Tuesday May 22 2012
History Archive
Village History
The bishop’s park
Posted on September 13 2010 at 2:52:12 0 comments
It’s nearly 900 years since the Bishop of Worcester fenced off an area that became known as Alvechurch Park, write Rachel Hayes and Dorothy Snaddon.
When the Bishop of Worcester built his hunting lodge – known as the Bishop’s Palace – at Alvechurch in the middle of the 12th century, he fenced off an area between Alvechurch and Rowney Green to keep fallow deer.
It became known as Alvechurch (Allchurch) Park. The area was surveyed in 1701 and this map, which is held in Worcestershire County Records Office, measures nearly six feet by three feet.
To prevent the deer from escaping, the park was enclosed by a deep ditch, the soil being thrown up to form an outside bank topped by a stout wooden fence or paling – marked on the map opposite running past Alvechurch Lodge and up to Lodge Farm.
The park was extended south in the 13th century and the deep ditch and bank which runs through the middle of Peck Wood dates from this time.
After Michael Aston, of TV’s Time Team, investigated the moat and fishpond complex at the Bishop’s Palace, his work was continued between 1969 and 1974 by James Bond, who was then archaeological officer with the Worcestershire County Museum Service.
At this time he was unaware of the 1701 map, but he made a plan of the park which shows its relation to the present roads. More remnants of the bank are still visible along the hedgerows of Rowney Green Lane, and along the end of some back gardens in Alvechurch and Rowney Green. A large number of veteran trees also indicate the position of the paling. A good view all across the park can be seen from the public footpaths near to Alvechurch Lodge Farm. This was probably the homestead of the park manager, called a “parker”. (Is this the origin of the term “nosey parker”?)
The field boundaries were undisturbed until late in the last century. Where fields have been “enlarged”, the line of an eradicated hedge can often be detected by remaining isolated trees.
The Alvechurch bypass now follows the line of a former long hedge from the point where it crosses Radford Road to the leat supplying water to the moat. The leat diverts some of the flow of water from the Pessle Brook near the corner of Radford Road and Rowney Green Lane and carries it to the moat.
The engineers constructed the bypass so that the flow of water to the moat continues as before, however the excavated soil which was not needed for landscaping the verges of the road was deposited on the larger of the two fields marked Poole Meadow.
In correspondence in 1994, James Bond had “no doubt that Alvechurch Park was more than just a live larder for deer; the presence of a major residence and a spectacularly-engineered set of moats and fishponds within it both point to a strong element of deliberate design for recreational and aesthetic motives.”
He wrote that “Alvechurch, with its palace, fishponds, gardens and deer park, would provide another very good example of the recently-recognised concept of mediaeval ‘aesthetically-modified landscapes’.”
Today the hillside is shown in the Bromsgrove District Plan as being within a Landscape Protection Area and in the County Structure Plan as being within an Area of Great Landscape Value.
What Villagers have been saying about this story . . . most recent comments first
HAVE YOUR SAY . . .
What do you think? Share your views by typing in the box below.