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Bladys of the Stewponey

by Sabine BARING-GOULD (1834 - 1924)

Chapter 01 - Oyez!

The setting, geography and history of this story by Rev'd Sabine Baring-Gould, author of Onward Christian Soldiers and a number of other well-known hymns, are all accurate, or at least as accurate as local lore will allow. Kinver has long been a midlands beauty spot, and the UK National Trust own and open one of the rock-dwellings mentioned. The 'Stewponey' too was an inn until a year or two into the twenty-first century: http://www.blackcountrybugle.co.uk/News/Reminder-of-the-heyday-of-the-old-Stewponey-2.htm - the present reader having stopped there for a drink and a meal many times. The story, whether you call it a romance, a historical novel or a horror story - comprising as it does a young woman being offered as a prize in a bowling match, a wife-burning, highwaymen and buried treasure - is of course wholly fiction. (Introduction by AJM)

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Listen next episodes of Bladys of the Stewponey:
Appendix - Burning for Petty Treason , Chapter 02 - In the Cellar , Chapter 03 - Crispin , Chapter 04 - The Bowling Green , Chapter 05 - The Jack , Chapter 06 - A Mad Wedding , Chapter 07 - Stand! Deliver! , Chapter 08 - The Rock Tavern , Chapter 09 - Nan , Chapter 10 - Castle Foregate , Chapter 11 - A White Devil , Chapter 12 - Petty Treason , Chapter 13 - The Last in England , Chapter 14 - A Challenge , Chapter 15 - Vashti , Chapter 16 - Drie , Chapter 17 - Kynaston's Cave , Chapter 18 - A Crooked Finger , Chapter 19 - A Second Flight , Chapter 20 - The Tally Stick , Chapter 21 - A Protector , Chapter 22 - Holy Austin Rock , Chapter 23 - Meg-A-Fox Hole , Chapter 24 - At The Rock Foot , Chapter 25 - Nan, Farewell! , Chapter 26 - The Crooked Finger Again