Oak, which, according to tradition, “the irregular and wild Glendower”
ascended to reconnoitre the state of the contending armies on the
Battlefield; but finding that the king was making a powerful head, and
had “beat down young Harry Hotspur and his troops,” he precipitately
retreated with his army into Wales. This majestic veteran of the forest,
“Whose boughes are moss’d with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,”
is completely hollow; many of the greater arms are dead, and the whole is
fast falling to decay. Whatever be the degree of credit due to the
tradition, certain it is there is positive evidence in a paper dated
1543, preserved among the title deeds of the Waring family, that this
tree was esteemed a great one within 140 years of the Battle of
Shrewsbury, and an object of remark to old people long before. The
following are the dimensions:—girt at bottom, close to the ground,
forty-four feet three inches; ditto, five feet from the ground,
twenty-five feet one inch; ditto, eight feet from the ground,
twenty-seven feet four inches; height to the top of the main trunk, or
principal bough, forty-one feet six inches.
[Picture: Shelton Oak]
A little beyond this, on the Welsh Pool road, is Christ Church, Oxon,
consecrated October 3rd, 1854, for a district comprising several outlying
portions of the Parishes of St. Chad and St. Julian.
Immediately opposite is the Lunatic Asylum for the Counties of Salop and
Montgomery, erected after a design by Messrs. Scott.