Bredon

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Bredon is a village in Worcestershire in England, on the banks of the River Avon. It lies in the extreme south of the county, in the Wychavon Local Authority District, and at the 2001 census had a population of 2,513 (including the hamlet of Bredon's Hardwick). Bredon's Norton, a separate parish to the north, had a population of 207.

[edit] History

There is evidence of human settlement on nearby Bredon Hill dating back some three thousand years. The village of Bredon (literally meaning hill in Anglo-Saxon) grew around the eighth century monastery on the banks of the River Avon. Unfortunately, Viking raiders sailed up the Avon and sacked the institution. Bredon grew slowly through the years leading up to the 20th Century, when a spate of building increased the size to the east. The village now consists of a mixture of mediaeval, Restoration, Queen Anne, Tudor, Jacobean, Victorian, Edwardian, pre-war and modern domestic buildings. In 1718, wealthy Bredonian William Hancock founded the Bredon Hancock Primary School. In the 1960s a housing estate of some 600 dwellings was developed on land formerly belonging to Mitton Manor in the extreme south of the parish, but this area was then lost to neighbouring Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. Bredon once had a station on the Bristol to Birmingham main rail line, very well sited for the village; the line remains open and high-speed trains regularly thunder through, but the station closed in January 1965. In February 1971 a new section of the M5 motorway was opened, cutting through the parish to the west of the village itself.

[edit] Notable Sites

St.Giles' Church, situated in the west of Bredon, dates from the Norman period. The church has two Romanesque arches, including a well-preserved west elevation, several local family commemorative tiles in the choir, and an impressive spire (very rare in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire) which rises to almost fifty metres high. The Bredon Barn (often incorrectly referred to as a tithe barn) is also a place of interest. The exisiting mediaeval structure was almost destroyed by fire in 1980 when a cigarette accidentally ignited a hay bale, but it has since been restored with the aid of the National Trust.

The village has two pubs, the oldest being the Fox and Hounds, a charming Jacobean inn. Bredon's other drinking establishment is called the Royal Oak and was founded in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Bredon Pottery, on the site of the village's old general store, sells earthenware and domestic ceramics.