The Malvern Hills, rising steeply from the flat and placid plains of Worcestershire, are one of England’s most beautiful pastoral landscapes. So peaceful are the views here that it’s hard to imagine that the surrounding lands were once the site of battles and bloodshed.
In the summer of 1642, the long-running battle of wills between Charles I and his English Parliament finally turned to open hostility – and a military skirmish a stone’s throw from the walled city of Worcester.
The Battle of Powick Bridge has the distinction of being the first confrontation between Royalist and Parliamentarian forces in what became the English Civil War.
In a strange case of symmetry, nine years, an estimated 200,000 deaths and the execution of a monarch later, the final clash between Roundheads and Cavaliers would also take place at Worcester.
It was here on 3 September 1651 that
