BRETFORTON VILLAGE, WORCESTERSHIRE

Bretforton is a rural village in Worcestershire, England. Bretforton is 4.4 miles (7.1 km) east of Evesham, in the Vale of Evesham. The village name has changed little over the centuries.

The earliest documented record of the town, a charter of 709, records it as Bretforton, the Saxon 'Ton' a modern spelling of the Saxon (Germanic) 'tun' which meant enclosure or village.

The settlement is distinguished historically by an unusual system of land ownership. In the 16th century, following the dissolution of the monasteries (and Evesham Abbey) in the 1540s, the Manor was sold to the tenants and a new class of land-owning yeomen was set up. Some of them built the houses still standing here, either of stone with mullioned windows or timber-framed.

Owned by the National Trust, The Fleece Inn was originally built in the early 15th century as a longhouse by a prosperous yeoman farmer called Byrd. A longhouse is an early type of farmhouse which incorporated accommodation for livestock on the ground floor, alongside the family's living quarters. 

This particular longhouse later became a pub and was rebuilt in the 17th century, but remained in the Byrd family until 1977 when Lola Taplin bequeathed it to the National Trust. 

Lola was a direct descendant of Mr Byrd and lived her entire life at the Fleece. She died at 83, having run the pub on her own for the last 30 years of her life. 

A curious mediaeval tradition also survives at the Fleece, preserved in accordance with Lola's wishes. This is the practice of chalking "witch circles" on the floor in front of each hearth to prevent witches from getting in through the chimneys. There are "witch marks" on the inside of the door as well to ward off evil spirits.

The BBC has also used The Fleece Inn and the surrounding village green for its 1993 £5 million production of Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit where the pub was renamed the "Green Dragon" for the duration of shooting.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretforton