Hanley Castle, Worcestershire

Description
Hanley Castle, a village and a parish in Worcestershire. The village stands on the W side of the river Severn, 1 1/2 mile NW of Upton-on-Sevem station on the Ashchurch, Tewkes- bury, and Malvern branch of the M.E., and 6 miles W of Defford, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Worcester. The parish includes also the village and ecclesiastical parish of Malvem Wells, and the hamlets of Black-more End, Hanley Quay, and Gilberts End. Acreage, 5923; population, 2274, of which 1154 were in Malvern Wells. A castle here belonged to Brictic who refused the hand of Maud, afterwards the wife of William the Conqueror, passed to the Earls of Warwick, was the deathplace of Henry de Beauchamp, and passed to the Despencers, the Savages, the Aries, the Lech-meres, and the Charltous. Scarcely a trace remains of the ancient castle, and a modern house has been built on its site. Blackmore Park is the seat of the Homyhold family, in whose .possession the manor has been since the time of Queen Elizabeth. The mansion was burnt in 1880, and rebuilt in 1883. A Roman Catholic monastery with school and-chapel, erected jn 1846, stands in the park, and a domestic chapel is adjacent to the mansion. Severn End, the ancient seat of the Lech-mere family, is a good specimen of a timber-grained house of the Elizabethan period. Rhydd Court, the present seat of the family, is a modern Italian mansion with a handsome chapel adjacent; it is situated in one of the most beautiful spots of the Severn Valley. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester; net value, £750. The church is partly Decorated English, partly brickwork of 1674, and was re- stored in 1858. It contains monuments of the Lechmere and Hornyhold families, much excellent modern stained glass, and a beautiful alabaster reredos. There is a chapel of ease at Hanley Green, erected in 1874 from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott. There is an endowed grammar school, rebuilt in 1 and enlarged in 1868.