Adlestrop / Edward Thomas

Adlestrop station sign in bus shelter, 2007. Photo by Graham Horn. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Adlestrop is a village in England, immortalized in a poem by Edward Thomas.

Adlestrop

Adelstrop railway station, 1961. Photo by Ben Brooksbank. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

ADLESTROP - Edward Thomas.

Yes. I remember Adlestrop
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat, the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

Village

Adlestrop (formerly Titlestrop or Edestrop) is a village and civil parish in the English county of Gloucestershire. It is known as Tedestrop in the Domesday Book.

The civil parish also includes the village of Daylesford. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 153, decreasing at the 2011 census to 120.

This small Gloucestershire village deep in the heart of the Cotswolds is renowned for its surrounding countryside and fine walks. Situated off the main road (A436) between Stow-on-the-Wold and "The Greedy Goose" near Salford, Oxfordshire Oxfordshire, it is an isolated community, with the village post office near the church being the main source of provisions and communication. Adlestrop's cricket club plays at Adlestrop Park.

Railway station

Adlestrop railway station served the village between 1853 and 1966. It was on what is now called the Cotswold Line.

Adlestrop station was opened on 4 June 1853 by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (OW&W) as part of the Template:Convert/LoffAonDbSoff section of the Cotswold Line from Wolvercot Junction to Template:Rws. The line was originally mixed gauge single track throughout with a narrow gauge passing loop at Template:Rws. The line through Adlestrop was dualled on 2 August 1858, after the sections between Wolvercot - and Handborough to Charlbury were respectively doubled on 18 November 1853 and 1 August 1854. The station had a broad gauge passing loop, but the only broad gauge train to use it was the inspection special, two days before opening. Adlestrop served the rural villages of Oddington and Adlestrop, for which Adlestrop House was the major feature.

Facilities for goods traffic were on the 'up' side: a Template:Convert/ft loading bank which could hold four wagons, a Template:Convert/ft goods shed with a Template:Convert/long cwt crane where a further three wagons could be held, with capacity for a further thirteen on the Worcester side of the shed. A signal box was added in 1907, which controlled access to the goods shed as well as to the refuge siding on the 'down' side which held 46 wagons. A 5-ton weighbridge was located on the 'up' side near the goods shed and main station building; this was replaced in 1938 by a 10-ton model which cost £160 (£Template:Formatprice in 2025). The down platform was Template:Convert/ft long, while the up platform was shorter at Template:Convert/ft. The main station building on the Up platform was timber-built and originally designed by Brunel, with the construction being completed by John Fowler. On the Down side a wooden waiting shelter was provided, behind which was the station house constructed in alternating courses of red and grey bricks.

On 1 January 1860 the OW&W became part of the West Midland Railway which, on 1 August 1863, was absorbed by the Great Western Railway. It then passed on to the Western Region of British Railways after nationalisation in 1948]]. British Railways closed Adlestrop to goods traffic on 26 August 1963 and to passenger traffic on 3 January 1966. The signal box closed on 27 April 1964 and the sidings were made redundant.

Literary associations

Novelist Jane Austen visited Adlestrop House, formerly the rectory, at least 3 times between 1794 and 1806, when the occupant was Rev. Thomas Leigh, her mother's cousin. She is thought to have drawn inspiration from the village and its surroundings for her novel Mansfield Park.

Thomas's poem "Adlestrop" was first published in 1917. The poem describes an uneventful journey that Thomas took on 24 June 1914 on the Oxford to Worcester express; the train made an unscheduled stop at Adlestrop railway station. He did not alight from the train, but describes a moment of calm pause in which he hears "all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire". The station closed in 1966; however, the village bus shelter contains the station sign and a bench that was originally on the platform. A plaque on the bench quotes Thomas’s poem.

Church bells

The 5 bells of the church of St. Mary were last all rung together in about 1975. The bells lay unrung completely until 2007, when two local couples wishing to marry asked for bells to be rung at their weddings. The bells are:

• Treble (smallest bell), note F: cast in 1711 by Abraham Rudhall (Gloucester)
• 2nd bell, note E flat: cast in 1711 by Abraham Rudhall
• 3rd bell, note D: cast in 1711 by Abraham Rudhall
• 4th bell, note C: cast in 1711 by Abraham Rudhall
• Tenor (largest bell), note B flat (but cracked and toneless): cast in 1838 by Thomas Mears (Gloucester).

The Adelstrop bells are hung in the traditional English fashion. As well as the cracked tenor bell, however, the bell-frame is time expired and suffers from dry rot and woodworm infestation, and the remaining uncracked bells may be rung only very cautiously. The bells are officially listed as "unringable". An appeal, to re-hang the bells and make them fully ringable once more, has been launched.

References

• Harvey, Anne (compiler & editor) (1999) Adlestrop Revisited: an anthology inspired by Edward Thomas's poem, Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing ISBN 0-7509-2289-3

External links

Village

• Adlestrop and the Cotswolds
• Adlestrop Rectory
• St. Mary Magdalene Church, Adlestrop
• Adlestrop visited by Joseph Gelfer
• 'Parishes: Adlestrop', A History of the County of Gloucester: volume 6 (1965), pp. 8-16.
• Adelstrop at genuki