Things to do in Worcestershire

The Malvern Hills on the Worcestershire-Herefordshire border are one of the finest ridge walks in England, a narrow range of Pre-Cambrian rocks rising to over 400 metres above the surrounding Midland plain in a wall of hills extending approximately fifteen kilometres, providing panoramic views of extraordinary extent from their accessible summit ridge. The hills give their name to the Victorian spa town of Great Malvern below, whose spa tradition was based on the pure spring water emerging from these ancient rocks. The ridge walk from the Worcestershire Beacon provides the finest continuous walking, views expanding east over the Midland Plain and west over the Herefordshire and Welsh border countryside in a panorama of great pastoral richness. The Pre-Cambrian rocks of the Malverns are approximately 680 million years old and quite different in character and origin from the rocks of any surrounding region. Edward Elgar, born and raised in Worcestershire, drew on the Malvern Hills landscape throughout his creative life, and the hills have been associated with his music since his lifetime. The combination of the walking, the spa heritage and the Elgar connection creates a destination of considerable cultural and natural depth.

Witley Court in Worcestershire is one of the grandest and most poignant ruins in England, the shell of what was once one of the most spectacular country houses in the country, its great Italianate facade and shattered interiors preserved as a maintained ruin by English Heritage and conveying with particular force the fragility of Victorian aristocratic wealth and the devastating consequences of its collapse. The house was originally a Jacobean manor house that was transformed in stages during the nineteenth century for successive owners of increasing wealth and ambition. The final and most dramatic transformation was carried out for the Earl of Dudley in the 1850s and 1860s by the architect Samuel Dawkes and the landscape designer William Nesfield, who together created a palatial Italianate mansion with state rooms of extraordinary luxury and grounds laid out with elaborate formal gardens, parterre plantings and the two enormous fountain basins that survive today as among the finest examples of Victorian landscape design in the country. The Perseus and Andromeda fountain, one of the largest in Britain, was capable of throwing its jet 36 metres into the air and was powered by a sophisticated hydraulic system fed by a purpose-built reservoir. The fountain operated only on special occasions due to the enormous quantities of water required, but on those occasions its spectacle was described by contemporary visitors in the most extravagant terms. The fountain has been restored to working order and operates on selected days throughout the visitor season. The house was gutted by fire in 1937 and subsequently abandoned, the contents sold and the building left to deteriorate over the following decades. The contrast between the still-impressive scale of the surviving facades and the roofless interiors open to the sky creates an atmosphere of melancholy grandeur that deliberately preserved ruins rarely achieve.

Worcester Cathedral stands magnificently on the west bank of the River Severn in the city of Worcester, its honey-coloured sandstone tower reflected in the river below and visible for miles across the Severn Vale and the Malvern Hills beyond. It is one of England's great medieval cathedrals, a building of nearly a thousand years of continuous development that combines Norman solidity with Gothic elegance and contains some of the most important medieval tombs in the country. The cathedral's origins lie in the seventh century when the first Bishop of Worcester established a monastery and church here, but the building that visitors explore today began with the construction of the Norman crypt under Bishop Wulfstan in the 1080s. This crypt, one of the largest Norman crypts in England, survives almost entirely intact beneath the later Gothic nave and gives a powerful sense of the massive, round-arched solidity of early Norman architecture. Above it, the cathedral was progressively rebuilt and extended over the following three centuries in the successive Gothic styles of Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular, creating the harmonious medieval building visible today. The two greatest medieval tombs in the cathedral give it a historical significance matched by very few buildings in England. King John, who died in 1216 and whose reign was marked by the sealing of Magna Carta, is buried before the high altar in a tomb that features one of the earliest royal effigies in England, a Purbeck marble figure of the king in full regalia. Nearby, the chantry chapel of Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII who died in 1502 at the age of fifteen before he could succeed to the throne he was born to inherit, is one of the finest pieces of late Gothic decorative carving in the country, its intricate stonework creating a screen of extraordinary delicacy around the prince's tomb. The cloisters on the south side of the cathedral are exceptionally well-preserved and the quiet garden they enclose provides a peaceful retreat from the city outside. The view of the cathedral from the meadows across the Severn, with cricket played on the county ground adjacent to the building during the summer season, is one of the most enduringly English scenes in the country.

The Severn Valley Railway is one of the finest and most completely preserved steam heritage railways in Britain, a 16-mile line running along the valley of the River Severn between Kidderminster in Worcestershire and Bridgnorth in Shropshire through some of the most beautiful river valley scenery in the Midlands. The railway was preserved following closure in 1963 by an enthusiast group and has developed into one of the most professional and most visited heritage railways in the country, operating a comprehensive service of steam and diesel traction throughout the season. The line follows the Severn Valley through a succession of charming riverside stations, from the junction with the national network at Kidderminster through Bewdley, the finest of the intermediate stations with its Victorian buildings carefully maintained, to Arley and Highley on the west bank of the Severn before crossing to Bridgnorth on the east bank for the final section to the terminus. Each station along the route has been carefully restored to its Great Western Railway appearance, and the experience of travelling between them in coaches hauled by vintage steam locomotives provides a complete period railway experience of considerable quality. Bridgnorth, the northern terminus, is a town of great historical and architectural interest, its High Town and Low Town connected by the steepest funicular railway in England and its medieval and later buildings providing an excellent heritage complement to the railway journey. The walk along the Severn between Arley and Bewdley, following the riverside path through the most beautiful section of the valley, provides the alternative of a river walk with the railway stations available as points of departure and return.

Snowshill is one of the most perfectly preserved villages in the Cotswolds, a small settlement of honey-coloured limestone buildings on the western escarpment above Broadway whose combination of the village green, the cluster of fifteenth and sixteenth-century cottages and the extraordinary contents of Snowshill Manor creates one of the most rewarding and most distinctive destinations in the Cotswolds. The National Trust manages Snowshill Manor and its unusual contents, and the village itself provides one of the finest examples of organic Cotswold village development without commercial intrusion. Snowshill Manor is famous for the collection assembled by its eccentric owner Charles Paget Wade between 1919 and 1956, a vast and extraordinary accumulation of objects from across the world and across time that fills every room and corridor of the manor house and overflows into the outbuildings. Wade collected with no dominant theme beyond the aesthetic pleasure of unusual or finely crafted objects, and the resulting collection includes Japanese samurai armour, Flemish weaving tools, children's toys, clocks, musical instruments, bicycles, farm tools, spinning wheels and thousands of other objects whose accumulation in this particular Cotswold manor house is one of the most surprising and most memorable house contents in Britain. Wade himself slept not in the manor but in a small cottage in the garden, preferring to keep the house as an undisturbed museum of his collection, and his relationship with his objects was intimate and intensely personal. The garden he created at Snowshill, with its terraced compartments and strong geometry, provides an excellent formal setting for the eccentric contents of the house. The village of Snowshill is also close to the Cotswold Lavender farm that provides spectacular summer flowering on the hillside above.

Broadway in Worcestershire is widely regarded as the most beautiful village in the Cotswolds, a broad main street of honey-coloured limestone buildings extending for over a mile through the village with a quality and consistency of architecture that creates one of the finest streetscapes in rural England. The village has been celebrated as a picturesque ideal of English village life since the nineteenth century when American and British artists of the Broadway Colony, including John Singer Sargent and Edwin Abbey, made it their base and established its reputation as one of the finest landscapes in England. The broad street from which the village takes its name is lined with buildings of Cotswold limestone in styles ranging from the medieval to the Georgian, the consistent use of the local warm stone and the characteristic Cotswold vernacular of steeply pitched roofs and mullioned windows creating an architectural harmony that absorbs buildings of very different periods into a coherent whole. The village green and the individual buildings of exceptional quality, including the Lygon Arms, one of the finest Cotswold coaching inns, punctuate the main street at intervals. Broadway Tower, a folly tower on the Cotswold escarpment above the village, provides exceptional views from its position on one of the highest points of the Cotswolds, the panorama extending across the Vale of Evesham to the Malvern Hills and beyond on clear days. The Cotswold Way national trail passes through Broadway and the walking to the tower from the village is one of the classic short walks of the national trail.