Sh^ MooIIiopc llaturalisfs' SkU ^hh. 



HEREFORD FOR HAMPTON COURT ESTATE. 



Mat 22nd, 1868. 



The first meeting for the year of the Woolhope Club took place on 



Friday, and was very successfuL It was pleasant in prospect, an enjoyable day, 



and has left behind it a bright recollection. There is always a freshness and 



pleasure peculiar to itself in the Sjiring meeting, vegetation is full of life, flowers 



are thickly scattered on every side, the grass tints are lovely, the foliage has 



all the beauty of youth, and it is impossible to resist the exhilarating influence 



of everything around you. 



"One moment now may give ns more 

 Than fifty years of reason ; 

 Our minds drink in at every pore 

 The spirit of the Season." 



As the members of the Club left the train at the Ford Bridge Station and 

 entered the fields, there was a general cheerfulness which showed they did not 

 wish to make any undue resistance to the day's enjoyment. A small advance 

 guard had already inspected the ancient mansion of Wharton, where they had 

 been very kindly received by Mr. J. Meredith, its present occupant. The man- 

 sion is interesting as one of the few pure examples of the style of the end of 

 the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, commonly known as Jacobsean, 

 of which the Coningsby hospitals, in Hereford, are a notable example. It is a 

 stone building, in excellent preservation. AVTiarton, anciently Waeg-faru-tun — 

 the town by the side of the water way— is further noticeable as one of the few 

 houses which retain, in a modified form, their ancient names, and illustrate 

 the true meaning of the word tun, i.e., a single house with a fortification of some 

 kind round it There has never been a village or even a parish of Wharton, yet 

 it remains a genuine town in the true sense of the word. The occurrence of the 



