WILLEY.
Willey, close Neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot—Etymology of the
Name—Domesday—The Willileys—The Lacons—The Welds and the Foresters—Willey
Old Hall—Cumnor Hall as described by Sir Walter Scott—Everything Old and
Quaint—How Willey came into possession of the Foresters.
“’Bove the foliage of the wood
An antique mansion might you then espy,
Such as in the days of our forefathers stood,
Carved with device of quaintest imagery.”
[Picture: Willey Old Hall]
TO commence with its earlier phase, it was clear that Willey would be
close neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot, and that it must have been
about the centre of the wooded country previously described. The name is
said to be of Saxon origin; and in wattle and dab and wicker-work times,
when an osier-bed was probably equal in value to a vineyard, the place
might have been as the word seems to suggest, one where willows grew,
seeing that various osiers, esteemed by basket makers, coopers, and
turners, still flourish along the stream winding past it to the Severn.
The name is therefore redolent of the olden time, and is one of those old
word-pictures which so often occur to indicate the earlier features of
the country. Under its agricultural Saxon holders, however, Willey so
grew in value and importance that when the Conquest was complete, and
King William’s generals were settling down to enjoy the good things the
Saxons had provided, and as Byron has it—
“Manors
Were their reward for following Billy’s banners,”
Willey fell to the lot of a Norman, named Turold, who, as he held twelve
other manors, considerately permitted the Saxon owner to continue in
possession under him. Domesday says: “The same Turold holds Willey, and
Hunnit (holds it) of him.” “Here is half a hide geldable. Here is
arable land sufficient for ii ox teams. Here those ox teams are,
together with ii villains, and ii boors. Its value is v shillings.” At
the death of Hunnit the manor passed to a family which took its name from
the place; and considerable additions resulted from the marriage of one,
Warner de Williley, with the heiress of Roger Fitz Odo, of Kenley.
Warner de Williley appears to have been a person of some consequence,
from the fact that he was appointed to make inquiry concerning certain
encroachments upon the royal forests of Shropshire; but an act of
oppression and treachery, in which his wife had taken a part, against one
of his own vassals, whose land he coveted, caused him to be committed to
prison. Several successive owners of Willey were overseers of Shirlot
Forest; and Nicholas, son and heir of Warner, was sued for inattention to
his duties; an under tenant also, profiting probably by the laxity of his
lord, at a later period was charged and found guilty of taking a stag
from the king’s preserves, on Sunday, June 6th, 1253. Andrew de Williley
joined Mountford against King Edward, and fell August 4th, 1265, in the
battle of Evesham; in consequence of which act of disloyalty the property
was forfeited to the crown, and the priors of Wenlock, who already had
the seigniory usual to feudal lords, availing themselves of the
opportunity, managed so to increase their power that a subsequent tenant,
as shown by the Register at Willey, came to Wenlock (1388), and “before
many witnesses did homage and fealty,” and acknowledged himself to hold
the place of the lord prior by carrying his frock to parliament. They
succeeded too, after several suits, in establishing their rights to the
advowson of the Church, founded and endowed by the lords of the place.
By the middle of the 16th century Willey had passed to the hands of the
old Catholic family of the Lacons, one of whom, Sir Roland, held it in
1561, together with Kinlet; and from them it passed to Sir John Weld, who
is mentioned as of Willey in 1666. He married the daughter of Sir George
Whitmore, and his son, George Weld, sat for the county with William
Forester, who married the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and voted
with him in favour of the succession of the House of Hanover.
Who among the former feudal owners of Willey built the old hall, is a
question which neither history nor tradition serves to solve. Portions
of the basement of the old buildings seem to indicate former structures
still more ancient, like spurs of some primitive rock cropping up into a
subsequent formation. Contrasted with the handsome modern freestone
mansion occupied by the Right Hon. Lord Forester close by, the remains
shown in our engraving look like a stranded wreck, past which centuries
of English life have gone sweeping by. Some of the walls are three feet
in thickness, and the buttressed chimneys, and small-paned windows—“set
deep in the grey old tower”—make it a fair type of country mansions and a
realisation of ideas such as the mind associates with the homes of the
early owners of Willey.
Although occupying a slight eminence, it really nestles in the hollow,
and in its buff-coloured livery it stands pleasingly relieved by the high
ground of Shirlot and its woods beyond. In looking upon its quaint
gables, shafts, and chimneys, one feels that when it was complete it must
have had something of the poetry of ancient art about it. Its
irregularities of outline must have fitted in, as it were, with the
undulating landscape, with which its walls are now tinted into harmony,
by brown and yellow lichens. There was nothing assuming or pretentious
about it; it was content to stand close neighbour to the public old coach
road, which came winding by from Bridgnorth to Wenlock, and passed
beneath the arch which now connects the high-walled gardens with the
shaded walk leading to its modern neighbour, the present mansion of the
Foresters.
Sir Walter Scott, in his description of Cumnor Place, speaks of woods
closely adjacent, full of large trees, and in particular of ancient and
mighty oaks, which stretched their giant arms over the high wall
surrounding the demesne, thus giving it a secluded and monastic
appearance. He describes its formal walks and avenues as in part choked
up with grass, and interrupted by billets, and piles of brushwood, and he
tells us of the old-fashioned gateway in the outer wall, and of the door
formed of two huge oaken leaves, thickly studded with nails—like the gate
of an old town. This picture of the approaches to the old mansion where
Anthony Foster lived was no doubt a more faithful representation than the
one he gave of the character of the man himself. At any rate, it is one
which would in many respects apply to old Willey Hall and its
surroundings at the time to which the great novelist refers. Everything
was old and old-fashioned, even as its owners prided themselves it should
be, and as grey as time and an uninterrupted growth of lichens in a
congenial atmosphere could make it. Hollies, yews, and junipers were to
be seen in the grounds, and outside were oaks and other aged trees,
scathed by lightning’s bolt and winter’s blast. Here and there stood a
few monarchs of the old forest in groups, each group a brotherhood
sublime, carrying the thoughts back to the days when “from glade to
glade, through wild copse and tangled dell, the wild deer bounded.”
Trees, buildings, loose stones that had fallen, and still lay where they
fell, were mossed with a hoar antiquity. Everything in fact seemed to
say that the place had a history of its own, and that it could tell a
tale of the olden time.
From the lawn and grounds adjoining a path led to the flower-gardens,
intersected by gravel walks and grassy terraces, where a sun-dial stood,
and where fountains, fed by copious supplies from unfailing springs on
the high grounds of Shirlot, threw silvery showers above the shadows of
the trees into the sunlight.
Willey, augmented by tracts of Shirlot, which was finally disafforested
and apportioned two centuries since, came into possession of the
Foresters by the marriage of Brook Forester, of Dothill Park, with
Elizabeth, only surviving child and heiress of George Weld, of Willey;
and George Forester, “the Squire of Willey,” was the fruit of that
marriage.