Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
which becomes a dark, deeply sunken track. Between steep banks draped
with ivy and hart's tongue fern, with trees high overhead to complete the
tunnel effect, this is a splendid section, full of charm and unquiet mystery.
WORTLEY AND ALDERLEY
Wortley and Alderley are small neighbouring villages astride a minor road that leads
from Wotton to Hawkesbury Upton, but they can also be reached via devious footpath
routes. Wortley was involved in the district's cloth trade by virtue of several mills
powered by local streams. It is also famed as the birthplace of Stephen Hopkins, who
made his fortune in that cloth trade and then sailed to America with the Pilgrim Fath-
ers in 1620. He became an important official and died there in 1644.
Alderley is 'the clearing in the alders', a charming hamlet set on a spur of land
between the Ozleworth and Kilcott valleys. Here lived a Lord Chief Justice, Matthew
Hale (1609-76); a botanical artist, Marianne North (died 1890); and another eminent
botanist, Brian Houghton Hodgson, who lived for a while at The Grange. But, long be-
fore all these, one Alderley inhabitant in the 13th century claimed to be the resurrec-
ted Christ, whereupon magistrates sent him to Oxford to be executed. Some say he
died by crucifixion.
