Nelson's Heritage Walk Guy's Ciff and the Saxon Mill

"Nelson's Heritage Walk"

Compiled for the benefit of Warwickians and others by Anthony James Leahy

Guy's Ciff House 1899 (Alfred Barnard - Round About Warwick)

One mile from Warwick is Guys cliff, a spot which has formed a theme for admiration from earliest times. Leland, Dugdale, Fuller and Drayton have enthusiastically spoken of its glories; but who that ever saw it could adequately describe its avenue of majestic cedars, its caves, its rocks, its walks, its tranquillity and the beauty of the river!

"Here aged trees cathedral walks compose" Cowper.

Near to the present mansion, built by the Greathead family, stands the ancient chapel built in the reign of Henry VI by Richard Beauchamp, who erected therein a colossal statue of Guy, the goodly knight whose deeds have been chanted by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Drayton, and a host of others. The latter thus sings:-

"Tow'rds Warwick with her train as Avon trips along,

to Guy-cliff being come, her nymphs thus bravely sang to thee,

renowned knight, continued praise we owe."

There is also Guy's Well and Guy's Cave, also an old mill on a site noticed in the time of the Conquest. What a dainty place the mill of Guy's Cliff is! Never was such a mill seen before. Picture to yourself a long building shaped in the quaintest fashion, with a recessed open gallery by pillars running along the whole front, a water-wheel at each end, with a road-way in front, separated from the river by a wall of unhewn stones, and you have the mill before you. Altogether, Guy's Cliff is one of the very loveliest that can anywhere be found.

This cliff was the solitary retreat for some years of the celebrated Guy, Earl of Warwick, and contains the cave hewn in the rock near the bend of the river in which he is said to have lived in retirement and devotion, and where he was buried. Tradition says, Guy assumed the disguise of a hermit, and daily visited the castle in which his Countess resided ignorant of his destiny, to whom he made himself known only a few days before his death. The Avon winds beautifully around the base of the cliff and through the grounds, which abound with shady groves and other charming objects of rural scenery.