Bewdley - Beales Corner

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Many thanks to the folks at The Courtyard Restaurant for facilitating this camera's location at Beales Corner and to Worcestershire County Council  for capitally funding its installation.  Please click here for flooding information regarding this location. The B4190 often floods at Beales Corner, when the River Severn is in full spate. Mesolithic-period settlers have been identified through excavations in Wribbenhall, which found 1,400 fragments of flint tools, as well as post holes, a hearth, gullies and a pit. This site has been dated to roughly 6,800 BC, making it the oldest settlement yet identified in Worcestershire. Pollen evidence shows that crops were already being grown and woodlands cleared at this time. The settlement of Wribbenhall, on the eastern side of the Severn, and now part of Bewdley, was recorded in the Domesday Book as being part of the manor of Kidderminster. By the 14th century, the town had come to be known as Beau lieu, French for "Beautiful place." Two centuries later John Leland wrote in his Itinerary that "a man cannot wish to see a towne better". Bewdley was granted borough status, as well as a weekly market, by King Edward IV in 1472. It retained this status until the local government reorganisation in 1974. A parliamentary report of 1777 listed Bewdley as having a parish workhouse accommodating up to 80 inmates. During the Second World War, Ribbesford House in Bewdley was used as the headquarters for the Free French officer cadets. The cadets consisted of 200 teenagers who undertook military training at Ribbesford House until they joined with other allied forces in the D Day invasion.