Quentin Letts: Heaven in Herefordshire

High on the Malvern Hills, you have two views. To the east lies Worcestershire’s fertile plain; to the west a vista more lumpy and wooded, a misty land of gurgling brooks, gnarled hedgerows and, as C. S. Lewis imagined, gambolling fauns. This is Herefordshire. In spring, its orchards drip with blossom. Orchids dance on spinney floors, hop poles line the lanes and the cows’ brown-dappled hides match the rich soil. Locals call it ‘the shire’, others consider it paradise; to me, it has been home this past quarter of a century.

Did that view inspire Lewis’s Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth? Both men often walked the Malverns. It is hard to believe flat Worcestershire could have fuelled much magic, but that bucolic kingdom to the west, its valleys and hummocks fluffed by old man’s beard, knolls with Arthurian dolmens, a louring hog’s back on the Welsh horizon? Now you’re talking.

The dimpled Herefordshire Beacon, or British Camp, is said to have given Tolkien his White Mountains of Gondor. I spent schoolboy years in its lee, thrilling to the yarn that this was where Caratacus fought the Romans. Another candidate for that event is Caradoc, a bluff near Ross on Wye. Legends swirl around Herefordshire — the cider can do that to you. The Woolhope Dome, also near Ross, is allegedly the best place in the world to grow apples.

Ross was the birthplace of British tourism; 18th-century travellers thought Symonds Yat a match for any Rhine gorge. Our other towns are Leominster, its quieter sister Bromyard, Kington in the wild west and pretty Ledbury, where a poetry festival starts on June 27. Four years ago, a Titian was found at Ledbury church: it had been there for ages, rather grubby, and no one had noticed its provenance.

Hereford’s pink-sandstone, low-slung cathedral houses the 14th-century Mappa Mundi — look at its headless blemmyes and winged salamanders and tell me its maker hadn’t been at the Westons vintage cider (8.2%) from Much Marcle.

In the summer of 2025 Hereford cathedral will play host to the Three Choirs Festival (July 26-August 2), established by 1715. A statue of Edward Elgar with his bicycle watches from a corner of the close. If you hear the roar of a motorbike, that’ll be our bishop, Richard Jackson, on his Harley-Davidson. The expression ‘Right Revd’ acquires new meaning.

The county’s 200 medieval churches include Shobdon, with its wedding-cake interior, and Moccas (about 1130), where the organ is water-powered. Box-pewed, 12th-century Clodock was named after a murdered Welsh king, Clydawg. These contested Marches were battle lands for centuries and are dotted with ruined castles. Recent digs at Snodhill Castle, Dorstone, suggest it was the love-nest of Elizabeth I (so much for the ‘virgin queen’). Yet who could blame the most virtuous soul for falling in love with, and in, this lush, romantic Eden?

Local highlight
The bucolic countryside.

Local lowlight
Lack of a bypass for Hereford.

Best-kept secret
Tom Denny’s Traherne stained-glass windows (2007) in the Audley Chapel of Hereford Cathedral.

Quentin Letts is a parliamentary sketch writer, theatre critic and author. His latest book is ‘NUNC!’ (Constable)