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Set in the lovely limestone country, a mile from the River Dover and the Staffordshire border, is this cluster of homes, an old church and a great house with gables and windows telling us it is from the 17th century.
To this secluded spot a wanderer found his way some 400 years ago. He was Thomas Becon, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer and Protector Somerset, a preacher who preached himself from Canterbury Cathedral into the Tower of London. Free once more, he sought obscurity in travel and found shelter here for a year with John Alsop.
The Alsops were lords of the manor for 500 years until 1688,and until 200 years later their descendants were again in the old home. The small church, with a tower of 1883, has a Norman doorway with unusual moulding like two rows of zigzag and a little Norman window in the south wall. The sides of the pointed chancel arch, and the crudely shaped piscina niche, are believed to be Norman also.
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