Twyford, Shropshire

 

Our second Twyford is a few miles south-east of Oswestry in probably one of the most beautiful English counties. Sadly we didn't have time to visit the Shropshire Sculpture Park, but frankly bits of it look terrifying:

Twyford on the map

Sculptures - scary

Gosh, it's small

As you might guess from the map, this isn't a BIG Twyford by any stretch of the imagination, and a quick scout around the Ordnance Survey map confirms those suspicions. It is - in fact - tiny, and easily the smallest of the Twyfords on our trip. It is little more than a scattering of a few houses just outside West Felton, a village with several of its own peculiarities - of which more later. We parked just outside the village and tried not to look too obviously tourists, while wandering down the no-through-road

Not much else here

We were not underwhelmed, though. Twyford is a cute little farming hamlet with half a dozen cottages pitched around a square of common land (current occupant: one horse) in support of a rather grand manor.

The big house at Twyford

The - ah - 'bustling' village centre

Original barn with arrow-slits

No doubt about the history here: the whole place evolved in support of the grand manor. The big house, although modernised, was hardly a blot on the landscape and round the back were some original-looking stone barns with what looked very much like their own defences. You gotta be careful in the Marches - never know when those Welshmen will creep up on you.

Goats are ace

We walked around the common with the intention of finding the two fords, but found something even better! A herd of assorted dairy goats who all came out to see us...

They were inquisitive but not particularly friendly, so we pushed on. We had a pretty good idea from the map where to find the two fords for which the place was named.

Probable location of the
original two fords

  

Just north of the hamlet, there is a little brook - barely more than a drainage ditch, really. But it is crossed very discernibly by two carriageways. The one on the left is a private road, and as good respecters of rights of way, we weren't going to wander down here. But we did have a lovely chat with the lady who lived at the cottage at the top of the road, explained the 'two fords' name to her (apparently it had never occurred), and were in danger of being invited in for a cuppa tea until we made our excuses. We were hoping to press on up the footpath to the right and cross the other ford, but it also turned out that the access gateway was where the local farmer kept his slurry. Not fancying wading ankle-deep through cow dung, we photographed both fords from a distance - they both have that characteristic dip in the roadway that suggests that - indeed - these were the two fords that led to the name of the hamlet.

The right-hand ford
(slurry in foreground)

The road to the left-hand ford, just
visible in the mid-distance

There wasn't much else to see in Twyford, and of course there was no church, so we took a wander through West Felton to St Michael's Church (which is indeed the one that the book points towards). The proximity of a motte suggests the original village was centred on a small defensive castle (ten a penny around this part of the world), and the church site does apparently date back to the 12th Century. It was pretty much ravaged by Henry VIII and the Reformation though and the modern church is best described as 'ramshackle Victorian'. Walking through the village was also something of a historical detective work - solid stone walling and a grand gate apparently standing in the middle of nowhere suggests that the east of the village was built in gardens of a big estate, probably around Felton Grange, which is more visible on the map than it is in real-life being hidden behind 'keep-away' 12-foot walls and thick hedgerow. No doubt about it: this is a bit of land that grew up around the big houses.

A big gate - entrance to the estate once? Now just tucked away
round the back of a 1990s housing estate

The village centre. Pub? Check. Shop? Check. Not much else, to tell you the truth

The carriage-house courtyard

Once you get past the Grange you're out of the modern village and into the quirky - presumably original - West Felton. Again, a couple of large houses dominate affairs, but largely the houses around the church give the impression of being The Land That Planning Permission Forgot. The whole area seemed to be an exercise in taking nice Georgian and Victorian buildings and tacking on extensions willy-nilly. It was all pretty horrific, although a few nice areas like the old Carriage House survived.

 

Amid the weird, butchered buildings, we found the church!

St Michael's Church, West Felton

View of the bell tower

Like everything surrounding it, the church is very bits-and-pieces. It would appear that it was largely rebuilt in 1879, which explains the arts-and-crafts look alongside the Norman square tower. Somebody popping a modern 20th century clock on the front probably thought it was terribly practical, but it doesn't do much for the look of the place.

In truth, the church and grounds don't give the air of being well-tended, and I suspect there is a church warden vacancy going spare. It may well be that this is a disappointingly familiar outcome as we visit more Twyfords. The building was locked, so no chance to look inside, and the sundial has not survived a 1970s vandalising. A couple of panes of the stained glass (there is quite a variety but you don't get the full impact from outside, so no photos) are broken with no hint of being replaced. 

What's left of the ornamental sundial

Many of the tombstones are overgrown or lichen-encrusted, so there's no certainty of identifying the oldest grave, again. But we did find a good candidate around the back of the church, an elaborate memorial to Frances, wife of Peter Bentley, deceased 1800.

Nearly everything else readable in the graveyard was of the Victorian era: both the old village and the church must have been a real social hub 150 years ago.

Inscription thereon

The oldest grave?

Actually, if we'd done our research a little bit better, we'd have found a couple of 18th-Century graves around the front of the church. But, romantically speaking, this is a much better place for a stash of treasure, no? And doesn't the ornamental stonework look a little bit like fish scales? Maybe we've found our first bit of fish symbolism!

There was one treat around the back. The old motte is now on private land, but it is kept very nicely as a centrepiece and talking-point to someone's garden, complete with its own moat. And the churchyard afforded an excellent view:

Want to own your very own medieval castle mound?

We wandered back into the village, noting another indication that the whole 'new' village was once a nice ornamental garden for the Grange:

A historic yew tree: plaque in foreground, the tree itself in the distance

We were hoping to pick up a souvenir at the village shop, but it turned out to be the sort of establishment that makes its entire margins from vaping product and off-brand spirits and the most exciting thing on offer was a copy of Farmers Weekly. Instead, we went into Shrewsbury, and in a little local crafts shop, we found something that was probably much more apt to our journey than most things we had seen in West Felton.

Fish!

Perhaps this wasn't the most successful of Twyford outings. It would have been nice to see the church interior, clearly we missed the oldest grave (or were hampered by lichen), and bits of West Felton are quite appallingly ugly. But they can't all be winners, right?

Join us next time as we visit Twyford, Derbyshire.