Between Nailsworth and Tetbury are Beverstone Castle and the
secluded manor-house Chavenage within a mile of it. The castle
stands near the road, an ivy-covered ruin of the time of Edward III., but with portions dating from the Conquest. Incorporated are some
Tudor remains and some old farm buildings, forming together a
pleasing picture.
To Major-General Massey, Beverstone, like Sudeley, is indebted for
its battered appearance. It held out for the king, but Massey with
three hundred and eighty men came and took it by storm. The
general having done as much damage as possible in Gloucestershire
d
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uring the Civil War, at length made some repairs by fighting on the
other side at Worcester; and perhaps it was as well, for had he been
on the victorious side he might have treated "the faithful city" with as little respect as Beverstone. In the peaceful days of the Restoration,
which Massey lived to see, as there were no more castles to blow up
he dabbled in the pyrotechnic art, suggestive of the pathetic passage
in Patience—Yearning for whirlwinds, and having to do the best you
can with the bellows.
The regicide squire of Chavenage must also have been skilled in the
noble art, for by common report at his death a few months after that
of the martyr king, he vanished in flames of fire! But there was a
ceremonious preliminary before this simple and effective mode of
cremation. A sable coach driven by a headless coachman with a star
upon his breast arrived at the dead man's door, and the shrouded
form of the regicide was seen to glide into it. But bad as Nathaniel Stephens may have been, it is scarcely just that all future lords of
Chavenage must make their exit in this manner.
The old house is unpretentious in appearance. Built in the form of the
letter E, it has tall latticed windows lighting a gre
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at hall (famous once for its collection of armour), and a plain wing on
either side, with narrow Elizabethan Gothic-headed windows. There
is a ghostly look about it. It stands back from the road, but sufficiently
near that one may see the entrance porch (bearing the date 1579)
and the ruts of the carriage wheels upon the trim carriage drive.
Arguments as strong as any in Ingoldsby to prove the mystic story must be true.
NOOKS IN NORTHERN