Great Malvern () is an area of the civil parish of Malvern, in the Malvern Hills district, in the county of Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, on the eastern flanks of the Worcestershire Beacon and North Hill, and is the historic centre of Malvern and includes its town centre.
It is a designated conservation area in recognition of the special architectural and historic interest of the area. The growth of Great Malvern began with the founding of an 11th-century priory. During the 19th century, it became a popular centre for hydrotherapy and swelled to include the bordering settlements of Barnards Green, Malvern Link with Link Top, Malvern Wells (South Malvern), North Malvern, and West Malvern. This urban area, along with the hills they surround and several villages, are collectively referred to as The Malverns.
Great Malvern is a seat of local government, being the location of the headquarters of Malvern Town Council, the Malvern Hills Conservators and Malvern Hills AONB Partnership, and Malvern Hills District Council. It has many of the town's amenities including the Malvern Theatres complex, the Priory Park, the Splash leisure and swimming complex, the main library, the police station, the tourist information centre, and the main post office.
Location Great Malvern is approximately south-west of the city of Worcester, on the eastern slopes of the Malvern Hills. The steep elevation of the town ranges from about 50 to 200 metres (164 to 656 feet) above sea level. The River Severn runs roughly north-south about to the east of the town.
Belle Vue Island (a public terraced garden on an "island" between roads) is the finishing point for the Worcestershire Way, a waymarked long-distance trail that runs from Bewdley to Great Malvern.
Town centre The town centre comprises two main streets at right angles to each other in a 'T': the steep Church Street and Bellevue Terrace, a relatively flat north–south extension of the A449 which forms Malvern's western extremity along the flank of the hills. In the heart of the town is a statue of the composer Edward Elgar, while other statuary is dedicated to Malvern water.
Among the many shops are two large modern supermarkets, both in Edith Walk, formerly a steep and unmade lane that served the rear entrances of the shops in Church Street. As well as traditional high street shops such as butchers, bakers, grocers etc., there are also cafés, bookshops, health food shops, art and craft shops, galleries, antique dealers, delis, restaurants, complementary therapists, charity shops, law firms, and estate agents. There is also a public library that includes access to many community services. On the Worcester to Hereford railway line is the Victorian Great Malvern station, a listed example of classical Victorian railway architecture close to the nearby former Imperial Hotel by the same architect, E. W. Elmslie.
There are many specimens of mature trees in Great Malvern. When Lady Foley, the widow of Edward Thomas Foley, sold off parts of her estate in the 1800s, she stipulated that all plots around the town centre should be planted with trees.
History Toponymy The name Malvern is first attested in a charter of around 1030, as Mælfern, and then in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Malferna. The name derives from the Common Brittonic words that survive in modern Welsh as ("bare") and ("hill"); thus it once meant "bare hill". The name perhaps applied originally to the hill now called Worcester Beacon, after which Great Malvern was then named. Additions corresponding to the Great part of Great Malvern, made to distinguish the settlement from Little Malvern, are first attested in 1228 (Magna Malverna, using the Latin word for "great") and 1521 (Moche Malv'ne, using the English word much). Great Malvern in turn then gave its name to the whole range of hills beside which it lies, the Malvern Hills., s.v. Great MALVERN..
Before the beginning of academic place-name studies, the name attracted some fanciful explanations. William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum suggests that the name comes from the Latin words ("badly") and ("flourishes"), implying that it meant "thrives poorly" and that this was used ironically because spiritual life in Malvern was so successful. Jabez Allies, a nineteenth-century antiquarian from Worcestershire, speculated that -vern derived from supposed Brittonic words sarn or varn meaning "pavement" or "seat of judgement".
Monastic Malvern
The town developed around its 11th-century priory, a Benedictine monastery, the remains of which make up some of the early parts of Great Malvern Priory, now a large parish church. Several slightly different histories explain the actual founding of the religious community. Legend tells that the settlement began following the murder of St. Werstan, a monk of Deerhurst, who escaped and fled through the Malvern Chase, finding sanctuary on the Malvern Hills and establishing a hermitage near St. Ann's Well.Severn Burrow, C.F: 1948, A little city set on the hill: the story of Malvern St Werstan's oratory is thought to have been located on the site of St Michael's Chapel, which is believed to have stood on the site of Bello Sguardo, a Victorian Villa. Bello Sguardo was built on the site of Hermitage Cottage. The cottage was demolished in 1825 and ecclesiastical carvings were found within it. An undercroft from the Middle Ages with human bones and parts of a coffin were also uncovered. Although the legend may be monastic mythology, historians have however concluded that St. Werstan was the original martyr. The first prior was Aldwyn, who founded the monastery on his bishop's advice, and by 1135 the monastery included thirty monks. Aldwyn was succeeded by Walcher of Malvern, an astronomer and philosopher from Lorraine, whose gravestone inside the priory church records details that the priory arose in 1085 from a hermitage endowed by Edward the Confessor. An ancient stained glass window in the Priory church depicts the legend of St. Werstan, with details of his vision, the consecration of his chapel, Edward the Confessor granting the charter for the site, and Werstan's martyrdom.
An 18th-century document states that in the 18th year of William's kingship (probably 1083), a priory was dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.Worcestershire Record Office, 899.601 BA 9155. Victoria County History describes how a hermit Aldwyn, who lived in the reign of Edward the Confessor, had petitioned the Earl of Gloucester for the original site (of the Priory) in the wood, and cites his source as "Gervase of Canterbury, Mappa Mundi (Rolls ser.)".Worcestershire Record Office, Bishop Guilford's Register of 1283, x713.093 BA 2648
Large estates in Malvern were part of crown lands given to Gilbert "the Red", the seventh Earl of Gloucester and sixth Earl of Hertford, on his marriage to Joan of Acre the daughter of Edward I, in 1290. Disputed hunting rights on these led to several armed conflicts with Humphrey de Bohun, 3rd Earl of Hereford, that Edward resolved. Nott states that Gilbert made gifts to the Priory, and describes his "great conflict" with Thomas de Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, also about hunting rights and a ditch that Gilbert dug, that was settled by costly litigation. Gilbert had a similar conflict with Godfrey Giffard, Bishop and Administrator of Worcester Cathedral (and formerly Chancellor of England. Godfrey, who had granted land to the Priory, had jurisdictional disputes about Malvern Priory, resolved by Robert Burnell, the current Chancellor.
A discussion in 2005 about the stained glass windows of Great Malvern Priory in terms of the relationship between Church and Laity stresses the importance of Malvern in the development of stained glass. It refers to "the vast and strategically important estates of which Malvern was a part" in the 15th and 16th centuries, to a widespread awareness of Great Malvern Priory, to the likelihood of a pilgrimage route through the town. The discussion also mentions Thomas Walsingham's view that Malvern was a hiding place of the Lollard knight Sir John Oldcastle in 1414. Chambers wrote, in relation to the stained glass, "the situation of Malvern was so much admired by Henry VII, his Queen (Elizabeth of York) and their two Sons, Prince Arthur, and Prince Henry" that they made substantial endowments.Also published in 2008 by Kessinger Publishing.
Post dissolution
During the Dissolution of the monasteries the local commissioners were instructed to ensure that, where abbey churches were also used for parish worship, they should continue or could be purchased by parishioners. Accordingly, Malvern Priory survived by being acquired by a William Pinnocke and with it, much of its 15th-century stained glass windows. The monastic buildings were taken apart and anything usable was sold off. With the exception of the church building (of which the south transept adjoining the monastery's cloisters was destroyed), all that remains of Malvern's monastery is the Abbey Gateway (also known as the Priory Gatehouse) that houses today's Malvern Museum.
Development as a spa (17th–19th centuries)
The health-giving properties of Malvern water and the natural beauty of the surroundings led to the development of Malvern as a spa, with resources for invalids and for tourists, seeking cures, rest and entertainment. Local legend has it that the curative benefit of the spring water was known in mediaeval times. The medicinal value and the bottling of Malvern water are mentioned "in a poem attributed to the Reverend Edmund Rea, who became Vicar of Great Malvern in 1612". Richard Banister, the pioneering oculist, wrote about the Eye Well,extracted from: Rose Garrard, Hill of Fountains, 2006. close to the Holy Well, in a short poem in his Breviary of the Eyes (see Malvern water), in 1622. In 1756, Dr. John Wall published a 14-page pamphlet on the benefits of Malvern water, that reached a 158-page 3rd edition in 1763. Further praise came from the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet in 1757, the poet Thomas Warton in 1790, and William Addison, the physician of the Duchess of Kent (mother of Queen Victoria) in 1828, all quoted in a review by the medical historian W.H. McMenemy. . Wall cited sectional p.1 (Vol. p.5). In his lecture about Malvern at the Royal Institution, Addison spoke of "its pure and invigorating air, the excellence of its water, and the romantic beauty of its scenery". Similar views appeared in the press, Nicholas Vansittart brought his wife Catherine to Malvern for a rest cure in 1809. Chambers, in his book about Malvern, praised Elizabeth, Countess Harcourt (daughter-in-law of the 1st Earl Harcourt), whose patronage contributed to the development of hillside walks.
Bottling and shipping of the Malvern water grew in volume. In 1842, Dr. James Wilson and Dr. James Manby Gully, leading exponents of hydrotherapy, set up clinics in Malvern (Holyrood House for women and Tudor House for men).Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, footnote 27 Gully bath house Malvern expanded rapidly as a residential spa. Several large hotels and many of the large villas in Malvern date from its heyday. Many smaller hotels and guest houses were built between about 1842 and 1875. By 1855 there were already 95 hotels and boarding houses and by 1865 over a quarter of the town's 800 houses were boarding and lodging houses. Most were in Great Malvern, the town centre, while others were in the surrounding settlements of Malvern Wells, Malvern Link, North Malvern and West Malvern.
Queen Adelaide visited St. Ann's Well in September 1842. "Throughout the 1840s and 1850s Malvern attracted a stream of celebrated visitors, including royalty." Patients included Charles Darwin,Charles Darwin, Recollections of the development of my mind and character, page sequence 157. Catherine, wife of Charles Dickens,