Herefordshire is one of England’s most beautiful, least populated and most rural counties. Agriculture is the county’s biggest industry and 95 per cent of the county is rural with over half the population living in a rural area. The gentle, comforting landscape of orchards and patchwork fields has been shaped over centuries by numerous small farms that cluster around the county’s peerless black-and-white villages, from where local produce is taken to one of the county’s five picturesque market towns.

So, if it’s peace and quiet and the enduring loveliness of Olde England you want, then seek out Herefordshire. But you’d better be quick.

As a county of traditional small farms, Herefordshire is threatened by the Government’s inheritance tax overhaul, which may see the county’s age-old family smallholdings broken up, tenant farmers who have tended the land for generations evicted, fields given over to solar panels and housing estates, and the lovely towns and villages that depend upon them become mere theme parks to a lost England.

The best way to see the county is to take Herefordshire’s Black-and-White Village Trail, a 40-mile round trip from Leominster that winds through some of the prettiest places you could imagine.

Weobley (pronounced Webley) is black and white from end to end, although perhaps its most famous house, which greets you as you enter the village, is actually black and red. If Herefordshire could be said to have a third colour then it’s red, from the rich red sandstone soil to Hereford’s pink sandstone cathedral, the red apples and pears that produce over half the cider sold in Britain and the famously docile, much-admired red Hereford cattle.
It was a Weobley farmer, Benjamin Tomkins, who developed the breed in the 18th century from a bull calf called Silver and there are now over five million pedigree Herefords to be found across the globe.

Pembridge is all wood, from 15th-century half-timbered halls and inns with overhanging floors to the 16th-century Market House, a simple shingle roof supported by eight oak posts, and the 13th-century detached wooden church belfry resembling a pagoda and set upon eight massive oak pillars. To look up from inside the base at the forest of beams and timbers is quite an experience.

The Norman font in pretty Eardisley’s church, carved in 1150, has been described as “the best Romanesque font in England” and purportedly shows, amongst the birds and animals and Celtic knotwork patterns, Eardisley’s 12th-century Lord of the Manor, Sir Ralph Baskerville, seen here duelling with his father-in-law Lord Drogo.

Nearby is a memorial tablet to Sir William Barnsley, whose family were Lords of the Manor after the Baskervilles. Sir William became entangled in a squabble with his son over inheritance that lasted 34 years and helped provide Charles Dickens with inspiration for the long-running case Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House.

The ridiculously picturesque centre of Eardisland is grouped around a bridge over the River Arrow and includes Staick House, 14th century or older, Millstream Cottage, built as a school in 1652, and the Old Manor, 17th century with a red-brick Georgian facade protruding at the front. In the manor grounds, beside the river, is a superb 17th-century red-brick dovecote, now occupied by a visitor centre, while opposite stands the oldest AA box in existence, dating from the 1920s and rescued by an AA patrolman who lived in the village.

Each of Herefordshire’s five small towns are black and white, beautiful and abounding in tales. Leominster, the largest, boasts a Norman priory endowed by Lady Godiva. Here you can find England’s last ducking stool, used to determine if someone was a witch (if the victim drowned when ducked in the town pool, she was clearly not a witch; if she floated, she clearly was).

In Ledbury, “pleasant to the sight, fair and half-timbered houses black and white”, according to the poet John Masefield, who was born there in 1878, the view towards the church spire, “golden vane surveying half the shire” up narrow, cobbled Church Lane, overhung with bowed half-timbered houses, is a perfect snapshot of medieval England. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning grew up near Ledbury and her parents are buried in the church.

Just outside Bromyard is the National Trust’s much-photographed Lower Brockhampton Manor, a 14th-century moated farm house approached through a half-timbered gatehouse of 1530. The view across the lily-strewn moat of manor and gatehouse is Olde England at its most sublime.

A few miles further east, buried somewhere beneath the chancel of St John’s church in the village of Whitbourne, lies Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford, the first Englishman to take us to the moon. Whitbourne Court, next door to the church, was once a bishop’s palace and it was here, in around 1600, that Godwin wrote The Man in the Moone, the world’s first science-fiction book.

In the book his hero is flown to the moon in a chariot drawn by swans, and it speculates that the Earth in fact revolves around the sun, describes gravity, some 65 years before Isaac Newton saw the apple fall, and foresees manned flight and the wireless.

Kington, close to the border with Wales, is an important cattle market as well as home to Britain’s only maker of traditional clogs and England’s highest golf course, 1,300 ft above sea level. The town sits near Offa’s Dyke in the lee of Hergest Ridge, featuring on its southern slopes ancient Hergest Croft, surrounded by its colourful award-winning garden of 70 acres.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed at Hergest Croft and may have been inspired by the story of the Croft’s medieval landlord, the villainous Black Vaughan, whose restless spirit roamed the land in the guise of a black dog. Conan Doyle, so local lore relates, replaced the name of Vaughan with that of the Baskervilles of Eardisley and thus was born The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Ross-on-Wye sits on a cliff above a bend in the River Wye and revels in the title “birthplace of British tourism”. An 18th-century rector of Ross organised trips for his friends down the Wye to Chepstow that were described in Britain’s first tour guide, Observations on the River Wye, written by William Gilpin and published in 1782.

As well as Conan Doyle and Dickens, Herefordshire can be said to have influenced another writer, CS Lewis. At the head of the Golden Valley in the west of the county, stands Arthur’s Stone, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic tomb consisting of a huge, cracked capstone resting on nine upright stones, which gave Lewis the idea for the stone table on which Aslan the lion is sacrificed in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

With its abundant farmland, river valleys, pretty villages, half-timbered splendour, idyllic scenery, inspiring history and legends, surprising literary connections, unique country churches full with hidden treasures, Herefordshire is a rural paradise, enhanced and enriched by the love and toil and dedication of generations of traditional hard-working small farmers.

The Black and White Trail takes in some of the most famous and most beautiful of the Black and White Villages of Herefordshire.

There are however a multitude of wonderful Black and White houses just off the trail and in surrounding villages – drive down almost any road away from the trail and you will find more beautiful villages, more country and village pubs and more wonderful countryside.

Watch this space for further suggestions…

Completing the tour and making the most of the villages is a full day out – why not stay over and spread the tour over two days?

The are offers all types of accommodation and there are some wonderful tea-rooms, pubs and restaurants to explore and enjoy.

Take a day out to enjoy some of the prettiest villages in the UK.

The Black and White Trail will take you on a tour of some of the ‘must-see’ villages in Herefordshire.

Make sure you take time to stop at each village to explore the buildings and the lovely tea-rooms and village shops that you will find.

Check out our ‘Things to Do’ section to complete your day.

Launched today – blackandwhitetrail.org

This is a community website created for the villages and towns on and near the Black and White trail by John & Sue Hewitt of Ker-ching Web Design.

Local businesses, clubs, societies, churches etc can all advertise for free on this website.  Any businesses etc that supply goods or services etc to the area can also advertise for free.

Please feel free to create a listing for your business/club/society etc in the Local Businesses etc section.

It all happens on the Black and white Trail!  Local craft shows, village fetes and flower festivals, open studios during h.Art week,  photography,  seasonal festivals and much more… Find it listed here.

Got something to promote?  List it here free of charge.