Stanway

Where should I take a visitor from Portugal to walk in the Cotswolds? This was the question I answered with "Stanway" yesterday. Parking alongside the railings beside the old chestnut avenue, you pass through what was once a typical village in these parts, all stone built, no motor homes on the driveway. There's the thatched cricket pavilion on staddle stones (designed for J.M. Barrie), the mansion with its five-sided bay window and garden wall pierced by paired oval windows, the magnificent gatehouse, built just before the Civil War, a 14th Century seven-bay tithe barn, the church with fragments of mediaeval sculpture in its churchyard wall, papermill, kissing gate, bronze war memorial with Gill lettering - and then the new avenue, stretching Southwards through the hamlet of Wood Stanway and up and over the escarpment.

Cricket memorabilia

Sorting through some old photographs a few days ago, I came across one of my grandfather's cricket team, Sutton Coldfield. I Googled the club, which is still flourishing, and, having just bought a new scanner, I was able to send a copy to them. Now they say they are interested in anything else from that era, so I have put together an on-line collection. It includes this rather blurred image of C.O. Gray and my grandfather (then 27) going out to open the batting for Sutton Coldfield v. Walsall, at the 1910 August Bank Holiday, a century ago. I particularly like the thatched pavilion in the background, which reminds me of J.M. Barrie's design of the same vintage which still graces the Stanway ground.