The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley — Read

Once more we look down upon English hills, lit by the same September sun. But it is another England; the dark Pennines have been left far behind; the grim heights of ling and peat and black rock, the reeking cauldrons that were the valleys, all have vanished. Here are pleasant green mounds, heights of grass forever stirring to the tune of the southwest winds; clear valleys, each with its gleam of water; grey stone villages, their walls flushing to a delicate pink in the sunlight; parish churches that have rung in and rung out Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian kings; manor houses that have waited for news from Naseby and Blenheim and Waterloo and Inkerman and Ypres, then have let their windows blaze through the night or have suddenly grown still and dark, but have kept their stones unchanged; and here and there, in the wider valleys, little woods where you could play A Midsummer Night's Dream, and gardens shaped and coloured, to the last inch of lawn cross-gartered with stone paths, from the tallest hollyhock to the smallest rosebush, for the music and happy folly of Twelfth Night. This is, indeed, another England, this green and windy outpost of Arden. Over to the west, beyond the deep channels of the rivers, is the Welsh Border country, a Celtic place, with hills as dark and mysterious as a fragment of Arthurian legend. But here, in the Cotswolds, all is open and pleasant, a Saxon tale of grass and grey stone, wind and clear running water. We have quitted the long war of the north. Here is a place of compromise, for Nature has planed off her sharp summits and laid down green carpets in place of bog and heather and rock, and man has forsworn his mad industrial antics, has settled himself modestly and snugly in the valleys and along the hillsides, has trotted out his sheep and put up a few tiny mills, and has been content. Yes, these two signed a peace here, and it has lasted a thousand years.

Chipping Campden is to the north of us, Cirencester to the south, Burford to the east, and Cheltenham to the west. This grey cluster of roofs, with the square church tower in the middle, is almost equidistant from all those four admirable townships. It is the village of Hitherton-on-the-Wole. Sometimes motorists, hurrying from lunch at Oxford to tea at Broadway or Chipping Campden, lose their way and find themselves at Hitherton, and the little books prepared for their use tell them at once that Hitherton has 855 inhabitants, closes early on Wednesday, empties its letter-box at 5: 30 p.m., boasts an hotel, The Shepherd's Hall (three bedrooms) and a garage, J. Hurley & Son, and has at least one thing worth looking at, for the account closes with the command -- See Church. Very few of them do stay to see the church, though the rector, the Rev. Thomas J. S. Chillingford, has not only written a short history of it but has also published this history as a pamphlet: "Reprinted from the ‘Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society' "; and any visitor who appreciates an extraordinarily fine rood-screen when he sees one (to say nothing of two possible leper-windows on the north side) cannot fail to obtain a copy of this pamphlet. But away they go, these motorists, and never once turn their heads to remark, with Mr. Chillingford, that the church "from a distance suggests a brooding-mother-bird with head erect. " Thus when any strange and expensive-looking motorcar stops there, everybody in Hitherton, with the exception of Mrs. Farley of The Shepherd's Hall and J. Hurley & Son, who are always hopeful, prepares at once to point the way to other and more important places.