narrow and uneven lane. Its fine church-tower looks down upon little
more than a few farms and bartons; for village, as generally understood,
there is none. This simple rural place, aromatic with hay and straw and
corn, is the representative of, and takes its name from, the great Roman
city of _Uriconium_, one-third larger than Pompeii, destroyed by the
fury of savage hordes more than fourteen hundred years ago. The City of
_Uriconium_,—the “City of the Wrekin”—was established shortly after A.D.
48, when the Roman general, Ostorius Scapula, had driven out the British
tribes. He set an important station here, at a crossing of the Watling
and the Ikenild Streets, and the place not only served as an armed camp
to guard the roads and the ford of the Severn, but grew to be the most
important market along the road to Wales. It lasted four hundred years,
and only fell some forty years after the Romans had deserted Britain.
_Uriconium_ was then taken by the combined onslaughts of the Welsh
tribes, and burnt to the ground, and the Romanised British who had
remained were all massacred.
[Illustration: THE “OLD WALL.”]
To this great city, its site now under corn and grass land, and
inhabited by a handful of peasants, the Roman road led, on its way to
Wales and the shores of the Menai, and to its site still leads, but
beyond is lost, save to those who study archæology. The only relics left
on the spot to tell of that vanished place are the two Roman pillars
standing before the church; the font, made out of a carved capital; and
that massive fragment of masonry, the Old Wall, standing once in the
centre of the city, but now solitary in a field.
[Illustration: WROXETER CHURCH.]
Superstition brooded for ages upon this spot, and weird legends were
created by the terrors the lonely place had for the ignorant of other
times. Dead and gone Romans, who had, perhaps, been very matter-of-fact
and commonplace persons in their lives, and gifted with all the small
virtues of the hearth-loving citizen, loomed large, menacing, and
supernatural before those whose business took them near the ruin, and so
it was not until modern times that much was done to unearth what relics
might lie deep down below the earth deposited by the changes of so long
a period.
It was in 1859 that two acres of land were excavated. What did they
find? Many things. Fragments of the red Samian ware on which the Roman
citizens served their banquets, and whence they pledged one another,
drinking to the eternity of Rome. A rusty key without a lock, and a
stylus among bones, wine-cups, and scattered coins; the wooden tablets
it wrote upon perished, like the hand that held it. The figure of a
cock, modelled in lead, once a child’s toy, and near it the skeleton of
a child, doubtless the one that owned that ancient plaything. Three
skeletons of older persons were found, crouched up in one of the
underground hypocausts. A hypocaust was a basement chamber, constructed
to heat a room or house. Into one of these places those persons had fled
when the barbarians stormed the city. They intended to creep out when
danger was past, but the place was fired, and they perished in their
hiding-place. Two of these fugitives were women; the other an old man.
Within his grasp lay a pile of Roman coins, 142 in all, and, beside
them, all that was left of his cash-box—some fragments of wood and rusty
nails.
Roofing-slates, still with nails in many of their holes, were discovered
in the ruins; the slate, by its appearance, judged to have been brought
from Bettws-y-Coed. Millstones for grinding corn, and a charred heap of
the corn itself, were found; brooches, seals, household gods, and
fragments of the innumerable intimate articles of everyday life. Even
some careless scribbling, such as that often found on the walls of
Pompeii, was seen; but before it could be protected some graceless
excursionists among the thousands carried by rail at that time to see
the novelty of a buried city, obliterated it with their walking-sticks.
The two acres then explored, with the little that has been done since,
give the impression that if the three-miles’ circuit of the walls could
be excavated, results surpassing the finds at Silchester might be
attained.
From Wroxeter, crossing the Severn, the Watling Street went by the two
Strettons Wattlesborough, taking its name from being situated on the
great road; _Rutunium_, now Rowton; thence to _Mediolanum_ at the
crossing of the river Tanad, under the Breidden, a site now called
Clawdd Coch, or “Red Ditch”; _Mons Heriri_, under the shadow of Snowdon
(whose Welsh name is Eryri, or Eagles’ Mountain) at the ancient
earthwork known as Tomen-y-Mur, in the Vale of Maentwrog; and to the
sea-coast at _Segontium_, identified with Caer Seiont, near Carnarvon. A
branch, with stations of the way at _Bovium_ (Bangor-ys-Coed); _Deva_,
the great fortress of the Twentieth Legion, identical with Chester, on
the Dee; _Varae_, the modern Bodfari; and _Conovium_, by the Conway
(Caer Hên, or Old Fort), traversed the Dee estuary and the coast-line
looking out to Anglesey and the Irish Sea.
XIX
Returning from Wroxeter and passing the tiny hamlet of Norton, the way
lies flat to Shrewsbury. Flat, because we are now come beside the Severn
(which no Welshman calls anything else than Sivern). Away across the
watery plain as we advance are the Stretton Hills on the left, volcanic
and mountainous in outline, blue and beautiful in colour; and, more
distant, ahead, far beyond Shrewsbury, the Breidden Hills, a great bulk
starting from the level without any disguise of foothills or preliminary
rises to detract from their dramatic effect.
The Tern, a tributary of the Severn, crosses the road beneath a handsome
stone balustraded bridge, with views to the right over Attingham Park
and along the road, through a mass of overarching trees, toward the
village of Atcham. There, in the Park, stands the classical stone
building of Attingham Hall, one of those places built a century or more
ago at incredible expense, and only to be maintained at a cost far
exceeding the resources available to-day. Corn at 50_s._ and 60_s._ a
quarter built many fine mansions, and nowadays corn at 25_s._ keeps them
empty. Attingham Hall lacks a tenant. It belongs to Lord Berwick, whose
title does not, by the way, come from the only Berwick commonly
known—the town of Berwick-on-Tweed—but from Berwick Maviston, close by
Atcham, the old home of the extinct Malvoisin or Mayvesin family.
The chief entrance to Attingham Park is through the great archway in
Atcham village. One side of the village street is made up of church,
school-house, post office, a deserted coaching inn, and a number of
rustic cottages; the other is the long brick wall of the Park, densely
overhung with trees, on to which the village blankly looks. The only
opening in this wall is the great archway aforesaid; very tall, Doric,
and stony. With a spinal shiver the stranger, who stands wondering
awhile where he has seen its like, suddenly realises the resemblance it
bears to the entrance of certain great London cemeteries. The arch is
flanked by a stag on one side and by a pegasus on the other, with the
inscription in gigantic lettering in between: “Qui uti scit ei bona.” A
very proper aspiration; but it is just as well that tramps are innocent
as a rule of Latin, or they might not inaptly call and ask for something
on account.
Opposite this gateway stands what was once the “Talbot,” a first-class
posting-house. It looks on to the church in one direction, the entrance
to the Park in another, and down upon the Severn in a third, so that its
situation is by no means commonplace. When the altered conditions of
travelling rendered it no longer possible to carry on a remunerative
business here, the hotel was converted into a private mansion, and the
gravelled drive walled in and turfed, but it has only been occupied for
short periods and has long stood empty. Like the Princess in the fairy
tale, it waits and still waits, looking up the road and down the road
and over the bridge for the expected. It is weary waiting, and even the
rats and mice who lived royally in old times, and were reduced at last
to the pitiful expedient of subsisting on the faint smell of what _had_
been, gave it up and lived on one another. The ultimate survivor is
believed to have committed suicide in the Severn.
It is a noble bridge that spans the river here, and, built before the
art—no, _not_ the art, the science—of constructing bridges in iron was
understood, is of stone, and very steep. This steepness added to its
narrow proportions was a terror to those nervous coach-passengers whose
faith in Sam Hayward of the “Wonder” was not what it should have been,
considering the consummate art he displayed as a whip. But possibly they
thought that all the artistry in the world would be of little use to
save them and the coach if, on one of the wintry nights and mornings
when the Severn mists had obscured the road, they came into collision
with the parapets and so were hurled into the swirling river; and,
moreover, the hours—5.30 in the morning and 10 at night—when the
“Wonder” passed this dangerous spot, are not those when courage is high
and confidence greatest.
[Illustration: ATCHAM BRIDGE.]
It is a gentle rise from here to Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, passing on
the way the old toll-house of Emstrey Bank. On the hill-top, and looking
down the Foregate from the summit of his Doric column, stands the statue
of “old Rowley.” The personage owning that nickname was Sir Rowland,
afterwards Lord Hill, Field-Marshal and Commander-in-Chief in succession
to Wellington. As a Peninsula and Waterloo hero, and a brother-in-arms
of Wellington, Shropshire people held him in great honour, for was he
not also a Salopian—one of the Hills of Hawkstone—and a fine
representative of the county? It was left to a descendant to bankrupt
the estate and disperse the medals, warlike relics, and trophies of
Hawkstone Park.
[Illustration: LORD HILL’S MONUMENT.]
It is perhaps not the sculptor’s fault, but a result of distance and
acute perspective, that the gallant general on his elevated post bears
an extraordinary likeness to Pecksniff, as pictured by Phiz.
Abbey Foregate must have been the place where Benjamin Disraeli,
travelling post to Shrewsbury in June 1839, in company with Sir Philip
Rose, to fight for one of the two Parliamentary seats the borough then
retained, had his attention drawn by his companion to a huge poster,
displayed on the walls of a roadside barn. Disraeli was standing in the
Conservative interest, and was at the time head over ears in debt.
“Something about you,” said Rose to his companion, as his eye lighted on
the poster. The chaise was stopped, and Disraeli, deliberately adjusting
an unnecessary eyeglass—for the bill was set in the boldest and blackest
of “display” type—slowly read it from beginning to end.
It began, “Judgment Debts of Benjamin Disraeli, Tory Candidate for
Shrewsbury,” and unfolded a long, long list of creditors and the amounts
due to them. After long and careful consideration of the lengthy roll,
Disraeli turned to his friend, and calmly said: “How accurate they are.
Now let us go on.”
Shrewsbury was apparently not so scandalised as it should have been by
this revelation of Disraeli’s financial straits, for the electors
returned both himself and the other Conservative candidate by thumping
majorities.
The Foregate, a broad thoroughfare outside the town walls, was an early
suburb on the hither shore of the Severn, which comes winding again
athwart the road, presenting, when such things were matters of the first
importance, a defence that not the boldest might pass. Whoever held
Shrewsbury, girdled by river and ramparted walls for fully seven-eighths
of a circle, and with the remaining eighth, the only easy approach,
blocked by the frowning dark red turrets of its great castle, was master
of the situation. Hence that race between Henry IV. and Hotspur for
possession of the town in 1403; a race won by the King, who flung his
army into it a day before Hotspur’s Northumbrians and Scots came in
sight; hence, too, the repeated attempts of the Welsh to gain
possession.
Foregate still keeps something of its old suburban character, the
old-fashioned houses partaking both of town and country; curious old
inns neighbouring stately mansions, and village shops shouldering the
doctor’s or the lawyer’s staid Queen Anne and Georgian residences. But
the great feature is the Abbey Church, great even though only a fragment
of its former self. Ruddy sandstone of a particularly deep, almost
blood-red, hue gives its massive and time-worn tower a suggestion of
Shrewsbury’s sanguinary history; just as the great bulk of the Abbey may
have been the measure of the sins of that Roger de Montgomery, Earl of
Shrewsbury, who founded it and died, a world-renouncing monk, within
these walls in 1094. Close upon two hundred years later, in 1283, the
first English Parliament was held in the Chapter House; and that would
be a place of much historic interest to-day, but, like most of the
monastery buildings, it has been destroyed.
XX
“Shrowsbury,” as already noted, is the correct pronunciation of the name
of Shropshire’s capital; a mode that still follows the structure of the
Saxon place-name, “Scrobbesbyrig.” But it is not reasonable to suppose
that the outlander who has never been to Shrewsbury should know all the
rights and wrongs of the case, and though it may grate upon the Salopian
to hear strangers talk of “Shroosbury,” he can have no possible remedy
until he procures a reform in the spelling of the word. Meanwhile, the
outlander aforesaid is often severely entreated for his solecism.
Sometimes, too, he deserves all he gets, as for example when, somewhere
about 1894, the author of “Pictures in Parliament” taunted a Shropshire
member with using a “Salopian pronunciation which for some time hid from
the ordinary member a knowledge that he was alluding to Shrewsbury.” It
did _not_ hide the identity, and moreover, no Salopian ever did or could
use any other pronunciation. Now, if that member had said “Salop” there
would have been more room for criticism, although by that name
Shrewsbury is just as often known in Shropshire. It may be presumed that
every one knows the county to be often so-called, but it is a novelty
for strangers in these gates to hear the word applied to the town. To
this day the railway booking-clerks for at least twenty miles round
Shrewsbury are commonly asked for tickets to “Salop,” and the very
milestones adopt the same name. The Earls of Shrewsbury, on the other
hand, are (it may not be generally known) miscalled by that title, and
are really Earls of Salop. Not, let it be noted, of the town of Salop,
but of the _county_; as seen in the original patent of nobility granted
to the ancestral Talbot in 1442. But, although there is not the shadow
of a warrant for their adoption of the “Shrewsbury” title, they appear
never to have used any other, and in literature, from Shakespeare
downwards, the same custom has always been observed. But why? Is it
possible that the ill meaning of the French word “Salop” has forbidden
the use?
The town presents a hold front from this side of the river, crossed in
these peaceful times without let or hindrance by the English Bridge, a
beautiful seven-arched stone structure built in 1774. It looks not a
little foreign when viewed from the river-banks, with the osier-grown
islands in mid-stream; houses and church spires clustered beyond, and
the Castle turrets closing the view on the right; while the approach
over the bridge discloses a street so steep that it fills the
untravelled Londoner with as much astonishment as it did the lawyer come
to Shrewsbury for the first time by the “Wonder” coach. “I think I’ll
get off,” he said nervously, touching Hayward on the arm.
[Illustration: THE ENGLISH BRIDGE.]
“You be d——d!” shortly replied that past master of the whip and ribbons,
as, springing his team up the hill, he brought the coach round in a
circular course, and, shooting his wheelers and pointing his leaders,
made with the certainty of an arrow through the archway, and into the
stony courtyard of the “Lion.”
The hill leading in this astonishing fashion into Shrewsbury is Wyle
Cop, the main thoroughfare in old days. Its name, meaning “Hilltop,” is
sufficiently descriptive. The “Lion” still stands on the summit, on the
left hand, its coach-entrance yawning as of old; the streets, as narrow
as ever, giving point to Sam Hayward’s clever feat of coachmanship.
“Pleasant and chatty,” says one who frequented the Holyhead Road in
those days, “was Ash, the guard of the ‘Wonder’ coach, but the coachman,
one of two brothers, Hayward[1] by name, could by no means be so called.
The other brother drove the Holyhead Mail. The coachman of the ‘Wonder’
was grimly silent. ‘I will wager,’ said one of this taciturn Jehu’s
passengers to another, ‘that you don’t get a word out of him from the
“Hen and Chickens” at Birmingham to the “Lion” at Shrewsbury, barring a
pure answer to a question.’” The bet was won, for Hayward kept silence
all the way.
Footnote 1:
The authority here quoted says “Hodgson,” but that is an error. Nor
even was there a Hodgson driving the Holyhead Mail, but a guard of
that name who accompanied it on to Holyhead. Many of the statements
made by writers on old coaching days are, indeed, surprisingly
inaccurate, even when they have been contemporary with those times.
Thus, Colonel Corbet sanctions the frontispiece to his _Old Coachman’s
Chatter_, showing the “Wonder” from London ascending Wyle Cop at one
minute to twelve, noon. The “Wonder” reached Shrewsbury at 10.30 every
night; the midday coach was the Holyhead Mail.
But he was no misanthrope. A naturally cheerful nature was overlaid by
an undue sense of responsibility to the proprietors of the “Wonder,”
whose law was “ten miles an hour, including stoppages; or put the
paint-brush over the name of the ‘Wonder’ on the dickey.” Had his road
not been one of the best in the world—true almost to the spirit-level,
and constructed of hard dhu-stone—he could not have kept that excellent
time, day by day, and from year to year. As it was, the doing of it
absorbed the man’s very existence. He might hum an air to himself, but
talk he would not.
“What the deuce ails you, Hayward?” asked one of his box passengers,
“are you dumb, man?”
Then the Sphinx broke silence: “Can’t drive and talk, too,” he said;
and, closing his mouth like a steel trap, spoke no more.
That he was not only a master of the ribbons, but also of a peculiar
feat in driving, has already been hinted. This exploit, only once known
to be attempted by any other,[2] was repeated every time he brought the
“Wonder” into Shrewsbury, and never failed to draw an appreciative knot
of spectators, or to transfix with horror any strangers who might chance
to be among the outside passengers. There was always some difficulty in
driving up the steep and narrow Cop and into the “Lion” yard, standing
on the near side. Other coachmen quartered slowly up, and then, having
first drawn to their off side, turned carefully across and slowly
piloted their teams through the narrow entrance of the “Lion.” Hayward’s
method was radically different. Galloping up the hill and almost
scraping the near-side kerb, he would pass the inn, and then, suddenly
thonging his leaders, smartly turn them round in their own length
opposite the street called “Dogpole.” Then, calling to the “outsides” to
“mind their heads,” he would drive the coach at a trot into the yard,
with an inch to spare.
Footnote 2:
Stephen Howse, of the Ludlow night mail, was the hero of that
occasion. He was born in 1809, and died in 1888.
When the “Wonder” was driven off the London road, and became only a
two-horse coach, running between Shrewsbury and Birmingham, Hayward
drove the “Greyhound” between Shrewsbury and Aberystwith. Then,
following the example of Tony Weller, he “took a widow and a pub.” This
house, the “Raven and Bell,” next door to the “Lion,” was long since
pulled down. He died November 1st, 1851, but his widow was still in
business in 1856. Hayward lies near the scene of his daily exploit, in
the churchyard of St. Julian’s, under the shadow of the square tower
seen in the accompanying view of Wyle Cop. The flowers bloom fresh at
the head of his grave.
XXI
Coaching enterprise, from the earliest to the latest days of the
coaching era, flourished better at Shrewsbury than any other town along
the Holyhead Road. An early mention of public coaches is found in Sir
William Dugdale’s diary under date of May 2nd, 1659, when he says:—“I
set forward towards London by the Coventre coach,” and is followed in
June, 1681, by a reference to a journey from London to his country seat
in Warwickshire by the “Shrewsbury coach.” This was an extremely
deliberate conveyance. It trundled as far as Woburn the first evening
and stopped there the night, for at that period when the state of the
country was unsettled, and roads uncertain, and infested with bad
characters, no one thought of travelling after sundown. The second
evening it lay at Hillmorton, near Rugby, and thence proceeded, on the
third day, to Coleshill. Sir William alighted there, leaving the coach
to reach Shrewsbury by way of Sutton Coldfield, Aldridge Heath, and
Wellington in another two days.
By the light of later coaching history, which shows that coaches between
London and Shrewsbury were established principally at Shrewsbury to go
to London—proving that the desire of country folk for the metropolis was
greater than that of Londoners for the country—it would seem that this
pioneer coach was also a Shrewsbury venture. It probably did not
continue long, for even sixty years later Pennant describes how the
able-bodied rode horseback to London, while the rich, who were the only
people who travelled frequently, had their own carriages, leaving a very
inconsiderable and uncertain number to support a regular conveyance.
Thus it is that in 1730, when three Shrewsbury ladies visited the
capital, we find them riding horseback, escorted by five gentlemen and
six servants. Such goods as then passed between the two places came and
went by pack horses, and it is not until 1737 that another glimpse of
vehicles plying regularly along the road is obtained. From Shrewsbury in
that year began the long-drawn journeys of the “Gee-ho,” whose
establishment was due to a very shrewd and enterprising soldier,
appropriately named Carter. He had been billeted at the “Pheasant,” on
Wyle Cop, where the pack horse business was then located, and so
enslaved the heart of the widowed Mrs. Warner, who kept the inn, that
she married him. The old house is still on Wyle Cop, changed only in
name, and that only by an addition. It is now the “Lion and Pheasant.”
The “Gee-ho” in part supplemented, but in greater measure supplanted,
the pack horses. It was chiefly intended to carry goods, and was drawn
by eight horses, which, with an extra couple to pull it out of the
sloughs, brought the lumbering and creaking vehicle to or from London in
seven, eight, or nine days, according to the condition of the roads.
Even in 1749, twelve years later, we do not find the failure of the
first stage-coach of 1681 forgotten, for a certain Pryce Pugh, who was
then landlord of what his advertisement calls the “Red Lion on Wild
Cop,” in drawing attention to his house, mentions room for a hundred
horses, and notes the starting of a stage-waggon for London, but says
nothing of a coach. The horses, doubtless, were post-horses for riders.
But if passengers were still scarce and not worth the provision of a
coach, something could be done, and was done, to expedite the waggons,
so that passengers and goods could be conveyed at once. Imagine, then,
the stir created by the announcement on October 22nd, 1750, that the
“Shrewsbury Flying Stage-waggon will begin to fly on Tuesday next, in
five days, winter and summer.” They were, of course, only the poorer
classes who were thus catered for——people who had no objection to being
wedged in between the rolls of Welsh flannel, the butter and lard, and
miscellaneous consignments being conveyed; or else we should not in the
same year find a lady, anxious to reach London, riding twenty-two miles
to Ivetsey Bank, across country, to catch the Chester and London
stage-coach, which, taking six days over the whole journey, would not
have brought her to town any sooner.
But times now began to move rapidly, and the close of 1750 saw a new
conveyance on the road. This was the “Caravan,” an affair greatly
resembling modern gipsy-vans, and fitted up inside with benches for
eight, twelve, or even, at a pinch, eighteen persons. It was drawn by
“six able horses,” and professed to reach London in four days, but often
occupied the whole of five. If it had taken the direct way, instead of
wandering off to the Chester road, this promise could have been kept, as
it was in 1752, when the proper way was adopted, and Birmingham reached
the first night. The fare to London by the “Caravan” was 15_s._