This week Gerry Brooke heads towards Wick and the South Gloucestershire village of Abson.

Abson, in case you have difficulty finding it, is located between the South Gloucestershire villages of Wick and Pucklechurch.

It’s unusual name is derived from Abbots Ton – that is, a place belonging to an abbot, in this case the Abbot of Glastonbury,

The manor of Pucklechurch, which once included Abson, was given to the monks after the savage murder of King Edmund in nearby Kingswood forest.

Once called Abston, the name was later shortened to the present day, Abson.

In time honoured fashion the houses and farms are clustered around a small village green.

Dedicated to St James the Great, Abson’s church is a listed building, as are the churchyard walls and many of the graves.

Up on the wall of the chancel, though hard to see, is a phallic figure of either Norman or Saxon work which may once have been part of a cross.

Intricate stone knotwork would also suggest that a Saxon church once stood here.

Inside the you will find an early 17th century pulpit complete with sounding board.

The neighbouring farmhouse, stables and barn, now converted into homes, are all Grade II listed.

Nearby Blue Lodge, built on the site of a royal hunting lodge, was once home to Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty.

The Sewell family lived here for six years from 1858, before moving to Bath.

Some of the fictional incidents in Black Beauty, it’s said, can be traced back to things that Anna experienced while living in Abson.

Her mother, Mary, was a prolific writer of children’s poems and stories.

A tear-jerking ballad, Mother’s Last Words, sold more than a million copies.

And one of her poems, The Little Forester, was set in ancient Kingswood forest.

Mary started mothers’ meetings, a working men’s club and a lending library at nearby Wick, and Anna would ride there three nights a week to teach writing and natural history.

Those gruelling trips in the dark no doubt inspired Anna’s description of coachman John Manley’s eight mile dash on Black Beauty to fetch a doctor.

And it was while at Blue Lodge that Anna witnessed a groom exercising a lively horse which slipped on wet ground.

Thrown under the wheels of a passing cart the man was killed.

This incident appears in print as the death of Reuben Smith, the drunken groom who cruelly rode Black Beauty along a stony road without shoes.

Black Beauty came out in 1877 but within a few months Anna Sewell was dead, aged just 57.

In the first year alone, the book sold an amazing 100,000 copies.

It went on to become one of the top five best sellers of all time.