'Extract of a Letter from Brailes, in Warwickshire, dated June 11 1765.
'Monday last, between two and three o'clock, we had a most dreadful storm of hail, attended with thunder and lightning, which
has cut off a great deal of the corn in Upper Brailes, Lower Brailes, and Sutton-field. In Lower Brailes all the fruit-trees are stripped as bare
as if it was Christmas. The gardens are likewise cut off to that degree, that in the whole town there is not a plant big enough to wrap
round your hand. The windows are broke in a shocking manner, particularly those that lay North. In the three windows in the school fifty
squares are broke, besides those above stairs, etc. Many of the hail-stones measured six and seven inches round; rooks, pigeons, etc. were
killed in great numbers, which continued about an hour, the thunder not ceasing one instant, and the hail (which I measured in the open field
after the storm was over) lay fourteen inches thick on the ground. Nor was this all; for during the storm the flood rose in such a manner that
all the town, except about where I live, was under water, and by the time we could put our heads out of doors, the water was running over the great
bridge top, and had drove down the whole range of walling from Colegrave's corner to Davis's; so that every house in the Brook-row was five or
six feet under water. It also carried away all the bridges, several sheep, styles, and every thing that was moveable from the houses in Brook-row
and Curtle-brook. In short it was the most awful scene I ever beheld. The loss, it is thought, will amount to near three thousand pounds.' (From
p.334, The Universal Magazine, Volume 36, 1765.)
'... the village of BRAILES, which had formerly a market, obtained for it by a charter from King Henry the third,
together with an annual fair for three days; the market has long been discontinued, but a fair is annually held there on Easter Tuesday.'
(p.285, Warwickshire Delineated by Francis Smith (of Southam), 1820).
'By this time the traveller who has followed me from Edgehill will be glad to find a comfortable inn, and such a one he
will find in the George at Brailes, a familiar resort of the county squires of former days, and even now much frequented by hunting men.
As we thread the shady lanes that lead us thither from Compton Wynyates, which here and there give us a view of the well-wooded country
on either side, it is hard to realise that this part of Warwickshire is called the Feldon, that is, the land from which timber has been
cleared away, to distinguish it from the woodland district of the Forest of Arden, which lies to the north of the Avon. Brailes Church,
from its size and massive tower, is known as the "Cathedral of the Feldon," and it well deserves the name. As we turn a corner of the lane
the tower comes into sight, the central object in a vast amphitheatre of meadow, wood and hill. The church stands in the highest part of the
village, not far from the inn. Nothing can be finer than the exterior ; the lofty tower, 120 feet
high, and wide in proportion, the long clerestory rising above
the aisles, the open foliated parapet on the south side, with a
cornice elaborately carved with grotesques beneath, and the
rich orange tints of the stone, command our wonder and
admiration. Enter the church, and alas ! the scene is changed.
The expectations raised by such an outside are doomed to
disappointment ; the plaster has been ruthlessly scraped from
the walls, almost every trace of the sanctifying hand of time
has been removed, and the whole has a strange, cold look,
from the contrast with the exterior all the more repellent.
'There is not much else, always excepting the comfortable
inn, to detain us at Brailes. Brailes House, in which the last
survivor of the Sheldon family recently died, is now a forlorn
and deserted mansion. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth
century the Sheldons were only second to the Comptons in
local importance. They had a fine house at Weston Park, four
miles to the south-west, and the landlord at the inn will show
you the names of some of them cut with a diamond on the
window panes, and also an old rent book of the family, which
shows that their estates were spread over half-a-dozen parishes.
The most famous of them was Ralph Sheldon, the squire of the
seventeenth century. He was an indefatigable collector of
books, manuscripts, and antiquities. Readers of Anthony
Wood's autobiography will remember how often he would
walk over to Weston from Oxford to visit his friend and
patron, and how many happy weeks he spent there arranging
and cataloguing the library. Weston enjoyed the distinction of
possessing this fine library for a century after the death of its
collector, but when poverty comes in at the door, books fly out
of the window, and in 1781, when the squire of that day slept
with his fathers, it was brought to the hammer at Long
Compton. Ralph's copy of the first folio Shakespeare, and a
large collection of old plays, were among its chief treasures. The former now belongs to Lady Burdett-Coutts, and many of
the latter are in the Malone collection in the Bodleian.
(...) 'It is time to resume
our pilgrimage along the " Via Sacra," and I must leave Brailes
by the Banbury road in the opposite direction, and climb the
hill till I come to the spot where the gallows once stood, and
where a remnant of the original heath is still left. The Brailes
people call it Gallows Hill to this day. The rough track to the
right is the ancient road I am in search of: for several miles it
forms the boundary between the counties of Oxford and
Warwick, and before the days of shires may well have marked
a still more ancient division of the land. I follow its course
down to Traitor's Ford, and surely if ever there was a name
suggestive of antique story this is one. But I have been quite
unable to hear of any story connecting any traitor with the spot,
nor does anyone appear to be able to give any explanation of the
name. Can it have any remote connexion with the treachery
of the Whispering Knights to which we shall come directly?
The only legend connected with the place I could pick up was
told me by the landlord of the Unicorn at Great Rollright.
The great bell, he said, which now hangs in Brailes Tower, was
dug up here. Perhaps this story arose from the fact that when
the bell was being taken away to be recast, I know not how
many years ago, the conveyance broke down on Gallows Hill,
and the bell lay by the roadside for a long time before it was
removed.
'There is a bridge now over the Stour at Traitor's Ford, and
it is a long climb on the other side up to Great Rollright.' (From pp.130-137, Highways and Byways
in Oxford and the Cotswolds by Herbert A. Evans, 1905
