The hill is the last outcrop of the Cotswold range,
and if you climb to the top on a clear day
you are rewarded with splendid views across
the Vale of Evesham as far as the Malvern
Hills.
On the south side are traces of ramparts, possibly dating back to the Neolithic Age, whilst to the south-west are the remains of an Iron Age hill fortress. This is borne out by the discovery in the 19th century of a large hoard of iron currency.
There is curious legend which says that tn the eighth century the devil sat on Meon Hill and kicked a huge stone at the recently founded Evesham Abbey, but that the prayers of its saintly founders so upset the devil’s aim that the stone fell on Cleeve Hill, outside Cheltenham, where it was shaped into the base of a cross. This totally confounded the evil one!
In more recent times—the 1940s—a field on the lower slopes was the scene of a murder The victim, a poor homeless old farm labourer, was found beneath a pear tree stabbed through the chest with his own fagging hook with which he had been laying a hedge. All police enquiries —house-to-house and at the local prisoner-of-war camp—led nowhere. The arrival of an elderly lady, announcing that she was an authority on witchcraft, produced a crop of wild rumours: the pear tree became an oak; the sign of the cross, it was stated, was cut on the victim’s chest; a phantom black dog had been seen in the vicinity; and there were a number of other phenomena. The people of Quinton were outraged. Witchcraft, even amongst the oldest inhabitants, had never been mentioned. The case was never solved although many people had their suspicions. Certainly it had nothing to do with witchcraft.
The villages of Upper and Lower Quinton go back in history. Thirty years before Alfred the Great became king, in AD 871, King Egbert founded the nunnery of Polesworth, north of Birmingham. Its first abbess was his sister, who subsequently set up a second foundation at the foot of Meon Hill. The Saxon word for woman was “quean,” and the village growing around the nunnery became known as Queanstun. The Domesday Book has it as Quenintune, which later became Quinton.
In Lower Quinton are a number of old houses. Opposite the church is a half-timbered house from the Elizabethan age. It had previously been four small cottages. The village pub, The College Arms was originally a farmhouse and, although the interior was not changed, became a public house. Change began when the licensee, Charlie Robbins, retired, and Ted Lawrence became the manager, and, in what is now the lounge, an ugly Victorian grate was removed to reveal a fine open fireplace is famous for its' bacon and eggs.
The church, with its tall steeple, is dedicated to St Swithin (best known perhaps for his supposed influence on the weather). It is a landmark for many miles around and represents many styles of architecture. Worthy of note in the inside is the effigy of a knight, recumbent beneath an arch in the south aisle. He is Sir William Clopton, a wealthy landowner with estates in four counties and the Welsh Marches. When he died his wife took a vow of perpetual widowhood and lived for the remainder of her life as an anchorite in a cell near to the church. The windows, bearing heraldic arms, are by Geoffrey Webb, who is also the, artist for the window in the south aisle—the children’s window. It is the result of a visit to the school by the artist who asked the pupils to name their favourite birds and insects, which are portrayed in the windows, as are the pixies, nominated by the young scholars. The earliest church registers, dating from 1547, include the year 1556 when, because of smallpox, there were 58 burials, about one quarter of the entire population at that time.