1. From near Oldbury.
2. Keep of the Castle.
]
Following down the Severn River from Shrewsbury, we come to Bridgenorth,
an ancient town planted on a steep hill, full of quaint houses, and
having an old covered market where the country-people gather on
Saturdays. The lower part is of brick, and the upper part is
black-and-white-timbered, but the human love for what is old and
familiar is shown by the way in which the people still fill up the old
market-house, though a fine new one has recently been built. The most
prized of the old houses of this venerable town is a foundry and
blacksmith shop standing by the river; it was in this house that Bishop
Percy, author of the _Reliques_, was born. On the promontory of
sandstone, which steeply rises about one hundred and eighty feet above
the river, the upper part of the town is built, and here are the ruins
of Bridgenorth Castle, which stood in an exceptionally strong situation.
The red sandstone predominates here, but not much of it remains in the
castle, there being little left excepting a huge fragment of the massive
wall of the keep, which now inclines so much on one side from the
settlement of the foundation as to be almost unsafe. This castle was
built eight hundred years ago by the third and last of the Norman Earls
of Shrewsbury: it was held for King Charles in the Civil Wars, and
underwent a month's siege before it surrendered, when the conquerors
destroyed it. Bridgenorth is the most picturesque of all the towns on
the Severn, owing to the steep promontory up which the houses extend
from the lower to the upper town and the magnificent views from the
castle. The communication with the hill is by a series of
steeply-winding alleys, each being almost a continuous stairway: they
are known as the "Steps." A bridge with projecting bastions crosses the
river and connects the higher with the lower parts of the town, thus
giving the place its name.
[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE BISHOP PERCY WAS BORN, BRIDGENORTH.]
[Illustration: LODGE OF MUCH WENLOCK ABBEY.]
About twelve miles south-east of Shrewsbury is the village of Much
Wenlock, where there are remains of a magnificent abbey founded by the
Black monks, and exhibiting several of the Early English and Gothic
styles of architecture, but, like most else in these parts, it has
fallen in ruin, and many of the materials have been carried off to build
other houses. Portions of the nave, transepts, chapter-house, and
abbot's house remain, the latter being restored and making a fine
specimen of ecclesiastical domestic architecture built around a court.
An open cloister extends the entire length of the house. There are
beautiful intersecting Norman arches in the chapter-house. There are
some quaint old houses in the town--timbered structures with bold
bow-windows--and not a few of them of great age. Roger de Montgomery is
credited with founding Wenlock Abbey at the time of the Norman Conquest.
The site was previously occupied by a nunnery, said to have been the
burial-place of St. Milburgh, who was the granddaughter of King Penda of
Mercia. This was a famous religious house in its day, and it makes a
picturesque ruin, while the beauty of the neighboring scenery shows how
careful the recluses and religious men of old were to cast their lots
and build their abbeys in pleasant places.
[Illustration: WENLOCK.]