Two settlements beside the Dene
Wellesbourne grew from two settlements on opposite sides of the River Dene: Hastings and Mountford. Their names came from medieval lordships, but they shared St Peter’s Church. Separate parish councils survived until a merger in 1947. Farming sustained both the village and specialist trades around it, including saddlers, smiths and wheelwrights; a rural economy required skilled making and repair as well as labour in the fields. [3]
The yard that kept farming moving
Chedham’s Yard makes that interdependence unusually visible. Its family history dates Thomas Chedham’s arrival to 1816–17 and his tenancy of the Church Walk premises to 1823. Farming customers needed carts, wagons and implements repaired. By the 1860s his son Henry had added a corn-threshing service, linking workshop skills with machinery brought to the farms themselves. [4]
The business adapted as horses lost ground to engines. After 1922 paraffin-powered tractors replaced ageing steam engines for pulling threshing machines. The last machine returned to the yard for dismantling in 1964; the business closed after Albert Chedham’s death in 1965. His son Bill carried repair skills into farm employment elsewhere. The tools’ survival records a changing livelihood rather than a craft untouched by change. [4]
In September 2006 the yard won the BBC’s Restoration Village competition. County Council minutes describe a community-promoted project supported by museum staff, with potential Lottery investment dependent on meeting funding requirements. The work of preserving and interpreting the yard became a further use for a place once devoted to keeping agricultural equipment serviceable. [5]
Labourers organise, gardeners exhibit
In 1872 Joseph Arch addressed labourers beneath a tree in Wellesbourne. The County Record Office places the gathering at the beginning of the movement that formed the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union. Low pay and difficult working conditions gave the meeting its urgency. The location mattered because labourers could gather beyond their individual farms and recognise shared grievances. [6]
Cultivation also supported sociability and competition. The horticultural society traces its first public show to July 1857, with flowers and produce, a band and tea. Its 1924 programme distinguished amateurs, cottagers and allotment entries. After the Second World War, the two parish councils and the Women’s Institute discussed reviving the show, and an August 1947 event combined exhibits with sport, pony rides and dancing. Garden produce could thus become the centre of a wider village occasion. [7]
Arch’s connection remained something people enacted in the landscape. In February 2019 the Allotment Association announced a commemorative walk with Barford Heritage Group from his home village to Wellesbourne, with wreath-laying, music and festivities planned at the Stag’s Head. The Joseph Arch Way links the place where he lived with the place where he addressed the labourers. [2]
Training aircrews and researching crops
The airfield west of the village opened in April 1941. RAF training brought a changing population of aircrew, including Canadians, who learned their roles before joining operational squadrons. Southam Heritage’s account stresses the accidents associated with well-used training aircraft and the burials of Canadian personnel at Stratford-upon-Avon. The airfield’s story is therefore also one of temporary residence, risk and remembrance. [8] [9]
Post-war agriculture also acquired a new institutional form. The National Vegetable Research Station was established at Wellesbourne in 1949 in response to pressure to increase food production. Laboratories followed in 1959, and an Oxfam appeal helped support the vegetable gene bank built in 1980. Integration with the University of Warwick in 2004 continued the site’s research role. Local agriculture now included scientific experiments and conserved seed as well as the working traditions represented by Chedham’s Yard. [10]
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