled at Offchurch at eight o'clock. These villages are all either of beam and brick or of beam and plaster construction, and, with their thatched roofs, are extremely effective pictorially. A good deal of one's drive in this region will be on the Roman fosse road. One is likely also to pass the big tree which has the distinction of standing in the exact centre of England. It is an oak, and therefore an appropriate heart of the empire. The walk from Leamington to Guy's Cliff, through fields and lanes, is like living in the midst of a picture by Constable. Horses standing in little pools under big oak trees; breezy paths through waving grain; it is full of the delight of rural England. The old mill at Guy's Cliff is picturesque, and the legend of Guy himself full of charm. Guy of Warwick was only a cup-bearer to the Earl, but he loved the Earl's daughter, and ventured to ask for her hand. She refused him |