Red Castle--A stately ruin--Old houses and new owners--The joy of
discovery--High Ercall and its story--Mills and millers--The life of
a stone-breaker--Old folk-songs--Haughmond Abbey--Ancient tombs--A
peaceful spot--A place for a pilgrimage.
On leaving Wem I sought instruction of the landlord as to the road to
Hawkestone, for the roads about Wem are many and winding, and it is
not easy for a stranger to find his way on them. He told me to go to
Weston, a village adjoining the park, "where there is a good inn. If
you ask your way to Hawkestone," said he, "the natives may send you
miles round; for Hawkestone is a big place, and there is no inn but
at Weston." So to Weston we went, guided by the signposts, and not a
signpost, strange to relate, did we see with "Hawkestone" upon it.
Weston proved to be a charming little village of black and white
half-timber cottages with an old church set on a hill above them, and
by the churchyard wall were its ancient stocks intact. At the end of
the village we came to the inn delightfully placed facing the park
and its glorious scenery, and with only a low hedge between it and
the park. The Hawkestone hotel gave me an agreeable greeting, for
on entering it I found myself in a panelled hall, and beyond this I
caught a peep of a pleasant little garden belonging to the inn. Again
I was fortunate in finding comfortable quarters. I liked my inn; it
had a home-like look. I asked about seeing the park, and was told I
could have a guide to show me over it, though I was welcome to go
alone if I wished. No guide was pressed on me, and I appreciated the
fact; but I felt I might miss much if I went without one. The park
was extensive, there were many things to see there; so I obtained a
guide, and set forth to explore Hawkestone, and I went alone with
the guide. After Dr. Johnson's description of the place and all the
adjectives he used--I presume he considered them necessary--I feel
somewhat at a discount in attempting a further description, and finding
fresh, suitable adjectives; but we see places with our own eyes and
glean our own impressions. What struck me first about Hawkestone
was a certain indefinable theatrical look, a sense of unreality, as
though I were viewing a stage production on a large scale. I had
never seen Nature and Art so romantically combined before. Though I
climbed the precipices by narrow paths cut along their sides, I did
not feel "my walk an adventure and my departure an escape," nor did
I feel the "sublime, dreadful, vast, or horrible profundity" of the
spot--I wondered much at those expressions; to me it appeared fully to
justify the terms romantic and picturesque, but not in the least that
of dreadful: never were my spirits daunted! The guide was loquacious;
had he talked less, I might have remembered more of all he told me,
and he told me much of the past history of Hawkestone and of its lords,
from the early days when the first castle was built there to close
upon the present time; and he expressed his surprise that I had not
heard of Hawkestone before. "Not to know Hawkestone is to show yourself
unknown," I almost fancy he thought.
I was first shown the Red Castle, built in the reign of King Henry
III., of which castle, except some broken masonry, a tall, round keep,
standing isolated and stately on a crag, alone remains. "How like one
of Salvator Rosa's pictures!" I could not help exclaiming to myself;
and really it is. The far view from this tower over a vast extent of
peaceful, pastoral, and wooded country to the stormy mountains of
Wales, so rugged of outline and contrasting, is wonderfully fine and
space-expressing. There was a bigness about it, looking over "the sweep
of endless woods," that pleased me, a green spaciousness that was
splendid. I forget now how many feet high the guide said the top of the
tower on its crag was from the ground; but one had to crane one's neck
to see it from below, and this gave one the impression of commanding
height whatever its height might be.
Next we went under a wide-arched rock at the end of a ravine, and began
to climb the crags on the opposite side by a narrow winding footpath
with steps cut here and there in the steepest parts; so we reached a
wonderful series of grottos, consisting of arched chambers in the solid
rock, with many roughly-hewn pillars. These grottos were lined with
shells and spas: the guide gave me the history of them, but I have
forgotten it; some one, however, cut them out of the rock, and some
ladies decorated them in the manner described. Then I was conducted
on to the top of the crag, opposite to which is the Raven's Cliff;
from this point the view over the park and rocks is very striking, the
rough grey rocks peeping out here and there from the sea of soft green
foliage, forming a telling combination and contrast. Then we descended,
only to ascend again up a steep and stepped path to the Hermitage, a
cavern in the cliff side, over the entrance to which is inscribed--
Procul, O procul este, profani.
It was a strange whim of our ancestors to have a Hermitage in their
grounds; and as real hermits were not to be procured, often an aged
pensioner was made to take their place for the benefit of visitors--but
nobody was of course deceived. I am afraid it was an age of shams, even
of sham ruins built to beautify the view! In the present instance,
however, a wax figure of a grey-haired and bearded man seated at a
table with a skull upon it did duty for a living hermit, though it did
not do it very well; for the effect of the figure was marred by the
dripping of moisture from the roof of the cave: not even a hermit could
endure that for long and live. The guide told me that he was supposed
to leave me here and go in by a secret door at the back of the figure
and somehow introduce himself beneath its cloak and talk. He was quite
open about the proceeding; it was mere acting; and I told him, after
such a confession, he need not trouble himself or me. Though actually
he declared some young people were taken in by the device, owing to the
gloom of the cavern; if this be true, I am afraid there are a good many
young innocents abroad. Then I saw the Druid's Cavern and St. Francis's
Cave, and a recess in the rock where, according to an inscription,
"Rowland Hill, a gentleman renowned for his great wisdom, piety, and
charity, who, being a zealous Royalist, hid himself in the Civil Wars
of the time of King Charles I.; but being discovered, was imprisoned in
his adjacent Red Castle, whilst his house was pillaged and ransacked by
the rebels." There were other things of interest in the park, but in
truth its gloriously rocky and wooded scenery, and its ruined castle
keep, appealed to me vastly more than the rest.
June is a month to joy in, for when in a gracious mood it can produce
the pleasantest of weather, and the next morning gave us a sample
of its occasional perfectness. A glorious sunshiny day followed the
promise of the morning with a deep sea-blue sky above, and hardly a
cloud in it--a day that made us feel the joy of being alive. So we
made an early start, and wandering about deviously we suddenly espied
before us, standing gaunt and deserted and lone in a grass field, the
ruined hall of Moreton Corbet, its roofless walls, its upstanding
gables and great vacant windows, darkly silhouetted against the bright
sky. I recognised the old house from a friend's photograph; it had a
familiar look, though I had never been there before and had come upon
it unexpectedly. The house covers a considerable area of ground, and
some of the quaint carvings on its front appeared to be almost as
sharp as the day they were carved, and that was centuries ago. Were I
an architect, I think I should try to discover the quarry from whence
came that enduring stone, for many a fine building I have seen has
suffered sadly from the perishable nature of the stone employed in its
construction. An architect cannot be too careful in the selection of
his material if he wishes his work to last--and what architect does
not--not to mention his client, who surely deserves some consideration?
Moreton Corbet was begun by Sir Robert Corbet in 1606, but he died
of the plague before the building was finished; his brother Sir
Vincent Corbet continued the work, but the house was never finished
or inhabited, and now the rambling ruins are but the home of owls and
other birds. Camden the antiquary in his day wrote of it: "Robert
Corbet began to build a most gorgeous and stately house, after the
Italian model, for his future magnificent and splendid habitation,
but death countermanding his designs took him off, so that he left
his project unfinished and his old castle defaced." The remains of
his "defaced" old castle are at hand, with the initials A. C. for Sir
Andrew Corbet over its doorway. There is a hazy local tradition that
some enemy of the Corbets, when the house was building, uttered the
prophecy that "Moreton Corbet shall never be finished." But who can
tell, it may be some day, though late the day, for its walls appear
sound, the stone mullions stand in the windows still, and I have known
ancient houses even more ruined that have come into the hands of a
new owner and have been restored and converted into delightful homes.
"Patch and long sit," runs the old proverb, but "build and soon flit"
it ends, and from my limited experience of the ways of men there is
some truth in the proverb. But proverbs are so often contradictory that
I have lost faith in them. One says, "Absence makes the heart grow
fonder"; then another has it, "Out of sight out of mind," and I might
go on quoting familiar proverbs of an antagonistic nature, only to do
so would be a waste of space. You can generally by searching find a
proverb to fit a special case whichever way you desire--that is the
beauty of proverbs.
[Illustration: THE RUINED HALL OF MORETON CORBET.]
A ruined home, whether of cottage or mansion, is always, more or less,
a pathetic sight and one that appeals to the sentimental traveller,
but coming thus suddenly and unexpectedly upon so stately a ruin as
Moreton Corbet right in the heart of a quiet country, a country with
no suggestion about it but of farms and fields--one expected nothing
else--the greater was the appeal to such sentiment. The coming to the
notable ruin of an abbey or castle for which the traveller is prepared
by guide-book description is quite a different thing; at least I, for
one, cannot command my sympathies to the order of a guide-book. To
repeat, in effect, a previous remark, I really think that the chief
charm of travel is the coming upon the unexpected, the enjoyment
of discovery, so that even the lesser sights by the way assume an
importance that perhaps is not rightly theirs and become memorable.
Leaving Moreton Corbet we got wandering amongst winding lanes, and
very pleasant lanes they were; these eventually brought us to High
Ercall, a lonely little village consisting of an ancient church, an
old Tudor manor-house of some size standing close by, and a cottage or
two. High Ercall had not much to show us, but what it had to show was
interesting, chiefly the fine church which retains some features of
interest in spite of the fact that it was sadly battered about by the
Puritan party, and the time-toned Tudor house built, according to an
inscription on it, in 1608. The main portion of the house is of stone,
but it has brick gables above that give it an odd appearance. The old
home took my fancy. "It looks history," I exclaimed to myself, though
at the time I knew nothing of its past. Why I should have imagined that
house had a story to tell I cannot say, but so it impressed me, perhaps
simply because it was so old. Anyway, on making inquiry I found my
intuition not wrong, for I discovered it was one of the many Shropshire
houses that had been fortified in the time of the Civil Wars and held
for the King, and though but a house, so gallantly was it defended that
it successfully resisted several fierce assaults, being indeed the last
house in the shire to surrender, only the strongholds of Bridgnorth
and Ludlow holding out longer. I wonder if anything eventful will
ever happen at High Ercall again. Who would have expected to come upon
history there? It looked so innocent of anything of the kind. Certainly
the Civil Wars have given the added interest of stirring days to many
a now dreamy spot in England, for those wars concerned themselves with
the sieges of so many private houses scattered far and wide over the
countryside. Those days have passed for ever, for no private house
could now be converted into a fortress. Many of these old houses still
retain bullet marks on, and sometimes the lead of the bullets in, their
thick oak doors; their strong walls too occasionally show, even to this
far-off day, the indentations made by some of Cromwell's inexhaustible
cannon-balls. You cannot escape from Cromwell's doings when you go
a-touring in England.
Beyond High Ercall we crossed over a marshy upland, and over a bridge
or two so narrow that there was only just room for the car to pass. The
country had a remote look, for we travelled far before meeting a soul,
and that soul was a solitary man breaking stones by the side of the
road. From the uplands we dropped down to a picturesque old mill, its
wheel turned by a sparkling stream; and a pretty picture the old mill
made with its foaming weir above, its sleepy pool below, and the green
fields gently sloping down to it. The mill was busy that day, and the
muffled hum of its machinery, the swish, swish of its wheel and the
plash of its weir, broke pleasantly the silence of the spot.
I saw no miller, or any one, about; perhaps the miller was at his
dinner whilst his work was being done for him. I wish I could have
seen him, for I have a liking for millers, always having found them
jovially disposed and not averse to a gossip; now I have a weakness for
gossiping with country folk, trusting by so doing to glean something
of their views of life. Such folk I have generally found willing to
talk about anything but politics--well, I do not care to talk politics,
but why they should so carefully avoid the subject I cannot say, nor
yet why millers are so cheerful a race, any more than why farmers in
contradiction should be given so to grumbling, even when the seasons
are good. I remember that picture in _Punch_ of a squire addressing a
tenant of his: "Good morning, Mr. Turnips, fine growing day." "Yes,
sir," responds the farmer, "'twill make the weeds grow." But the miller
looks on the bright side of life; perhaps it is because he seems to
have so little work to do, only having to watch whilst the running
water or the willing wind do his work for him. I know I have chatted
with a miller for an hour or more inside his mill and amongst his
whirling wheels, as the flour flowed fast and free from the wooden
shoots into the sacks below, and he merely glanced round now and then
to see if a sack were nearly filled, so that he might put another in
its place; nor did this take him long to do, nor did the work seem
hard. It was this miller who so kindly explained to me how much better
it was to rely on water than wind power, the latter being so uncertain,
for "the wind may drop in the daytime, and then blow at night when you
are comfortably in bed, so you may idle away half, or even the whole
of a day, but water-power is constant, if you have a decent stream to
depend upon." Then the miller told me how in his father's time, for
his father was a miller too, the gleaners used to come to the mill to
have their gleanings ground, and in those friendly past days the miller
used to grind their gleanings without charge in his spare time, as the
custom was. "Then helped every one his neighbour," for those were "the
good old days," at least they seem good to look back upon.
After the mill followed a stretch of open country with wide cornfields
on either hand waving round us like a golden sea and rustling in the
wind; then by way of change we entered upon a tree-lined road, with at
one spot great rocks by its side, and from this spot Shrewsbury and its
church spires came into view vaguely showing in the mist like the city
of a dream. Not desiring to revisit Shrewsbury, I stopped the car and
consulted my map; it was a fortunate circumstance, for in doing so I
discovered "Haughmond Abbey" marked thereon, and apparently not very
far off. I seemed to be always making discoveries on my map. Now I had
heard of Haughmond Abbey, but what the ruins were like, where they were
hidden away, whether extensive or the mere fragments of a building,
I had no idea. Bolton, Tintern, Fountains, Glastonbury, Melrose, and
other famous ruined abbeys were familiar to me in pictures, engravings,
photographs, and poetry long before I saw them, but of Haughmond I had
seen neither picture nor engraving, nor, as far as I am aware, has any
poet sung its praises. Yet Haughmond Abbey I found to be a beautiful
ruin, not so romantically situated as either Tintern or Bolton truly,
but set in as sweet a spot as all fair England can show, delightful to
the eye with its verdant meadows, shady trees, tranquil water, grey
rock, and sheltering wooded hills around--a spot so peaceful in its
seclusion, so peace-bestowing, too, and without a hint of the modern
world, for at Haughmond nothing is to be seen but quiet woods, gentle
hills, and the spacious sky above. Never came I to a more tranquil
spot; the monks of old must have left their benediction there, though
robbed of their abbey they loved so well and turned adrift into the
outer world, and though they doubtless fondly hoped and believed it
would "have canopied their bones," or at least they would have been
laid to rest in the shade of its church.
But I am a little previous. Close to where I pulled up I saw a man
breaking stones by the roadside, and I asked him if he could tell
me the whereabouts of the abbey. "It be right down there," said he,
pointing ahead with his finger into space, "not more than a quarter
of a mile away. You comes to a cottage, and on the other side of the
way is a footpath by a stream leading to it." He was a civil man, his
instructions were clear, stone-breaking is wearisome work; I was sorry
for him to the extent of a sixpence, better expended than on a tramp, I
thought, and tramps in my green days wheedled many a sixpence out of
me. I remember that the last tramp to whom I gave a trifle exclaimed
in the fulness of his heart upon unexpectedly receiving it, "God bless
you, sir. May we soon meet in Heaven!" Since then my donations to
tramps have ceased. I would chat with that stone-breaker, I would see
the world through a stone-breaker's eyes. But his view of the world
was limited; manifestly the monotony of his labour had told upon him,
perhaps too the loneliness of the life, so that I got little profit out
of the conversation. It needs a strong mind to sit by the roadside all
day long and break stones, do nothing but break stones, and have any
imagination left.
Finding a secluded, shady spot by the wayside I rested there awhile,
for the day was hot; moreover I was already beginning to feel hungry,
and my luncheon-basket was handy. How hungry one gets motoring in the
fresh air, to be sure! Whilst resting there and thinking, it suddenly
struck me how seldom in Wales I saw any children romping about in the
villages as English children are wont to do; even to-day sometimes on
the village greens one finds the latter playing games so old that no
one can tell how they originated. Take, for instance, the game of "Old
Roger" often played at children's gatherings in the West Country to an
old song as follows. I have given this song in a previous book, but it
will bear repeating, and I repeat it to show how this old song, long
years ago, found its way to America, and how it became altered there.
This, then, is how the original "Old Roger" runs:--
Old Roger is dead and lies in his grave--
Hee-haw! lies in his grave.
They planted an apple-tree over his head.
The apples were ripe and ready to drop,
When came a big wind and blew them all off;
Then came an old woman a-picking them up.
Old Roger jumped up and gave her a knock,
Which made the old woman go hipperty-hop.
Now an American lady reading this in my book wrote to me about it,
enclosing the words of a song that was sung to her by her grandfather,
who had learnt it from his grandfather. "It is very plain," wrote
the lady, "that our song came over from your country, and that it
originated in your 'Old Roger.' This is very interesting to me. We call
our song 'Old Father Cungell.' It goes this way:--
Old Father Cungell went up to White Hall,
Hum, ha! up to White Hall,
And there he fell sick amongst 'em all,
With my heigh down, ho down,
Hum, Ha!
Old Father Cungell was car-ri-ed home,
Hum, ha! car-ri-ed home;
Before he got there he was as dead as a stone,
With my heigh down, ho down,
Hum, Ha!
Old Father Cungell was in the grave laid,
They covered him up with shovel and spade,
And out of his grave there grew a big tree
That bore the best apples that ever ye see!
Before they were ripe and fit for the fall,
There came an old woman and stole them off all;
Her gown it was red, her petticoat green,
The very worst woman that ever was seen.
Old Cungell got up and hit her a knock,
That made the old woman go hipperty-hop.
The neighbours were scared and said in their fright,
'The ghost of Cungell gets up in the night,'
With my heigh down, ho down,
Hum, Ha!"
[Illustration: HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHURCH DOORWAY.]
Rested and refreshed I went in search of Haughmond Abbey, the ruins of
which, though near to, are not visible from the road, so the casual
traveller might pass them unawares, as doubtless many do. A short
stroll along a shady footpath and by the side of a limpid stream soon
brought me to the spot; the hoary, ivy-clad ruins peeping through the
branching trees made a perfect picture, the sunshine resting on them
and brightening the century-gathered gloom of their broken walls and
rugged gables. It was, in truth, a pleasant spot the monks selected
for their abbey, an ideal spot well secluded from the outer world;
even to-day it retains its old-time tranquillity undisturbed. I had
the ruins to myself, rejoiced to escape from the noisy prattle of the
mere sightseer; to myself, excepting that some birds were holding a
profane service on the grass-grown ground where erst the high altar
stood. The ruins are of considerable extent, though, but for a portion
of a wall and a fine sculptured doorway, the church itself has wholly
disappeared; its foundations, however, may still be faintly traced.
Unlike most abbeys the ruined churches of which remain whilst their
monastic outbuildings and offices have vanished, at Haughmond the
reverse is the case. So one generation builds a fane of prayer and
another generation levels it to the ground, even glorying in its
destruction; and the sad thought of it is, who can say that what we
build in our pride to-day may not at some future time share a similar
fate? Doubtless the monks who reared this stately abbey thought it
would last to Doomsday; it lasted about four hundred years, for it was
founded in 1135 by Fitz Alan of Clun, and was suppressed by King Henry
VIII. in 1541, he "being mynded to take it into his own handes," as he
did many another abbey, "for better purposes." The world knows what
those "better purposes" were.
Nettles and weeds now flourish in the abbey's deserted courts and
around its roofless buildings, the only roofed portion being the
Chapter-house, which is entire with its three richly ornamented arched
doorways, of which I give an illustration. It may be noted that between
the pillars are statues under canopies, a remarkable feature that I
do not remember to have seen in any ecclesiastical edifice before.
It struck me that these statues were an after-thought and had been
introduced at a later period by cutting pillars away to receive them;
I cannot say that they altogether pleased me, for they disturbed the
unity and simplicity of the fine Norman arches. The flat oak roof of
the Chapter-house appears to be in perfect condition, though I was
surprised to find an oak roof there and not a vaulted one of stone. The
chief offices appertaining to the abbey appear to have been built round
a court beyond the cloisters; of these the Abbot's Lodge retains its
beautiful bay-window, and what was probably the guest-house retains all
its side windows with their tracery intact. This building has a large
gable at one end flanked by shapely turrets.
[Illustration: HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHAPTER-HOUSE.]
Of the many stately tombs the abbey church once contained only two
inscribed slabs remain, but these are interesting: one to John Fitz
Alan, deceased 1270, who was buried before the high altar, bears the
following inscription in Norman French, as was the fashion of the
time:--
VOVS KI PASSEZ ICI PRIES PVR LAME IOHAN FIS ALEIN
KI GIT ICI DEV DE SA ALME EIT MERCI. AMEN.
ISABEL DE MORTIMER SA FEMME ACOST DE L ... DEV
DE LVR ALME ... MERCI. AMEN.
Another slab has the incised effigy of a woman shown wearing a quaint
head-dress with a coat-of-arms on either side of it, her gloved hands
folded in prayer; the inscription is in Latin, that prevailed during
that later period and for long afterwards, and thus it runs:--
Hic jacet ... filia Iohis Leyton armigi & uxor Ricardi mynde que obiit
in festo Cathedre Sancti Petri Anno Dni Millesio cccc xxviij cui aie
ppiciet Deus Amen.
I loitered long at Haughmond, and loth I was to leave so
peace-bestowing a spot; thither the world-weary pilgrim might well
come in search of rest, for nowhere could he find a quietude more
profound. I wish I could, in words, express the peacefulness of the
spot, a peacefulness that grew upon me and that seemed to me on leaving
like an unuttered benediction, but not the less a benediction because
unuttered. Never bade I farewell to a spot more reluctantly; never
have I felt a greater desire to return to one. Such was the spell it
cast upon me. "Within its walls peace reigned; from its stately church
came the sounds of prayer and praise; its gates were ever open to the
pilgrim and the poor; its hospitality and brotherly kindness softened
the harsh incidence of the feudal days."