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[Illustration: Map.]
MOTOR TOURS IN WALES AND THE BORDER COUNTIES
[Illustration: VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.
_Frontispiece_]
MOTOR TOURS IN WALES & THE BORDER COUNTIES
by
MRS. RODOLPH STAWELL
With Photographs by R. De S. Stawell
Boston
L. C. Page & Company
1909
CONTENTS
I PAGE
SHROPSHIRE 1
II
NORTH WALES 65
III
THE HEART OF WALES 135
IV
SOUTH WALES 163
V
WYE VALLEY 223
ILLUSTRATIONS
VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
LUDLOW CASTLE 4
THE FEATHERS HOTEL, LUDLOW 5
TUDOR DOORWAY, LUDLOW CASTLE 6
THE ROUND CHAPEL, LUDLOW CASTLE 7
ENTRANCE TO HALL IN WHICH “COMUS” WAS FIRST PERFORMED 10
STOKESAY CASTLE 11
OLD STREET IN SHREWSBURY 22
RICHARD BAXTER’S HOUSE, EATON CONSTANTINE 23
BUILDWAS ABBEY 28
MADELEY COURT 29
HAUGHMOND ABBEY 38
WENLOCK PRIORY, ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL 39
WENLOCK PRIORY, CHAPTER HOUSE 42
BISHOP PERCY’S BIRTHPLACE, BRIDGNORTH 43
WHITTINGTON CASTLE 64
THE LLEDR VALLEY, FROM THE HOLYHEAD ROAD 65
THE OLD CHAPEL, BETTWS-Y-COED 82
THE LLUGWY AT BETTWS-Y-COED 83
CONWAY CASTLE 90
THE PASS OF NANT FFRANCON 91
THE MENAI BRIDGE, FROM ANGLESEY 102
CARNARVON CASTLE 103
DOLBADARN CASTLE 106
SNOWDON, FROM CAPEL CURIG 107
NEAR BEDD GELERT 120
GATEWAY OF HARLECH CASTLE 121
THE MAWDDACH, FROM TYN-Y-GROES HOTEL 134
LLANIDLOES 135
ARCHWAY AT STRATA FLORIDA 148
NEAR GLANDOVEY 149
THE MAYOR’S HOUSE, MACHYNLLETH 156
THE RIVER DULAS 157
THE PASS OF CORRIS, NEAR TAL-Y-LLYN 158
BALA LAKE 159
CAERPHILLY CASTLE 172
BEAUPRÉ CASTLE 173
EWENNY PRIORY 180
NEATH ABBEY 181
BRECON 186
GATEWAY, KIDWELLY CASTLE 187
GOSCAR ROCK, TENBY 196
MANORBIER CASTLE, NEAR TENBY 197
ENTRANCE TOWER, PEMBROKE CASTLE 202
PEMBROKE COAST 203
CAREW CASTLE 208
ST. DAVID’S CATHEDRAL AND RUINS OF THE BISHOP’S PALACE 209
ST. MARY’S COLLEGE, ST. DAVID’S 212
ST. DAVID’S CATHEDRAL: INTERIOR 213
KILGERRAN CASTLE, NEAR CARDIGAN 222
THE WYE NEAR ITS SOURCE 223
CONFLUENCE OF THE WYE AND THE MARTEG NEAR RHAYADER 234
HEREFORD 235
THE PREACHING CROSS, HEREFORD 238
ROSS FROM WILTON 239
MONNOW BRIDGE, MONMOUTH 250
RAGLAN CASTLE, ENTRANCE TOWER 251
THE MOAT, RAGLAN CASTLE 254
LLANTHONY PRIORY 255
INTERIOR OF LLANTHONY PRIORY, SHOWING THE EAST END 258
TINTERN ABBEY 259
TINTERN ABBEY 266
CHEPSTOW CASTLE 267
Much of the material of this book has appeared in the _Car Illustrated_,
and is here reproduced by the kind consent of Lord Montagu.
SHORT RUNS IN SHROPSHIRE
There was once a tramp who said--“Och, now, it’s true what I’m tellin’
ye; I never got a bit o’ good out o’ me life till I took to the road!”
He was quite serious about it. He was a nice tramp, with a fine sense
of romance and a large trust in the future, and on this first day of
the tour his words ring in my head above the rush of the wind and
the throbbing of the engine. For though all the days will be good,
this first day is surely the best. To be on the road again; to have
one’s luggage behind one and all the world in front; to watch the
villages slipping by and mark their changing character; to saunter
through strange towns and swing across great, desolate moorlands; to
pause at some attractive inn, or eat sandwiches and sunshine by the
wayside--this is the first day. History and the camera must wait; the
first day must be given up to the sheer joy of the road.
So, as we shall not be able to hurry in Shropshire, seeing that there
history cannot be ignored, we shall do well to cross its border in the
evening, and spend the night in Ludlow. We will drop gently down the
hill by Ludford House, and cross the Teme when the light is growing
dim, and we can only tell by the deepening of the shadows in the trees
on the left that the castle stands among them. Then we will climb a
short, steep hill into the town through the only one of the old gates
that is still standing, turn to the right through the Bull Ring, and
draw up before the famous carved front of the “Feathers.”
[Illustration: LUDLOW CASTLE.]
[Illustration: THE FEATHERS HOTEL, LUDLOW.]
Here in this little town, in its historic inn, in its church and its
great castle, we may find the concentrated essence, as it were, of the
glamour of Shropshire--that borderland where the local stories have
helped to make the history of England, and the quiet towns have seen
wild deeds of courage and horror, and the fields have been red with
blood; where every tiny village has its own tale of love or battle,
of fair lady or fugitive king. This very house, the “Feathers,” has a
world of romance in its timbered walls and panelled rooms, for it is
far older than the beautiful Jacobean chimney-piece before which we
shall presently dine. These moulded ceilings and elaborate carvings,
it is said, were once the property of a member of that Council of the
Welsh Marches that Edward IV. established to bring order into the
affairs of this stormy neighbourhood, where the “Lords Marchers” had
hitherto taken what they chose, and kept it if they could. It is said
that the English King once asked by what warrant the Lords Marchers
held their lands. “By this warrant,” said one of them grimly, drawing
his sword--and the inquiry went no further.
The President of this Council lived in the great castle that still
stands so imposingly above the Teme, with its outer and inner baileys,
its Norman keep and curious round chapel, and all its long, long
memories.
[Illustration: TUDOR DOORWAY, LUDLOW CASTLE.]
[Illustration: THE ROUND CHAPEL, LUDLOW CASTLE.]
Within these grey walls we may dream of many things, both pitiful and
gay: of all the children who have played and the poets who have written
here; of young Prince Arthur, who died here; of his bride, Katherine
of Arragon; of poor Princess Mary--“my ladie Prince’s grace,” as they
called her quaintly--the Queen of blood and tears. Edward IV. and his
brother Edmund, dressed in green gowns, played in these courts as boys,
and wrote a letter to their “right noble lord and father,” begging
him daily to give them his hearty blessing, and to send them some
fine bonnets by the next sure messenger; and here on the right is the
roofless tower whose crumbling walls are haunted by the most touching
memories in all Ludlow. For these weed-grown stones have echoed to the
voices of Edward IV.’s little sons, who lived and laughed here with no
thought of that grimmer Tower that is connected for ever with their
names. There is still existing a wonderful letter written by the
King to “his Castle of Lodelowe,” in which he gives the most minute
instructions as to the education and general deportment of the Prince
of Wales--not forgetting the baby’s bedtime. His Majesty, indeed, was
definite on all points.
“We will that our said son have his breakfast immediately after his
mass; and between that and his meat to be occupied in such virtuous
learning as his age shall suffer to receive.”
His age at this time was three years. Not only was the virtuous
learning to occupy him from breakfast till dinner, but during the
latter meal “such noble stories as behoveth to a prince to understand
and know” were to be read aloud to him; and “after his meat, in
eschewing of idleness,” he was to be “occupied about his learning”
again. It is a relief to read that after his supper he was to
have “all such honest disports as may be conveniently devised for
his recreation.” At eight o’clock his attendants were “to enforce
themselves to make him merry and joyous towards his bed”; and, indeed,
after so hard a day of virtuous learning and noble stories and honest
disports, the poor child must have been glad to get there!
Later on, when Sir Henry Sidney was President of the Council, this
ground where we are standing was trodden by his son Philip, the pattern
of chivalry, who “fearde no foe, nor ever fought a friend”; and it was
through that doorway at the top of the inclined plane--then a flight of
marble steps--that little Lady Alice Egerton, not knowing that she was
on her way to immortality, passed on the evening that she took part in
the first performance of _Comus_, which Milton had written for her.
It is curious that in this venerable town so many of our thoughts
should be claimed by the very young. Ludlow Castle, as one sits
here thinking of the past, seems to be peopled with the ghosts of
children. And even in the church whose great tower gives Ludlow so
distinguished an air, the church where the solemn Councillors of the
Marches have their pompous tombs, we find the grave of Philip Sidney’s
little sister. “Heare lyethe the bodye of Ambrozia Sydney, iiijth
doughter of the Right Honourable Syr Henrye Sydney ... and the Ladye
Mary his wyef.” It is sometimes said, too, that Prince Arthur, Henry
VII.’s young son, is buried here, but this is not the case. There is a
cenotaph that was, perhaps raised in his memory, but his body was taken
to Worcester Cathedral.
These are the gentler memories of Ludlow. Of the fiercer kind there is
no lack, from the old fighting days of the de Lacy who built the keep,
and the de Dinan who built the round chapel, down through centuries of
siege and battle to the time of the Civil War, when the King’s flag
flew here longer than on any other castle of Shropshire.
Ludlow might well be chosen as a centre for motor drives in
Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire. But for the moment we
are concerned with Shropshire only, and the centre of that county, in
every sense, is Shrewsbury; and so, sad though it is to leave Ludlow
so soon, we must glide away down the steep pitch beyond the door of
the “Feathers,” past the railway station, past the racecourse, and
over the twenty-nine miles of excellent and level road that lie between
Ludlow and Shrewsbury.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO HALL IN WHICH “COMUS” WAS FIRST PERFORMED.]
The first village on this road, Bromfield, is very typical of the
villages of Shropshire at their best. The black-and-white cottages seem
to have been set in their places with an eye to pictorial effect; the
stream and bridge are exactly in the right spot; and to complete the
picture, a beautiful old gatehouse stands a little way back from the
road. It is built half of stone, half of timber and plaster, and was
once the gateway of a Benedictine Priory which is mentioned in Domesday
Book as being of some importance. It leads now to the church, and is
one of those unexpected touches of beauty and interest that may meet
one’s eye at any turn of a Shropshire road.
[Illustration: STOKESAY CASTLE.
_Photo by W. D. Haydon._]
At Onibury we cross the line and the river Onny, and about a mile and
a half further on we should begin to look for Stokesay Castle on the
left. As it is a little way from the main road, and partly hidden by
trees, it is easy to miss it when travelling at a good pace; but
it is perhaps the most attractive ruin in Shropshire from an artist’s
point of view, and should on no account be neglected. It is really a
fortified house rather than a castle, and the mingling of the warlike
with the domestic gives it a peculiar charm. The northern end, with its
irregular roof and overhanging upper storey, the “Solar Room,” with its
magnificent carved chimney-piece, and even the timbered gateway, are
all merely suggestive of a dwelling-house; and it is only when we turn
to the curious polygonal tower that we remember how in the old days an
Englishman’s house was either very literally his castle or was likely
to become some other Englishman’s house at an early date. As far as I
know, however, the only time that Stokesay had to make any use of its
defences was when it was garrisoned for the King during the Civil War,
and on that occasion it seems to have yielded without much ado.
It is by very pleasant ways that this road is leading us--between
wooded hills and over quiet streams. The valley narrows and is at
its prettiest near Marshbrook and Little Stretton; then the pointed
hill of Caradoc became conspicuous, and beyond it the famous Wrekin
appears--famous not for its beauty, but because, being in the centre of
the county, it can be seen by nearly every one in Shropshire, and so
has gathered round it the sentiment of all Salopian hearts. “To friends
all round the Wrekin!” is the famous Shropshire toast, and there,
far away to the right, is the isolated rounded hill that means so
much to those born within sight of it. At Stretton we leave the hills
and wooded valleys behind us, and pass through a few miles of rather
dull country. It is at the village of Bayston Hill that we first see,
dimly blue against a background of hills, the slender spires--almost
unrivalled in beauty--of that fair town which long ago the Welsh named
_Y Mwythig_, the Delight.
The history of Shrewsbury is stirring, and very, very long. When
England was still in the making she stood there on her hill, looking
down at the encircling river that has defended her for so many
centuries. Nearly every street is connected in some way with history;
every second house is haunted by some great name. Many large and solemn
books have been written about Shrewsbury, and not one of them is
dull. Even in these few hundred yards between the river and our hotel
how many memories there are! As we turn on to the English Bridge to
cross the Severn we should glance backwards to the right at the red
tower and great west window of the Abbey founded by the Conqueror’s
kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, a man of mark; and then, having crossed
the steep rise and fall of the bridge, we climb into the heart of the
town by the hill called the Wyle Cop. It was up this steep hill that,
not so very long ago, the London coach used to dash, turning into the
yard of the Lion Hotel at a pace that is still spoken of with awe
and admiration. If we were to do the like we should probably have to
pay five pounds and costs, so we will ascend the Cop in a way more
conducive to dreaming of the past: of Harry Tudor on his way to “trye
hys right” at Bosworth, with the welcoming citizens strewing flowers
before him; of the more stately procession that wound up the hill when
he came back as Henry VII. with his Queen and young Prince Arthur; of
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his stepson Essex, after their
reception by bailiffs and aldermen, “and other to the number of xxiiij
scarlet gowns, with the scollars of the freescoole,” listening wearily
“at the upper end of the Wylde Coppe,” to three orations! Henry Tudor,
when he reached the Wyle Cop, was glad to take shelter for the night
in that picturesque little black-and-white house with the overhanging
top storey and the tiled roof--it is on the left, rather more than
half-way up the hill--for he had not won his way into the town without
difficulty. “The gates weare shutt against him and the portculleys lett
downe,” and a bailiff of the town--“a stout, wise gentleman,” we are
told--vowed that Henry should only enter over his prostrate body. So,
when Henry had made it clear that he did not mean to hurt the town,
“nor none therein,” the only way for the stout, wise gentleman to keep
his word was by lying down on the ground and allowing his future king
to step over him. Thus did Henry of Richmond come in triumph to the
little house on the Wyle.
If we are going to the “Raven,” or the “Crown,” as is probable, we
turn to the right near the top of the hill, and pass the beautiful old
timbered house--which stands on the right hand, a little back from the
street--where Princess Mary stayed on her way to Ludlow after she had
been created _Prince_ of Wales; and a little further up, on the left,
is the many-gabled house where Prince Rupert lived for a time when he
was here with Charles I. On each side of us rises one of the slender
spires that are the pride of Shrewsbury. St. Alkmund’s Church, on the
left, was founded by Alfred’s daughter Ethelfleda, known as the Lady
of the Mercians; a lady, it would seem, of some force. “A woman of
an enlarged soul,” William of Malmesbury calls her; and adds: “This
spirited heroine assisted her brother greatly with her advice, and was
of equal service in building cities.” It is gravely recorded in a
serious chronicle that in 1533 “the dyvyll apearyd in Saint Alkmond’s
Churche there when the preest was at highe masse with greate tempest
and darknes, so that as he passyd through the churche he mountyd up the
steeple in the sayde churche, teringe the wyer of the sayde clocke, and
put the prynt of hys clawes uppon the iiijth bell.” This steeple on our
left was the very scene of this feat; but the body of the church was
rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Another old Shrewsbury church, St.
Chad’s, had fallen down, and the congregation of Saint Alkmund’s feared
a repetition of the disaster. In the case of St. Alkmund’s, however, it
was the rebuilding that was the disaster.
The story of St. Mary’s lovely spire, on our right, is full of
incident. In 1572 it was “blown aside by wind”; in 1594 “there fell
such a monstrous dry wind, and so extreme fierce ... that the like was
never seen of those that be living ... the force whereof removed the
upper part of St. Mary’s steeple out of his place towards the south
about five inches”; in 1662 the steeple was “taken down six yards
from the top”; in 1690 it was damaged by an earthquake; in 1754 it was
“shattered by a high wind”; in 1756 the newly-built part was again
“blown aside”; in 1818 the upper part “became loose”; and during a
terrific storm in 1894 fifty feet of its masonry fell through the roof
of the nave shortly after the evening service. Most wonderfully this
last disaster did no damage to the stained glass, which is St. Mary’s
great glory and has itself had an eventful existence; for some of it
was in old St. Chad’s when it fell, and much of it, long ago, filled
the windows of religious houses in Germany.
The slender columns and pointed arches of this lovely church have rung
to the voice of Charles I., who once proclaimed his good intentions
within these walls, and knelt, harassed and nearly uncrowned, before
this altar. It was in St. Mary’s, too, that James II. touched for the
King’s Evil.
Just beyond the church is the Crown Hotel, and whether we stay there or
at the “Raven,” a hundred yards away, we shall hear the bells of St.
Mary’s, once described as “the comfortablest ring of bells in all the
town,” and the chiming clock that was the bequest of Fanny Burney’s
Uncle James, and the curfew, which still rings every night at nine. And
after the curfew we shall hear the number of the day of the month rung
out--a relic of the times before cheap almanacs existed.
There is no doubt that the most satisfactory way of seeing Shropshire
is to spend a few nights in Shrewsbury, and make it the basis of
operations; for Shrewsbury lies exactly in the centre of the county,
and is the meeting-point of a particularly large number of good roads.
The old town itself, too, does not deserve to be hurried through. The
longer one stays in it the more one feels the charm of its gentle old
age.
The Old School Buildings are within a stone’s-throw of us, with all
their memories of the wise and great: memories that are, as a matter
of fact, older than themselves; for though Charles Darwin was educated
within these very walls, it was in an older building of wood, standing
on the same spot, that Philip Sidney was a schoolboy--gentle and
grave, and as much loved then as he was destined to be all his life,
and is still. It was while he was here that his father wrote him a
“very godly letter ... most necessarie for all yoong gentlemen to
be carried in memorie,” which his mother, who added a postscript
“in the skirts of my Lord President’s letter,” considered to be so
full of “excellent counsailes,” that she begged Philip to “fayle not
continually once in foure or five daies to reade them over.” The
counsels were certainly excellent. “Be humble and obedient to your
master,” says Sir Henry, “... be courteous of gesture.... Give yourself
to be merie ... but let your mirth be ever void of all scurrillitie and
biting words to any man.... Above all things, tell no untruth, no not
in trifles”; and he ends quaintly: “Well, my little Philip, this is
enough for me, and I feare too much for you.” If my Lord President had
not also been my Lord Deputy of Ireland one might have loved him nearly
as much as his son.
Neither he nor Philip ever saw the timbered gatehouse that stands
opposite to the Old School Buildings, but in the red Council House to
which it leads, Sir Henry always stayed when he made official visits
to Shrewsbury. There were fine doings on these occasions; banquets
and processions, with “knightly robes most valiant,” and many scarlet
gowns; masquerades, too, by the boys of the school, who appeared now
as soldiers, now as nymphs, and made orations in both characters.
Later on the same red house sheltered Charles I., when he came here
to collect men and money. Half the plate in the county disappeared
into his mint, which was set up, some say, in a little tottering house
that may still be seen in an alley on Pride Hill--a fragment of green
and weather-worn stone that is one of the most picturesque things in
Shrewsbury. Some of the money that Charles “borrowed” on this occasion
was well spent in repairing the Castle, which is quite near the Council
House. The Castle is now a private dwelling, and one cannot walk about
the grounds without permission; but the oldest part of it is the great
entrance-gate, which all may see; the gate that was built by Roger
de Montgomery and attacked by Stephen; the gate through which Henry
IV. rode out to the famous Battle of Shrewsbury. The Castle itself,
as it now stands, was probably mostly built by Edward I.; but it
suffered so much through the centuries from siege, and treachery, and
time, that many repairs were necessary to secure it a peaceful old
age as a dwelling-house. Every motorist who is properly grateful to
his benefactors, will be interested to know that it was the engineer
Telford who carried out these repairs. He actually lived in the Castle
for a time, I believe, and he certainly built the “Laura” tower, which
stands on the foundations of the old watch-tower. Telford was in
Shrewsbury when the tower of Old St. Chad’s showed signs of collapsing,
and, on his advice being asked, said the church should be repaired
without delay. The Parish Vestry begged him to meet them in St. Chad’s
to discuss the matter, and demurred so long at the expense that at last
Telford walked out of the church, saying grimly that he would rather
talk the matter over in some place where there was less danger of the
roof falling on his head. Two or three days later it fell.
Not far from the fragments of this ruined church is the High Street,
where are some of the oldest and prettiest houses in the town; and hard
by is the Tudor marketplace, with its statue of Richard, Duke of York.
The claims of the Unitarian chapel in the same street are not based on
beauty, but on the fact that Coleridge’s voice once rose in it “like a
steam of rich distilled perfumes,” according to William Hazlitt, who
had walked ten miles to hear Coleridge preach here, and was as much
delighted, he says, “as if he had heard the music of the spheres.”
Charles Darwin attended the services of this chapel as a boy, but was
baptized in New St. Chad’s, the eighteenth-century church near the
Quarry, within whose classical walls Dr. Johnson once worshipped. The
Doctor’s famous rolling walk, too, of which we have all heard so much,
was once seen under the splendid limes of the Quarry.
[Illustration: OLD STREET IN SHREWSBURY.
_Photo by W. D. Haydon._]
[Illustration: RICHARD BAXTER’S HOUSE, EATON CONSTANTINE.]
As we entered Shrewsbury by the English Bridge we caught a glimpse of
the Abbey behind us. Leaving the town by the London Road, on our way
to see something of the eastern side of the county, we shall pass
close by the old red building that was partly spared when Roger de
Montgomery’s great monastery was dissolved. It will be worth while to
stop the engine for a moment, and to look at the massive Norman piers
of the nave, the fine altar-tombs, and the fragment of St. Winifred’s
shrine. The founder himself was buried here, after a long life of storm
and stress, and three days in a monk’s habit; but the knightly figure
that has been thought to represent him is said by the best authorities
to be of a later date than his. This Roger is very prominent in
Shropshire history, and is, indeed, not unknown in that of England, for
he figured in the Battle of Hastings, and wherever he figured he made
himself felt. We hear many conflicting things of his character, but
from them all we gather that he was a typical man of his day, spending
his time chiefly in acquiring his neighbour’s goods, and his leisure
moments in building abbeys. Having built this Abbey of Shrewsbury he
was careful to see that other people enriched it, and it soon became
one of the most important in England. Its actual buildings covered ten
acres: yet now all of it that we can see is this restored church, and,
across the road, a relic of a later date. There, in the din and dust
of a coal-yard, stands the graceful stone pulpit that was once in the
refectory wall. From under its delicately carved canopy a lay brother
read pious works aloud to the monks while they ate.
As we drive up the Abbey Foregate, between the trees and old houses,
the memory of the Benedictines is with us still; for it was down
this road that the monks, with their abbot at their head, came once
in solemn procession with the bones of St. Winifred. These, by the
combined use of a smooth tongue and a stout spade, they had brought
triumphantly away from the churchyard of a Welsh village, knowing full
well that no wealth of lands and churches enriched a monastery so
surely as a handful of saintly dust.
At the top of the Foregate is the column on which Lord Hill stands
above a list of his battles. Here we keep to the London Road, and are
soon in the open country. We are bound for Boscobel, but as there is
a good deal to be seen on the way, a round of forty-three miles is not
as short as it seems. Between Shrewsbury and Atcham the scenery is
not particularly interesting, but the road is level and the surface
good, so we have our compensations. From the picturesque bridge at
Atcham there is a lovely view of distant Caradoc, with the Severn in
the foreground, and on the river bank the old church that is said to
have been largely built, like that at Wroxeter, of the stones from the
Roman city of Uriconium. We are very near that city now. If we take
the first turn to the right after leaving Atcham, we shall soon be
actually passing over the ashes of “the White Town in the Woodland,”
as it was called by the Welsh poet who sang of its tragic end; and a
moment later we shall see, near the roadside, a fragment of the wall of
its basilica. By asking for the key at a cottage close at hand, and by
paying sixpence, we may see also the remains of its public baths, and a
piece of tesselated pavement that might have been laid down yesterday.
Many relics of this town that was built by the Romans, inhabited by
the British, and burnt by the Saxons, have been found within the limits
of the hundred and seventy acres that it once covered: skeletons of
men and women crouching where they had vainly sought safety in the
hypocausts of the burning baths; coins scattered by fugitives; pathetic
trifles of women’s dress--hairpins, buckles, and a brooch whose pin
still works. Older than these are the urns and tombstones found in the
Roman cemetery; the tombstone of Petronius, who is thought to have
taken part in the victory over Boadicea; and that of “Placida, aged
fifty-four, raised by the care of her husband.” Most of the relics have
been moved, for safe keeping, to the Museum in Shrewsbury.
From Uriconium a very pretty road leads us to Buildwas. The Severn
winds below us on the right, and on the hillside to the left is the
little village of Eaton Constantine, which Constantine the Norman--who
also gave his name to the Côtentin in France--held in the days of
Domesday Book at a rental of a pair of white gloves, valued at one
penny. Even at this distance is visible the black-and-white gable
of the farmhouse that was once the home of Richard Baxter, author
of “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest,” and an amazing number of other
books--enough, said Judge Jeffreys, “to load a cart.” Dr. Johnson,
however, pronounced them to be “all good.” Here, we learn, Baxter
“passed away his Childhood and Youth, which upon Reflection he,
according to the Wise Man’s Censure, found to be vanity.” In spite of
these austere views, however, his childhood was not without its wild
oats, for we are told that he “joyn’d sometimes with other Naughty Boys
in Robbing his Neighbours’ Orchards of their Fruit, when he had eno’ at
home ... and was bewitched with a love of Romances and Idle Tales.”
Presently, after passing through the pretty village of
Leighton-under-the-Wrekin, we see Buildwas, the Shelter near the Water,
on the further side of the river. Perhaps this is the most striking
view of the fourteen massive pillars of this roofless nave, in which
the Cistercians of the twelfth century austerely worshipped; but we
can visit the ruins if we wish to do so by crossing the bridge that has
quite recently superseded one built by Telford. There is not very much
more to be seen at close quarters than from here: the great charm of
Buildwas lies in its effect as a whole, in its simplicity and strength,
and in its position by the river.
[Illustration: BUILDWAS ABBEY.
_Photo by W. D. Haydon._]
[Illustration: MADELEY COURT.]
About a mile beyond Buildwas is Ironbridge, named from the first bridge
ever built in England of iron, which here spans the Severn at a height
of forty feet, by a single arch of a hundred feet in width. It was the
work of Abraham Darby, the third of his name, and was finished in 1779.
A gradient of 1 in 10 takes us through Ironbridge, and less than two
miles further on is Madeley, which appears at first sight the very type
of all that is unromantic, a prey to coal-dust and miners; yet if we
turn off the main road to the left we shall presently find, hidden in
a hollow near Madeley Court Station, as poetic a spot as we shall see
in many a day’s journey. Perhaps its very contrast to its surroundings
adds to its charm; perhaps to some it may not seem charming at all,
but merely a tumble-down, ill-kept house. But to others this little
nook, with the weather-stained, crumbling walls and tiled gables of
the Court House, the swinging ivy, the still pond, the bulrushes and
water-lilies, and the red-and-black timbered barn that once sheltered a
fugitive king, are a “faery land forlorn,” the very home of glamour and
romance. Here Charles II. arrived one night, dressed in green breeches
and a noggen shirt. He was tired and hungry, his hands and face were
smudged with soot, and he answered to the name of William Jones. He
was refreshed in this house, and spent the next day in the barn with
Richard Penderel, one of the five brothers to whom he owed his safety.
When night fell he walked to Boscobel.
It was hours before he was there, whereas we, if we were as much
hurried as he was, might be there in half an hour or so. But though
there is nothing to keep us at Shifnal we must pause at Tong, where
there are some especially pretty timbered cottages and a church that
is really remarkable, for it contains a collection of tombs which I
should imagine to be unequalled in a village church. They are those of
the Vernon family, and among them is that of Dame Margaret Stanley,
the sister of Dorothy Vernon, of Haddon Hall. Charles Dickens said
himself that it was of Tong Village he was thinking when he wrote the
end of “The Old Curiosity Shop,” and those to whom Little Nell appeals
may think of her and her grandfather in the porch of this church. Some
of us, however, will take more interest in the shot-marks that have
scarred the northern wall ever since the days of the Civil War.
In a park near the village stands the astonishing structure called Tong
Castle. It was once a real castle of stone; in the sixteenth century
Sir Henry Vernon rebuilt it of brick; in the eighteenth a new owner
thought that Moorish cupolas would make a pretty finish to it. When, in
1643, it was in the possession of the Parliamentarians, it was said on
that account to be a “great eye-sore to his Majesty’s good subjects
who pass’d yt road.” For other reasons it is so still.
A writer of the seventeenth century describes Boscobel as “a very
obscure habitation, situate in a kind of wilderness”; and no doubt it
was to this obscurity that Charles II. owed his safety. Even to-day
it is wonderfully isolated, and we reach it by a series of rather
circuitous by-roads; but we can drive right up to the house, and leave
our car in a safe enclosure, while we walk a hundred yards to the
Royal Oak--not the original “asylum of the most potent prince King
Charles II. ... the oak beloved by Jove,”[1] which was mostly made into
snuff-boxes and other treasures for the loyal--but an oak grown from
an acorn of that “fortunate tree.” When Charles reached Boscobel at
three o’clock in the morning he was taken into the big panelled room
that we shall presently see, and was refreshed with bread and cheese
and a posset of milk and beer. Colonel Carlis, another fugitive from
Worcester, “pulled off his Majesty’s shoos, which were full of gravel,
and stockens which were very wet,” and at daybreak went with him into
the wood, where they both climbed into the oak--here, where we are
standing--with a cushion for his Majesty to sit on. Here, for a great
part of the day, the tired King slept with his head on Colonel Carlis’s
knee. “He bore all these hardships and afflictions with incomparable
patience,” says a contemporary historian. At night he was hidden in the
house, buried beneath the garret floor in a box-like priest’s-hole,
with a load of cheese on the lid. We may climb the stairs and see it;
get into it if we will--and ask ourselves if, after spending a night in
it, we should be as lighthearted as this man who at any moment might
lose his life and had already lost everything else. In the morning
he called for a frying-pan and butter, and, having first despatched
Colonel Carlis with a dagger to slaughter a neighbour’s sheep, he gaily
cooked himself some mutton collops, while the Colonel, “being but
under-cook (and that honour enough too), made the fire and turned the
collops in the pan.”
From Boscobel we strike due north to Ivetsey Bank, where we shall
find an inn capable of providing a good, if homely, luncheon or
tea. Thence sixteen miles on Watling Street will bring us without a
pause (_unberufen!_) through Wellington to the point where we left
the main road on our outward journey. It is worth while, by the way,
to avoid the unpleasant bit of road through Oakengates by striking
across to the main road from Shifnal; to do which we must take a turn
in St. George’s, where a lamp-post stands out prominently. We enter
Shrewsbury, as we left it, by the London Road.
* * * * *
A slightly longer run, covering about fifty miles altogether, will show
us something of the northern part of the county on its western side. We
drive out of the town past the station and through the squalid suburb
of Ditherington, where, for love of our springs and of humanity, we
must perforce drive slowly, by reason of the bumpiness of the surface
and the phenomenal number of children. Over this ground rode Henry IV.
and Prince Hal to the Battle of Shrewsbury, and there on our right is
Haughmond Hill, the “busky hill” to which Shakespeare refers. Presently
there appears on the left, a few hundred yards away from the road, the
church of Battlefield, raised, with the exception of the tower, quite
soon after the battle on the spot where the fight raged most fiercely,
in order that masses might be sung perpetually “for the prosperity of
the King and the souls of the slain.” Here Harry Hotspur died, and
with him thousands of others both gentle and simple, for this was a
very notable fight and many interests were concerned in it. Beneath
the mounds that we see on the south side of the church are the bones
of many of the slain. The King “had many marching in his coats,” as
Hotspur puts it in “Henry IV.,” and as they were killed in mistake for
him he saved himself by a device more ingenious than kingly.
There is nothing of special note between Battlefield and Hawkestone,
which is about twelve miles from Shrewsbury, and is a private park,
open to visitors. In the rhododendron season it is well worth while to
leave one’s car at the extremely nice hotel at the outskirts of the
park, and to walk about a mile through pretty grounds swarming with
black rabbits, to see the blaze of blossom for which Hawkestone is
famous. And yet I think they will fare still better who choose the time
of bluebells. These should drive through the park by the public road.
Beyond the gate, where the stream is close to them on the right and
woods slope to its edge, they will see, bright in the near foreground
but fading away into the distance under the trees in a misty cloud,
a soft, ethereal veil of grey-blue. Here and there the green breaks
through, and the flowers look like wisps of smoke trailing across the
grass. This wonderful sheet of mystic blue borders the river and the
road for some way, till the wood ends suddenly, and Hodnet Hall comes
in sight.
One really grows a little tired of recording the picturesqueness of
Shropshire villages. They are nearly all pretty: for the houses,
when they are not of timber and plaster, are often built of the warm
red sandstone that is the stone of the county and acquires such soft,
mellow colours in its old age. But I sometimes think Hodnet is the
prettiest village of them all. Half the houses are black-and-white; and
near the church gate a group of timber gables, with the octagonal tower
in the background, forms a complete and perfectly composed picture.
Bishop Reginald Heber, the author of “From Greenland’s icy mountains,”
was rector of Hodnet for some years before he sailed for “India’s coral
strand.”
From Hodnet we may either drive back to Shrewsbury or turn to the left
in the middle of the village and take a run of about thirty-four miles
by Market Drayton and Newport, two picturesque old towns with a good
road between them. The scenery in this part of the county is pleasing,
but not especially striking. If we choose this way we shall, as we
draw near Shrewsbury, pass the ruins of Haughmond, one of the great
Shropshire abbeys.
Long ago there was a hermitage at the foot of this “busky hill”; before
William FitzAlan’s monastery for Austin Canons rose here, with the
great church that has practically disappeared,[2] and the tall gable
with the turrets that are so conspicuous to-day, and the chapter-house
with the beautiful doorway. This Abbey was greatly patronised by
royalty. Stephen gave it a mill, Matilda gave it lands “for the
remission of her sins,” Henry II. gave churches, and Henry III. more
land, and Llewelyn of Wales “a moiety of Kenwicke.” The list of other
benefactions is endless: mills and fisheries, churches and markets,
woods and hogs and herds. Many were the “privileges of flesh and fish”
enjoyed by the canons of Haughmond; and Abbot Nicholas, in Edward
III.’s time, desiring to make the most of all these luxuries, built
a new kitchen for the brethren and “appointed them a cook to dress
their food.” It was in 1541 that Henry VIII., as his manner was, took
possession of Haughmond and all its riches, “beyng mynded to take the
same into his own handes for a better purpose”; and so the minster,
for which he had no use, gradually vanished. Nothing is left of it but
a fragment of wall and a doorway. Two tombs that were once within the
chancel now lie open to the sky on the hillside, where their appeal for
the prayers of the passers-by is of far more pathetic force than it
ever was under the shelter of the Abbey’s roof:--
“_Vous Ki Passez Par Ici Priez Pur L’Alme Johan Fitz Aleine Ki Git
Ici. Deu De Sa Alme Eit Merci. Amen._”
“_Isabel De Mortimer Sa Femme Acost De Li. Deu De Lur Alme Eit
Merci. Amen._”
[Illustration: HAUGHMOND ABBEY.]
From this road near Haughmond we have perhaps the loveliest view of
distant Shrewsbury. The pale hills rim the horizon, the river winds in
the foreground, and between them rise the clear outlines of the two
incomparable spires that crown The Delight.
* * * * *
Another of the Shropshire monasteries that must certainly be seen is
Wenlock Priory, which lies on the way to Bridgnorth. It is a fairly
level road that leads to it by Cross Houses and Cound and pretty
Cressage, which in Domesday Book is Cristes-ache, or Christ’s Oak.
Christianity was preached here, it is said, under an old oak-tree, in
days so early that when St. Augustine visited the place he found it
already Christian. Between Harley and Wenlock there is a hill which the
Contour Book describes with perfect accuracy as “a precipitous hill on
which innumerable accidents have happened.” The accidents, I fancy,
have mostly happened to horse-drawn vehicles and bicycles--especially
the latter--when descending the hill, for it is a mile long and has a
turn in the middle. There is no reason why it should inconvenience a
good car, for the average gradient is nothing more alarming than 1 in
8, and it is well worth climbing for the sake of the wide view from the
top, just beyond which Much Wenlock lies.
[Illustration: WENLOCK PRIORY, ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL.
_Photo by W. D. Haydon._]
Milburga, Saxon princess and saint, built the first religious house
at Wenlock, and became its abbess, and was finally buried within its
precincts. William of Malmesbury tells us how, long after her death,
she enriched the place to which she had given her life and all she
possessed. “Milburga,” he says, “reposes at Wenlock ... but for
some time after the arrival of the Normans, through ignorance of the
place of her burial, she was neglected. Lately, however, a convent
of Clugniac monks being established there, while a new church was
erecting, a certain boy, running violently along the pavement, broke
into the hollow of the vault, and discovered the body of the virgin,
when a balsamic odour pervading the whole church, she was taken up, and
performed so many miracles that the people flocked thither in great
multitudes. Large spreading plains could hardly contain the troops
of pilgrims, while rich and poor came side by side, one common faith
compelling all.”
The convent of Clugniac monks in question was built by that notable
man Roger de Montgomery, and was the same whose ruins speak so plainly
to-day of the ornate tastes of the monks of Clugny. We saw no arcaded
walls such as these of the chapter-house, nor richly moulded doorways,
nor any such elaborate ornament at Cistercian Buildwas, whose lands
marched with the lands of this Priory, and whose monks found the
Rule of Clugny too soft, the tastes of Clugny too enervating. Go to
Wenlock in the spring, when its slender columns rise above a sea of
sweet-scented flowers, and its old wall is bright with rock-plants--for
the Priory stands in private grounds and is cared for like a garden.
It is the third religious house that has stood on this spot, for
between the days of Milburga, the royal saint, and those of Roger and
his Clugniacs, there was another monastery founded here by Leofric
of Mercia and his wife Godiva, a well-loved woman whom we are glad
to connect with this beautiful spot. The picturesque old Prior’s
Lodge is inhabited, and it is only on Tuesdays and Fridays that the
world at large is admitted to the ruins. Perhaps nothing recalls to
one so vividly the daily life of the monks in this place as the long
causeway that stretches across the field near the Priory garden. It
was here that the brothers took their daily exercise, raised above the
surrounding marsh--a long procession of dark figures, walking slowly to
and fro--and among them, unsuspected, that interesting swashbuckler of
whom we long to hear more, that man of extremes whose strange career
is all summed up for us in one short, pregnant sentence. “In 1283,” we
learn, “a brother of Wenlac became a captain of banditti.” We hear no
more of him, alas! except that he was hanged.
The road to Bridgnorth is a continuation of the one by which we entered
the town, so we must drive back, past the beautiful old Guildhall and
market-place, up the street to the Gaskell Arms, where we may have
luncheon if, as may well occur to motorists, we are too hungry to wait
till we reach the more imposing “Crown” at Bridgnorth. At the Gaskell
Arms we turn sharply to the left, and thence eight or nine miles of
good road, with several steep hills, will bring us to Bridgnorth.
[Illustration: WENLOCK PRIORY, CHAPTER HOUSE.
_Photo by W. D. Haydon_.]
[Illustration: BISHOP PERCY’S BIRTHPLACE, BRIDGNORTH.]
Ever since the Danes built a fort here this town, nearly as consistently
as Shrewsbury and Ludlow, has concerned itself with history. It has
been visited by half the kings of England. Henry I. besieged it; Henry
II. defended it; John and Edward I. stayed in it; Edward II. took
refuge in it; Henry IV. gathered his army here on his way to the
Battle of Shrewsbury; Charles I. was besieged here by Cromwell, who
narrowly escaped death before the walls. The Castle, of course, was the
centre of interest on all these occasions--the Castle that was built
so hurriedly by Robert de Belesme, Roger de Montgomery’s son, and is
now so conspicuous on account of its leaning tower. Round its ruins
is a path that must be practically the same as that which Charles I.
declared to be as pleasant a walk as any in his kingdom. Robert de
Belesme, who has been described with apparent justice as “an implacable
villain,” also founded the church of St. Mary Magdalene, but the
present building was designed by Telford. Another interesting church
is St. Leonard’s, where in the churchyard the Roundheads once beat the
Royalists in a skirmish, and where Richard Baxter was a curate. He
lived in the little black-and-white cottage close at hand, and seems
to have had a poor opinion of his flock. “He found the people here
generally ignorant and dead-hearted,” he says, “... so that though by
his first Labours among them he was Instrumental in the Conversion
of several Persons, and was generally Applauded, yet ... Tippling and
Ill Company rendred his Preaching ineffectual.” If his preaching was
ineffectual it at all events began early, for “when he was a little
Boy in Coats, if he heard other Children in Play speak Profane Words
he would reprove them, to the wonder of those that heard him.” At this
time--when he was a little Boy in Coats--he lived at Rowton in this
county; it was not till he was ten years old that he moved to Eaton
Constantine and indulged in dark deeds in his neighbours’ orchards.
An extremely steep dip with an awkward corner in the middle of it will
take us to the birthplace of another famous divine, Bishop Percy, best
known in connection with “Percy’s Reliques.” The house, which stands
in the Cartway, may be approached quite comfortably from below, and is
worth seeing for its own sake, being a good example of black-and-white
work.
Our best way home from here is by Ironbridge and Buildwas, on the road
by which we drove to Boscobel. Between Bridgnorth and Ironbridge some
of the country is pretty, and at Broseley especially it must have been
lovely in its natural state, before it was ruined by the potteries. We
cross the river by Abraham Darby’s iron bridge.
* * * * *
A run of forty-seven miles or so, by Wem, Whitchurch, and Ellesmere,
will show us a good deal of the north-west part of the county, and
if, when we reach Whitchurch, we choose to lengthen the distance to
fifty-four miles by slipping over the Welsh border to Overton and
Erbistock, we shall not regret it.