Article written by Rose Arno (nee Campbell), June 2023

Cecilia Dudley Campbell, my mother, moved to Welland in 1935 after marrying my father in April 1934. She grew up in Upton-on-Severn, the adopted daughter of Blanche Fowler, a Methodist deaconess and owner of a temperance café in Upton. Blanche had ambitions for Cecilia (she was very keen on education) and after Tewkesbury High School and a few years working as a trainee teacher, she  obtained a place at Dudley Training College. She worked in Birmingham and Malvern before being appointed to the infants’ head post at Welland School.

My brother Patrick was born in July 1935 and they moved into the school house at Welland. Mr Band, the headteacher, preferred his bungalow in Upper Welland. Apparently the school house, though uncomfortable and draughty, had some modern conveniences like a flush lavatory (albeit off the kitchen) and some kind of bathroom – all quite unusual then.

I think after the war, when the village expanded with council housing and baby boomers, it was decided (by my mother) to move the infants’ class into the parish hall. She seems to have had a great deal of autonomy in this respect but it was a good decision. The downside was that they also served school dinners in the hall, but the stage was ideal for her annual nativity play, and  it was large and roomy for the numerous  pupils,  all different ages and abilities. By 1946 the school house was needed for the new head, Alex Clarke, so my parents moved to Camelot, Brookend, where I was born in August 1946.

She loved her job which she saw as a genuine vocation and I believe she was an excellent teacher. She once boasted that she had ‘never had a child who couldn’t read’.

She was very active in village affairs and a member of the WI, Mothers’ Union and Parochial Church Council.  My father was the vicar’s warden. However, she always wanted a headship and this dream was realised when she was appointed to be head at Corse Lawn school in the early 1960s. She retired in 1974.

The Pheasant pub stands at the crossroads of Drake Street and the Gloucester Road (see map). This handsome building was completed by early 1843, when the owner was James Archer and the tenant Samuel Ingles. It replaced an earlier Pheasant Inn about 100m further along the road towards Upton. The timing of the rebuild suggests that the owner was keen to take advantage of the expected increase in traffic caused by the creation of improved roads and crossroads as a result of the anticipated enclosure of the common (the Welland Enclosure Act was passed in 1847).

The earliest record of The Pheasant we have found to date is an advertisement for sale by auction in 1774, when it is stated as consisting of the Inn and two orchards, occupier Ann Grubham and proprietor Richard Lutwich. Its position is emphasised, being adjacent to the Chase and on the Upton to Ledbury turnpike road.  Later advertised for auction in 1834, the Pheasant then consisted of the inn, stable, cider-house, and about two acres of pasture and orchard. The pub passed through various hands in the 18th and 19th centuries but seems never to have belonged to any one family for long.

Francis Elms became tenant in 1929, when the value of the fixtures, fittings and stock in trade was valued at £192 18s. He and his wife Violet ran the pub until they retired in 1955. It was then taken over by their son, Southwell Elms, and his wife Rhoda, who continued until their retirement in 1982. Southwell was responsible for having the function room built, providing a dance floor and room for a band.

The pub closed in 2010 after a succession of tenants were unable to make it pay all year round. The spacious car park behind the pub was sold off for housing, now St James Close. Various plans for a combination of pub or restaurant and apartments fell through but renovation work is currently under way (2025). The planning application states that the original Pheasant Inn will be converted into three apartments, with an extension providing a further two dwellings. A second extension will provide space for a combined cafe, bar and restaurant.

Anthony Berwick Lechmere was a member of the Lechmere family of Hanley Castle.

After ordination he was first appointed Vicar of Eldersfield in 1826, then Vicar of Welland in 1828. From 1839 onwards he was Vicar of Hanley Castle in addition to Welland and lived in the Hanley vicarage rather than Welland’s. He also served as a magistrate for Worcestershire and was chairman of the Upton-on-Severn Petty Sessions. 

The Revd Lechmere was instrumental in campaigning to build a new church for Welland. The present-day St James was finally consecrated in 1875.

This house stands in the Brookend area of Welland on Drake Street (see map). It has been a farmhouse and a grocer’s shop during its existence and probably dates from the late 18th or early 19th century. The name appears in census returns as Slade Firs and Slate Firs. When Sarah Green, widow, was running it as a shop in 1851, the address given was simply, ‘shop, Drake Street’.

This photo taken around 1910 shows the house as a shop and tea-room. The front door has since been replaced by a window and the gateway and path no longer exist but the house is still easily recognisable.

Slade Firs c 1910, courtesy of Sheila Hoare

Welland has had three vicarages.

The Old Vicarage

The oldest of the three still stands in Welland Court Lane (see map). Grade II listed, it is believed to date from the early 17th century, with timber framing later encased in brick (see Historic England entry). From about 1839 it was occupied by the curate of the day rather than the vicar. By 1881 it was no longer a vicarage. The Docker family were living there and continued to do so until at least 1939.

Welland House Care Centre

In 1880 a substantial vicarage was built on glebe land on Marlbank Road, within a few minutes’ walk of the new St James Church (see map). This house remained the vicarage until the end of the incumbency of the Revd Josiah W Coombes, vicar of Welland 1926 – 1942.

The building was used as a remand home from 1943 to the 1970s and is now Welland House Care Centre. Eight houses have been built along the drive, forming Lime Grove.

Rear view of the vicarage, date unknown. Courtesy of the late Mary Purser

Sunny Bank

Directly opposite Lime Grove is a large house built around 1950. This served as Welland’s third vicarage until 1974. For most of that time it was lived in by the Revd Cyril Kay, vicar of Welland 1954 – 1974, and his wife, Jessie. During their time the house still backed on to fields, now the Giffard Drive estate.

This third vicarage had a very large garden with tennis courts and lots of lavender and roses. Revd Kay used to have parties every summer for the Sunday school children with tennis, croquet and board games. Fetes were held there and the Revd Kay also put on Punch and Judy shows. More conventionally, confirmation classes were held at the house.

The house was sold after the Kays left and Welland then ceased to have a vicarage. In the 2010s, the plot was divided in two. The original house, extended since the Kays’ occupation, is now Sunny Bank, and another house has been built behind it.

Thanks to Gwyneth Gill for her memories of this vicarage and the Kays.

The Tewkesbury and Malvern Railway (a branch of the Midland Railway from 1st July 1877) ran from Ashchurch to Great Malvern via Tewkesbury, Ripple, Upton upon Severn and Malvern Wells (renamed to Malvern, Hanley Road from 2nd March 1951 in order to avoid confusion with Malvern Wells on the Hereford line). Construction started from the West Midlands Railway at Malvern and Tewkesbury junction on 1st July 1862. The line opened on 16th May 1864, connecting with the Worcester & Hereford Railway at Malvern and the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway at Ashchurch. The section of line from Malvern and Tewkesbury Junction to Upton passes through the northern part of Welland parish (see map). This section was closed to passengers on 1st December 1952 and the track between Malvern Wells and Upton was lifted in September 1953.

Traces of the line can still be found.

The embankment that lifted the line across a brick bridge over the road towards Hanley Swan (by the junction with Gilver’s Lane) are still clearly visible each side of the road, but the bridge itself was blown up in the early 1970s.

Gilver’s Lane and several footpaths provide views of the line but, for access to the line itself, try Worcestershire’s Wildlife Trust site which runs along the line and has access and a car park at Brotheridge Green, just outside Welland’s parish boundary (see map and the Trust’s website page for details).

A railway buff, Martin Theaker, has done a very informative blog about the line with many fascinating photos. You can find it here. The articles relating to the Welland section are Lumber Tree Farm, Gilver’s Lane, Hillcourt Farm and Brotheridge Green. The article about Gilver’s Lane has several wonderful photos of the Welland Road bridge being blown up!

Railway embankment heading towards the Malvern Hills. Taken from the western end of the Brotheridge Green nature reserve.

Much of the land once belonging to Lawn Farm, on Drake Street, is now part of the Pippin Drive housing estate built a few years ago (see map).

In 1806 Richard Harris is recorded as the proprietor of a landholding paying £2 16s 11d in land tax. The farm name is not given but other records allow us to identify the land in question as Lawn Farm. The current house, brick with some timber framing, was probably already in existence at this time and part of the building may have 17th century origins. The house is Grade II listed. (See Historic England entry.)

Richard Harris married Sarah Solloway in 1798 at Coddington. After Richard’s death in 1829, Sarah continued to farm the land, appearing in the land tax records as Mrs Harris. She married again in 1836 and appears thereafter as Sarah Hooman or Homan. Intriguingly, her husband John Hooman did not appear in her household in the 1841 or 1851 census and her later will states that they were separated. In the 1851 census she is identified as a farmer of 40 acres, 82 years old. Sarah died in 1855.

By 1858 William Harris, a nephew of Richard Harris, was tenant, but the farm was owned by Edward Pace, whose connection to Welland is unknown at present. The 1861 census records William Harris and his family, farming 50 acres. Still the farm is only identified as ‘Farm house, Drake Street’. William died in 1874 and the John Harris who succeeded him was probably his son. It was during John Harris’s tenancy that we see the name ‘The Lawn Farm’ for the first time, in a newspaper advertisment of 15 September 1879 (Worcester Herald).

The advertisement announces an ‘important sale of fruit’ produced by several growers, to be held at The Pheasant in Welland. Heading the list is ‘Mr John Harris, The Lawn Farm’ with crops from Cherry Orchard, Hill Orchard, Stock Orchard, Bacon Hill and Westfield for sale (presumably apples, but this is not stated). There was also a ‘row of damsons’ in Pig Orchard and the fruit of a ‘large walnut tree at back of the house, very thick’.

By the time of the 1911 census Francis Wastie was the owner. He was born in 1867 at Eynsham, Oxfordshire, where the Wasties were a long established family. The 1939 National Register records him at Lawn Farm as a dairy farmer, with his wife Edith, daughters Gladys and Edith, and son Frederick, all engaged in farm work. Another son, Frank Wastie, was working at Church Farm. After his father’s death in 1954 Frank took over Lawn Farm and the family owned it until at least 1979.

In the 19th century Welland Races were a popular one-day event, usually held in July, attracting spectators from Upton, Malvern and further afield. The number and quality of the horse races varied from year to year and they were supplemented by foot racing, ‘rustic sports’ and other amusements. Reports appeared in the Worcestershire Chronicle, the Worcester Journal and other newspapers from the 1820s to the 1890s but the event fell into abeyance for long periods at least twice during this time. The original race course was on Welland Common south of Danemore Farm (see map) but this was no longer available after the 1849 meeting as the land was enclosed. When the races began again in the 1870s Castlemorton Common was used briefly before the event moved to Danemore again as described below.

From 1846 spectators from Worcester could travel down the Severn on the paddle steamer Sabrina, disembarking at Hanley Quay. By the 1870s racegoers could also travel by train as far as Malvern Wells (the Hanley Road station).

James Archer, then owner of The Pheasant inn, was responsible for reviving the races in the 1840s and also acted as steward on at least two occasions. Mrs Mary Ann Ketteringham, The Pheasant’s landlady in the 1870s and 1880s, was frequently praised for her efforts as in this Worcester Journal report from 1873:

‘This annual event came off on Tuesday [22 July] at Dainmore [sic], the ground being kindly lent by Mr Watkins. The weather was fine, between 2,000 and 3,000 persons were on the ground, and there was capital sport. Refreshments were supplied in first-class style by Mrs Ketteringham, of the Pheasant, whose arrangements were as usual of the most satisfactory character. Four races had been announced but several others were added, and the meeting was a thoroughly enjoyable one. Hurdle and flat racing took place during the afternoon, and the several events were well contested. Formerly the horse races took place on Castlemorton Common, and the company had to return to a field near the Pheasant to witness the foot racing. This was an inconvenient arrangement, and the alteration made this year was a great improvement, and as such was highly appreciated by all who patronised the meeting. In the evening a ball took place at the Pheasant (the magistrates having granted an extension of closing time till two o’clock), about 100 were present, and the gathering was most successful …’

Evidently these were lively and well supported events, sustained in the village over a long period of time.

This postcard, dating from around 1915, shows the smallpox hospital that was once situated at the far end of California Lane (see map).

In the 1890s a small isolation hospital was built for Upton-on-Severn on the Upton to Welland road, intended for patients with infectious diseases such as measles, diphtheria and scarlet fever.

It was felt that an additional site for dealing specifically with smallpox cases would be useful and so this corrugated iron structure was built on a lane that went nowhere around 1905.

Smallpox vaccination was made compulsory in England and Wales in 1853 but it did not cease to be endemic until the 1930s. In the event, the Welland hospital seems never to have been needed for this purpose and it closed around 1944. A private house now occupies the site. To date we only know of one individual who was nursed at the Welland hospital: Ethel Hadley passed away there in 1919 from pulmonary tuberculosis.

Note the title of the postcard is ‘The Sanatorium’, perhaps slightly less ominous than ‘Smallpox Hospital’!

Corrugated iron buildings of this type were popular in the early 20th century for use as churches and community halls. Several examples survive locally, e.g. at Coombe Green, Hollybush and on the Upper Hook road.

We would be pleased to hear from anyone whose relatives are known to have been patients or staff at the smallpox hospital.

Photo: Peter Roberts – The Sanatorium, Welland

The first school in Welland was built in Welland Court Lane under the auspices of the National Society. This organisation was founded in 1811 as the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales. It promoted the building of schools to provide basic education to the children of the poor and was very closely linked to local parish churches and their clergy and congregations. Attendance was neither compulsory nor free although fees were subsidised by the church or parishioners for children whose parents could not pay.

In 1829 grants of £565 were made towards the costs of building the Welland school, which was put up on or very near to the green in Welland Court Lane, where the road forks towards Malthouse Farm (see map).

In the 1861 census records William Hillier was listed as a National School master and his wife Caroline a National School mistress. They were living in Drake Street so it is likely that they ran Welland school at that time. William was also the enumerator for the 1861 census in Welland.

Victorian schools have a grim reputation but a newspaper report from 29 June 1864 relates a happy event when 75 children from the school were treated to tea and games at Brookend House by invitation of Mrs Henry Green and her son, Mr Henry Green. The children ‘were marshalled by the mistress, Mrs. George, and led on to the spacious lawn in front of the house by the Rev. Lionel E Brown, the respected curate of the parish. Mrs Green and her son also invited many personal friends and parishioners to partake of her hospitality and to witness and join the games of the juveniles. After tea the children sang appropriate pieces, and with the visitors, entered heartily into various rustic games, including balls, croquet, foot racing, jumping and dancing on the green, to the strains of old John Heath’s violin, so well known in that neighbourhood.’ (Worcestershire Chronicle)

The National School was replaced in 1876 by Welland Board School, now Welland Primary School.