AN AMBITIOUS scheme for a funicular railway from Malvern to the top of the Worcestershire Beacon was under consideration at this time exactly a century ago.

Crowquill, in his Journal comment column for this week of 1900, explained: "A topic of interesting conversation in Malvern is a project for a funicular railway to the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon.

"It is understood that a London syndicate with ample means has such a scheme under consideration, but so far as can be ascertained their project has not even reached the stage of plans.

"The syndicate have announced their readiness to avoid anything unsightly in their operations - an indispensable condition, for it is clear from the attitude of the Malvern Hills Conservators that they will not contemplate anything which might detract from the natural beauty of the hills.

"It is questionable whether a railway of this kind would find favour with the class of visitors whom it is desired to attract to Malvern, from some of whom there was loud protest as to the paths which were lately made to facilitate progress up the hills - pleasant paths which Mrs Lynn Linton, in her own vigorous way, called 'cockneyfied terraces.'

"It is not everyone who has the energy to negotiate the gentle slopes of the Malverns and to climb the 1,200 feet. And it is not every visitor to Malvern who has the leisure. Whether it is in the interests of either or both classes that such a railway is desirable is a debatable matter.

''Whether a railway is possible without disfigurement of the hills is also a point which may be left open until plans are forthcoming."

In view of the acute class-consciousness and snobbery of late Victorian society and reactionary attitudes in general, it is perhaps little wonder the funicular railway did not materialise and that people continued for years afterwards to climb the Worcestershire Beacon on foot or astride the many donkeys for hire!

Crowquill, in the same Journal edition of 100 years ago, referred glowingly to the picturesque village of Cropthorne, near Evesham.

"Amy Bell, a writer in the national magazine 'The Amateur Photographer', speaks of Cropthorne as the village which charms her most of all villages in England, and she gives some very good views of it in the current number of the magazine.

''She praises its pure air and stresses that it is, at present, unspoilt by the vulgar crowd. 'I hope it may long remain so,' she writes.

"Coincidentally, Mr Ernest Parton, a landscape painter, in complying with a request of the editor of a cycling journal to name the prettiest village in England, wrote: 'I think I should give preference to Cropthorne on the Avon as being the most typically English village with its old, quaint thatched cottages, looking almost the same now as of old."

The Journal of 1900 also carried a brief item saying that Walter Grundy, a Worcester butcher and cattle dealer, had won the first and third prizes for "horse-leaping" at a show in Dudley. He was a cousin of my grandfather, but goodness only knows what "horse-leaping" was!

Two hundred years ago this week, the Journal looked forward to the Three Choirs Festival at Worcester in September 1800.

"The Conductor, Mr Pitt has chosen a new sacred oratorio to be performed in the Cathedral. Entitled 'The Creation," it is the production of Doctor Haydn, Master of the Royal Chapel at Vienna.

''According to reports from the Continent, no musical composition has ever excited more curiosity or commanded greater success. The composer has already made 15,000 florins by it and disposed of 1,570 copies of it at three ducats each."