Wychbury Hill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wychbury Hill
Wychbury Hill looking towards Wychbury Obelisk
Elevation	224 m (734 ft)
Location	Worcestershire, England
Topo map	OS Explorer 219
OS grid reference	SO920817

Wychbury Hill is a hill situated off the A456 Birmingham Road, at Hagley, Stourbridge, on the border of West Midlands and Worcestershire.

It is divided between the parish of Hagley and former parish of Pedmore. It is one of the Clent Hills. The hill offers good views across the Severn Valley as far as the Malvern Hills and Clee Hills. It is the site of an Iron Age hill fort and the Wychbury Obelisk, and much beloved of modern pagans, apparently due to the name sounding like 'witch'. However the name is actually unrelated, being derived from that of the Saxon subkingdom of the Hwicce.

On the flank of the hill is a folly (the Temple of Theseus) in the shape of a Greek Doric temple. Built in 1758, it was England's first example of Neo-Classical architecture. The temple is in a seriously dillapidated condition. It is a listed building on private land amd permanently fenced off to the public.

A woman's body was discovered inside a wych elm tree in a wood, on Wychbury Hill on the Hagley Hall estate during World War Two, prompting the intriguing graffiti "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?". This message has reappeared in a variety of local places at intervals ever since, and as of 2007 the obelisk bears the slightly different message "Who put Bella in the Witch [sic] Elm" (no question mark). The victim was never identified. It has sparked a lot of media interest over the years, featuring on the BBC's Inside Out TV program in the West Midlands.