Henley-in-Arden & Wooton Wawen

Today I went for a drive to Henley-in-Arden, a pretty little market town across the border in Warwickshire. I went there in 2001 to do look at the church for my undergrad dissertation and was curious to see if anything had changed. It hadn't.

Kim the Dog on the site of the old Norman castle

I went up the hill overlooking the town, which used to have a Norman motte and bailey hill on top of it. Nothing there now though, just grass and nettles.

Down in the town there was a church fete, so I decided to look for some ice cream. The old man at the entrance said I had to pay 20p to enter, then he threatened to take my credit card and beat me up, so I punched him in the chin and ran past. Once inside I completed my objective of purchasing ice cream (rum and raisin flavour), and also bought a homemade gluten-free chocolate cake (of the various cakes on offer it seemed to offer best value per ounce) before running back out.

I'd left Kim the Dog in the car with the windows slightly open as it was a hot day and I wasn't worried about anyone trying to steal a broken-down old Metro with an aggressively paranoid collie in the front. Also, Henley-in-Arden is not exactly GTA.

Middle England

On the way I home I decided to swing by the village of Wooton Wawen, because: a) I also had to visit it in 2001 and haven't been back since; and b) it has a silly name.

I won some Anglo-Saxon nerd points because this is one of the oldest churches in the Midlands, founded in the early eighth century, and perhaps my favourite medieval church anywhere. It's like a massive lego set which has been randomly expanded over a thousand years.

This, my friend, is a genuine Anglo-Saxon archway

Wooton Wawen was the site of a priory for centuries until the Dissolution, at which point the manor fell into the ownership of a stubborn Catholic family, even though the church itself became Protestant. So Wooton Wawen remained an isolated pocket of Catholicism, with a third of its population refusing to convert. In 1700-and-something the Anglican Church finally sent a minister to root out and correct all the Papist heretics, but he ended up converting to Catholicism himself. ANGLICAN INQUISITION FAIL LOL.

How it should be done

Across the road was a general store, which had this friendly sign outside:

Huzzah, England and Ireland united by a common hatred of the French!