Bredon Hill - Literature and The Arts

Literature and The Arts

Bredon Hill features in the works of a multitude of composers, poets, writers and artists. This pantheon includes the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir Arthur Somervell, Ivor Gurney, George Butterworth, Herbert Howells and Julius Harrison; the poets A. E. Housman, John Masefield, Cecil Day-Lewis, John Drinkwater and U. A. Fanthorpe; the authors E. V. Lucas, Arthur Quiller-Couch, William Cobbett, E. Temple Thurston, Francis Brett Young, John Moore, Fred Archer and Jenny Glanfield; and the artists Peter de Wint, Alfred William Parsons, Benjamin Williams Leader, Frederick Whitehead, Josiah Wood Whymper, Alfred Egerton Cooper, A. R. Quinton, Henry Yeend King and Anna Hornby.

Bredon Hill is the birthplace of farmer and writer Fred Archer (1915–1999), whose many books describe, in vivid prose, life on the farms and in the villages, particularly during the first part of the 20th century.

The author John Moore described life on and around Bredon Hill in the early 20th century in the 'Brensham Trilogy'.

The children's author Ursula Moray Williams lived on the hill in Beckford from 1945 until her death in 2006

The hill is immortalised in poem 21 of A. E. Housman's 1896 anthology A Shropshire Lad.

In summertime on Bredon

The bells they sound so clear;

Round both the shires they ring them

In steeples far and near,

A happy noise to hear.

Here of a Sunday morning

My love and I would lie,

And see the coloured counties,

And hear the larks so high

About us in the sky.

The bells would ring to call her

In valleys miles away;

"Come all to church, good people;

Good people come and pray."

But here my love would stay.

And I would turn and answer

Among the springing thyme,

"Oh, peal upon our wedding,

And we will hear the chime,

And come to church in time."

But when the snows at Christmas

On Bredon top were strown,

My love rose up so early

And stole out unbeknown

And went to church alone.

They tolled the one bell only,

Groom there was none to see,

The mourners followed after,

And so to church went she,

And would not wait for me.

The bells they sound on Bredon,

And still the steeples hum,

"Come all to church, good people."

O noisy bells, be dumb;

I hear you, I will come.