“No calling left, no duty broke,”
in making ourselves more acquainted than we are, by holiday rambles and
dignifying investigations, with wonders which constantly surround us.
[Picture: Valley of the Severn as seen from the hill near Coalport
Incline Plane]
Few more interesting spots could be chosen than Ironbridge, with its
woods, and cliffs, and river, which from tourists, and all lovers of the
beautiful, never fail at once to secure attention and admiration. You
may travel far and not meet a page so interesting in nature’s history.
Many are the occasional visits—many are the stated pilgrimages, made from
distances—by devotees of science, desirous of here reading the “testimony
of the rocks.” To such, this natural rent in the earth’s crust; this
rocky cleft, the severed sides of which, like simple sections of a
puzzle, afford the clue to its original outline and primæval features,
and prove full of interest. Like some excavated ruin, flooring above
flooring, there are platforms and stages where in rearing the old world’s
structure the workers rested. Coins of that far off period are plentiful
where human habitations now stand, terrace above terrace. Other than
these, the little town has no antiquities older than its bridge; other
than the hunting lodge and half-timber-houses previously mentioned; there
are no castle keeps, cathedral aisles, or moss-crowned ruins; no
suggestive monuments of the past save those already noticed and such as
nature furnishes. ’Tis rich in these; these it has mature and undecayed:
and in such mute eloquence as no work of man can boast. Massive and
motionless there are around the most interesting and instructive
specimens of the world’s architecture. Not a winding path threads the
hill side but conducts to some such memorial, but opens some page written
within and without. Take the favourite summer’s walk of the inhabitants,
that leading to the Rotunda, on the crest of the hill; and you stand upon
the mute relics of a former world! Beneath is the upturned bed of a
former sea, and around is the storied mausoleum where hundreds of the
world’s lost species lie entombed. Few places boast a more suggestive or
more romantic scene. Lower still, just at
“The swelling instep of the hill,”
winds the silvery thread woven by the Severn through the valley,
interlacing meads, woods, upland swells, and round-topped grassy knolls.
Amid pasture land sloping to the water’s edge and relieved by grazing
cattle, rise the ivy-topped ruins of Buildwas Abbey; beyond is a pleasing
interchange of land and water, the whole bounded by hills scarcely
distinguishable from the azure sky. Mingled sounds of birds and men and
running water strike strangely on the ear; and often in the calm twilight
fogs move slowly on the river. How these rocks and caverns echo and
reverberate during a thunder-peal, when loud and long-continued. The
inhabitants tell, too, of curious acoustic effects produced along the
valley; how in under tones from one side the river to a point of equal
elevation on the other neighbours may whisper to each other, the
atmosphere acting as a sounding-board for the voice. This is so in a
rent in the rocks above the Bower-yard, known to natives as the Bower
_Yord_.
“Up the bower, and through the Edge,
That’s the way to Buildwas bridge,”
is a local ditty with no other merit than antiquity; but it has served as
a lullaby to generations cradled long ere the bridge below was reared.
Over-looking the Bower is Bath-wood—minus now the bath. Tych’s-nest
comes next, where the kite formerly squealed, and had its eyrie; and
still later—as the oldest inhabitant is ready to testify—where badgers
were caught, and made sport of at Ironbridge Wake.
Ironbridge abounds in pleasant walks and sunny spots; and right pleasant
’tis to view from some eminence on the opposite bank—Lady-wood or
Benthall-edge, the prospect spread out before you. Clustering cottages
are seen to perch themselves on ridges, or to nestle pleasantly in shady
nooks half hid by rocks and knolls and trees; while bits of nature’s
carpet, garden plots and orchards, add interest to the scene. On points
commanding panoramic sweeps of country, of winding dales and wooded
hills, have sprung up villa-looking residences and verandahed cottages
that tell of competence, retirement, and those calm sweet joys that
fringe the eventide of prosperous life. There are no formal streets or
rigid red brick lines to offend the eye: but that pleasing irregularity
an artist would desire. Looking east or west, fronting or turning their
backs upon each other, many gabled, tall chimneyed, just as their owners
pleased; there is a freedom and rusticity of style that gratifies the
sight and harmonises well with the winding roads that meets the poet’s
fancy and goes beyond the limner’s skill. To mention severally these
suburban hill or tree-embosomed retreats would be sufficient by the name
itself to indicate the faithful picture we have drawn. From the Severn
to the summit, the hill is dotted over with villas, Gothic and fanciful,
fronted by grottoed gardens, flanked by castellated walls and orchards,
with ornamental hedge-rows and shady sycamores; whilst in mid-air, lower
down, like a gossamer on a November morn, appears the iron net-work of
the bridge. We have written so much and so often of these scenes that we
are tempted here to hand in _copy_ to the printer of what we have
previously said on the subject.
However beautiful these rocks and hills are by day, the view of
Ironbridge assumes a character equally sublime when the glare of the sun
is gone, when the hills cast their shadows deep and the river gathering
the few rays left of the straggling light gives them back in feeble
pencils to the eye. At sunset when the hills are bathed in purple light,
and the god of day before his final exit between Lincoln Hill and
Benthall-edge a second time appears; by moonlight, when rosy tints have
given way to hues of misty grey, when familiar objects grow grotesque and
queer, and minor features melt away amid the deep calm quiet that reigns
below, serial pictures of quaint perspective and inspiring beauty present
themselves. To the stranger entering the valley at night for the first
time the scene is novel and impressive. Silence,
Faithful attendant on the ebon throne,
sways her sceptre over dim outlines which imagination shapes at will, and
the river, toned down to the duskiest hue, whispers mournfully to each
smooth pebble as it passes.