3.5.09
Hampton in Arden
The next stop past Berkswell, towards Birmingham, is Hampton in Arden. Here you're very close to the Birmingham Airport, but Hampton seems a pretty small village still with a couple more shops than Berkswell, and a school and library. It's still very much a collection of older houses on the crest of a hill around the church and the
village pub. Lower down, though, are some pretty grand Georgian or Victorian houses that look over the nearby farmland.
The church is a pretty straightforward Gothic renovation of an older Norman one, and an old ditch separates the graveyard from what seems to be an old manor house. I couldn't see much of it, but it was built up on one side by some huge stone retaining walls, and is apparently a large, half-timbered house, and with the church and the pub, takes up the very top of Hampton's hill.On the marshy ground below Hampton is the medieval Packhorse Bridge,
with the much more modern railway bridge in the background. There used to be a cross on the bridge,
and on its stump has been carved the parish boundary between Hampton in Arden and Berkswell (the H/B to the right). The whole area now is part of a wetlands reserve, but if you duck under the railbridge, you'll find yourself in a field looking to Berkswell.