Part 8

But if the inns be quaint, how shall justice be done to the quaintness of the mediæval timbered houses in the High Street, or Butcher Row? There is no town in England—no, not even Chester—that can show a greater number, or more beautiful examples of black and white; while for queer street names Shrewsbury certainly bears away the bell. There are Wyle Cop, and the houses at its foot, once known as “under the Wyle”; Pride Hill, which does not refer to the almost Spanish pride of Salopians, but to an old mansion of the Pride family that once stood there; Shoplatch; Murivance, on the old town walls; Mardol, or “Dairy Fold”; and Dog-pole, originally “Duck-pool.” In midst of all these is the Market-square, with the old red sandstone Market-house in the centre; a place notable in these days rather for a pleasant and aristocratic quiet than for anything connected with marketing. The old trading interest went in 1809, when the new Market buildings and Corn Exchange—a not altogether successful combination of red and yellow brick—were opened. A curious inscription on the front of the old building dates it back to Queen Elizabeth’s time, and above, in a recess, stands the effigy of that Richard, Duke of York, whose head graced one of York’s gates in 1460, after the Battle of Wakefield. The effigy was brought from the old gatehouse on the Welsh Bridge, demolished in 1791. Armoured from heel to crown, it reminds one vividly of those feudal Daimios of Japan whom it was imperative to sweep away before that country could emerge from barbarism and savagery. And let it not be forgotten that our “chivalry” of old was as savage and as barbarous as anything to be found in China or any other Asiatic country.

A warrior of unflinching resolve and proud belief in self was Clive, one of Shropshire’s greatest sons, whose bronze statue, its pedestal simply inscribed with his name, stands in advance of the Market-house. It was well merely to place his name there, for what do Shropshiremen need to be told of Clive? That would be an ill day when they should forget his youth, his manhood, his achievements, and his tragedy. To serve your country—to give her Empire, trade, and wealth—these things do not fall to the lot of many men, and it is well they should not, for they bring the curses and the rabid enmity of the factious, the deprecation of the feeble-hearted, and the vitriolic hatred of the envious and the mean-souled; ever the loudest voiced among the body politic. Few are those who, unmoved, could be the recipients of such base slander and ingratitude, and Clive was not one of them. The man who gave us India died by his own hand, but none the less done to death by the Little Englanders of that day.

The dedications of Shrewsbury’s churches are as unusual as the names of its streets. There are St. Chad’s, St. Alkmund’s, and St. Julian’s, among others; but the finest church of all is St. Mary’s, whose spire, soaring to a height of 220 feet, is oddly at variance with the tower and the rest of the building, being of white stone, while the body of the church is in red. St. Mary’s spire is visible from great distances. It tempted a steeple-jack named Cadman to a fearful death in 1739. He had been repairing the spire, and, having completed the work, was foolish enough to essay the feat of sliding down a rope fastened to the spire at one end, and at the other to an oak tree across the Severn. The rope broke, and he was flung from mid-air into the street of St. Mary Fryars, being instantly killed. A curious epitaph to him remains:—

Let this small monument record the name Of Cadman and to future time proclaim How by a bold attempt to fly from this high spire, Across the Sabrine stream he did acquire His fatal end. ’Twas not from want of skill Or courage to perform the task he fell. No, no; a faulty rope being drawn too tight, Hurried his soul on high to take its flight And bade the body here a last good-night.

St. Mary’s is largely Norman, and very, very beautiful. St. Chad’s, on the other hand, built a hundred years ago, is Greek of sorts and designed in a perfect circle; the model of a heathen temple, and the worst of bad taste. But there is this satisfaction; it is not in an obtrusive position, and unless it be diligently sought is not likely to be found.

[Illustration: THE MARKET-PLACE, SHREWSBURY.]

The Castle, on the other hand, is the first thing seen by the railway traveller from London, just as it was the least likely in coaching days. When the Psalmist sings of the valleys being exalted and the mountains laid low, he parallels the changes wrought at Shrewsbury by the railway, for the traffic that came in by Wyle Cop has been wholly transferred to another line of route, where the Castle is the most prominent object. If there were ever one who, alighting at Shrewsbury station and, entering the station-yard, failed to see the Castle, he surely would be blind to the light of day, for the frowning battlements that even now glower down from their craggy foothold, after eight hundred years, overhang very dramatically the cabs and carriages, the portmanteaus and Gladstone bags of modern life. The keep is all that is left of the original Norman stronghold. The outworks have disappeared these hundreds of years past, and the walls of the keep itself have been patched and re-faced. Impressive still is that ancient fortress in sunshine, but infinitely grand when the sun is setting, the lights of the station begin to twinkle, and the signal-lamps to gleam green and red. Then those ponderous turrets and ruddy walls take on a silhouetted blackness that effectually hides the innovations and the modern touches only too visible in the broad eye of day.

Shrewsbury School is as prominent as the Castle itself, on the way up into the town; a school no longer since modern buildings have been raised on the other side of the Severn. Now used as a Public Library and Museum, and with a seated bronze statue of Darwin, its last famous scholar, in front, it fitly enshrines within its noble Tudor walls many records of Shrewsbury’s and Shropshire’s past.

One thing, certainly, the visitor to Shrewsbury cannot, nay, must not, fail of doing. He must not neglect the delicacy peculiar to the town—

A Shrewsbury cake of Pailin’s best make,

as Ingoldsby has it in his “Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie.” Only Pailin no longer makes Shrewsbury cakes. He has long been gathered to his fathers, and let us hope he is quiring with the celestial throng. But, if Pailin be dead, the making of the especial cakes goes on unfailingly, and the eating of them is a rite—a canonical observance almost.

Over against the shop where the original Pailin earned his undying fame—why has Shrewsbury no statue to him?—is the courtyard that gives access to that wonderfully beautiful timbered building, the Council House, the spot where, in bygone days, the Council of the Marches governed the Principality of Wales and these marchlands. “Lords’ Place” they sometimes name this vice-regal court.

A great feature of Shrewsbury is the Quarry. Now the Quarry is not a quarry at all, but a public park beside the Severn, in whose beautiful grounds is probably the largest and most beautiful avenue of limes in the kingdom; and amidst those noble trees there stands a stone effigy of Hercules, covered over with the green stains of weather until he looks quite the most horrid Hercules the explorer is likely to discover anywhere. Also, his muscles are things of a weird and wonderful fascination, more resembling subcutaneous apple dumplings than mere representations of gristle and sinew. Who is there that lives within a circle of fifty miles from Shrewsbury and has not heard of the Quarry and its flower shows? Do not the railway companies run excursions especially for those who flock there? What Shrewsbury would do without its Quarry it is difficult to imagine, and scarce anything more disastrous could be thought of than that it should ever be improved away; for the town is so placed upon its almost island site that the houses huddle closely up to one another in most directions, and this is one of the very few clear spaces within the circlet that the Severn makes.

[Illustration: THE COUNCIL HOUSE.]

XXVII

Indeed, when you have descended Mardol, and so across the Welsh Bridge—the “reddie way to Wales”—have left the town on the way to Holyhead, you are not yet clear of streets and houses. There, on the further shore of Severn, outside Shrewsbury altogether, is the long, steep street of Frankwell, all old houses and tottering tenements, dirty and crazy, and so picturesque that surely some top-hatted, frock-coated smeller of drains will presently level it with the ground and build some sanitary and abominably ugly successor. The pity of these reforms that must needs be so destructive! Not many places are more charming to the artistic eye than Frankwell. There, among many other old houses is the timbered “String of Horses” inn, that perhaps got its name when the road was a steeper ascent even than now, and eight and ten horses in line toiled up the rugged way to Wales.

In those old days, going back many centuries ago, the “Frankwell” of to-day was the _Franche ville_, or “Free-town,” where the outlanders might squat; the “beggarly and turbulent” Welsh, for example, who might by no means come and live or ply their trades within the walls, and must go forth from the town every night. Partly as a defence against more threatening dangers, and partly to keep the Frankwell aliens, and other unauthorised and undesirable rabble, outside for the night hours, when the powers of evil are exalted, the gatehouse was long maintained across the Welsh Bridge and the gates duly shut at sundown.

Darwin, who by his doctrine of evolution and heterodox reading of accepted phenomena caused many flutterings of episcopal skirts, uprooted much placid belief, and gave many a simple soul anxious times, was born in that great house, the Mount, on Frankwell hill-top, so long ago as 1809. The house stands in its own grounds, surrounded by high walls, just the same now as then; only the toll-gate, spoken of in Telford’s reports as “Dr. Darwin’s”—although Dr. Darwin had nothing to do with it and probably wished it at the devil, with the shouts of “Gate!” all night long—is gone. Here the old houses begin to thin out, and beyond, to Shelton, one mile and three-quarters from the town, suburban villas line the way.

[Illustration: SHELTON OAK.]

At Shelton Gate, where the road branches to Welshpool, still stands that battered and riven monarch, Shelton Oak, just within the garden-wall of one of these modern villas, but readily to be inspected. “Glyndwr’s Oak” it is often named, from the persistent legend that Owain Glyndwr from its branches watched his ally, Harry Hotspur, being defeated at the Battle of Shrewsbury, on that fatal day, July 21st, 1403. But, unfortunately for the credibility of that legend, the battle was fought three miles away, at a spot not visible from here, and Glyndwr was very far distant on that particular day. This has been proved again and again, and it saves something of Glyndwr’s reputation to accord him a decent _alibi_; but the myth is immortal. It has brought no good to the old oak, for, what with the relic-hunters who have hacked pieces away, and their fellow-sinners who have carved their own names on its giant trunk, it is in sorry case. Age, of course, is responsible for its hollow body and dead limbs, but the kindly ivy wraps it fondly round and hides many a scar. The trunk has a girth of 45 feet, a measurement that goes far to prove an age going a hundred years or more back beyond Shrewsbury Fight, and that _if_ Glyndwr had been here he could have, indeed, climbed its branches. Had he desired to see the battle, he should have taken his courage in his hands and gone down the road to Shrewsbury, beyond, to get a good view. But there were those at Shrewsbury who could have desired nothing better, and Glyndwr, _if_ again he had been here, would perhaps have remembered too keenly what they did down there to the rebel Prince Dafydd when they caught him, more than a hundred years before. What they did was to draw him on a hurdle, hang and quarter him, and divide the pieces among the clamorous towns. Greedy London got his head, and, crowning it with a tinsel crown, spiked it upon Temple Bar, or London Bridge, or some similarly prominent place.

Passing the outlying houses of Bicton village, the road comes to Montford Bridge, where we take our last look at the Severn from Telford’s sturdy red sandstone bridge.

The Severn is no sooner left behind than the Breidden Hills, first glimpsed ten miles away and then lost, come again into view. They rise suddenly from the level with even more dramatic effect than the Wrekin; not of a greater height, rising only to 1200 feet, but of true mountainous character. The distance of seven miles separating them from the road, while not obscuring them, has the grand effect of blotting out all petty detail and giving the appearance of a huge, blue-black, and apparently unscalable mass. To give the last touch of theatrical effect, a monument tops the highest point; perhaps, the traveller thinks, the memorial of some hardy mountaineer who essayed to climb these heights and perished in his rashness. But it is nothing of the sort; only a pillar erected to keep green the memory of Rodney’s naval victories. “Colofn Rodney,” as the Welsh call it, otherwise “Rodney’s Pillar,” is inscribed in Welsh to the effect that

The highest pillars will fall, The strongest towers decay; But the fame of Sir George Brydges Rodney shall increase continually and his good name shall never be obliterated.

From behind “the Breidden,” as Salopians call the Hills, came the Welsh in olden times to plunder and commit outrages on these exposed frontiers; and the whole district remained a veritable Alsatia until the beginning of the seventeenth century; outlaws and freebooters, both in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire, the real authorities, who usually slew, but in their lighter moments and more kindly vein contented themselves with making sheriffs’ officers eat the writs they carried, seal and all; or just stripped the traveller and with an oath and the prick of a sword bade him begone.

[Illustration: THE BREIDDEN HILLS.]

The red rock that rises, tall, rugged, and precipitous behind Nesscliff village, and gives that place its name, was the fastness of one of the last of these gentry, Wild Humphry Kynaston, who, when forced from his seat at Middle Castle and outlawed, lived in a cave here and began a career as wildly romantic as that of Robin Hood.

The Ness gave a name not only to Nesscliff, but to the neighbouring villages of Great and Little Ness, in lonely and sequestered spots at a little distance from the road. Nesscliff itself has put off the outward trappings of romance, and has but a few unremarkable cottages, the very ugly old red-brick “Nesscliff Hotel” of coaching days, and the older and, dazzlingly whitewashed “Old Three Pigeons.” Telford’s fine road, too, disclaims any memories of lawless times, and except where the branch road goes off to Knockin, is in itself as safe and commonplace as any in England. At that point, however, just at the fork, a deep and foul horse-pond offers a likely snare for the outward-bound stranger on dark winter nights; although its sides are guarded by breast-walls as old as Telford’s day, to the traveller making towards Shrewsbury. Gallows-tree Bank, one of the rises on the way, now a name only, and not well known at that, had its significance in the old days, together with another of the same name a mile short of Oswestry; better known because it gives its grim title to “Gallows-tree Gate,” an old toll-house built beside that Golgotha. The especial need for these engines of retributive justice, placed here in old times, is seen in the peculiar political and social condition of the Marches. Nineteen miles separate the towns of Shrewsbury and Oswestry, and only the smallest of villages are found between. There had once been an attempt to establish a town—with markets and fairs and municipal life—midway, but it failed, and the site of that enterprise may be sought at the quite insignificant village of Ruyton, to which a finger-post, pointing along a bye-road, directs. “Ruyton-of-the-Eleven-Towns” is the name of that place, and one that whets curiosity. “Towns,” however, is a misleading term in this connection, and never meant more than the eleven “townships,” or petty subdivisions of land, into which the manor of Ruyton was subdivided. The Earls of Arundel were anciently lords of this manor, as also of that of Oswestry. One of them granted in 1308 a full market charter to Ruyton, with right of scot and lot, and of assize of criminals, and many other privileges, and it is possible that the place would have thrived, only for the fact that another Earl of Arundel, ninety-nine years later, rendered these privileges useless by an arbitrary ordinance that none of the tenants of his various manors were to offer anything for sale at any fair or market until they had first offered it at Oswestry. The penalty for disobeying was a fine of six shillings and eightpence. There is an eloquent piece of fifteenth-century protection! The result, of course, was that Oswestry had the “pick of the market,” and Ruyton decayed.

With that decay the road grew more lonely and dangerous. It had always been a wild country, with robbers roaming the open heaths that spread, forbidding and desolate, where enclosed fields now border the road; and as Shrewsbury and Oswestry grew and trade waxed between them, the plunder to be gained grew more and more tempting. Oswestry was then, and for long after, the chief seat of the Welsh flannel market, and every Monday the Shrewsbury drapers were accustomed to ride to it and back on business. So dangerous was the journey that, even so late as Queen Elizabeth’s time, the drapers, not without due cause, had prayers for their safety read in St. Alkmund’s church before they set out, and were “ordered”—no need for being bidden, one would think—always to go together, and to bear arms. Perhaps it was because their prayers, their companionship, and their arms did not suffice to protect them, that, a few years later, we find them insisting that the Welsh cloth-weavers and flannel-makers should bring their goods to Shrewsbury to be sold.

XXVIII

Along the road, half a mile or so short of West Felton, on the right hand, stands the lodge guarding the entrance to Pradoe, the home for half a century of that famous whip and amateur of coaching, the Honourable Thomas Kenyon. Whether Pradoe be a corruption of the old Welsh word “Braddws,” meaning “Paradise,” none can now say with certainty, but sure it is that the beautiful park in whose recesses the house is secluded, half a mile from the road, has one of the loveliest outlooks upon the distant Welsh mountains of any domain in this fair county of Shropshire. From the tall windows of the noble drawing-room at Pradoe the landscape slopes down towards where the road runs, hid from view; and in the blue distance, glimpsed between the romantic stems of fir trees, rise the steep sides of the Breiddens, their highest point crowned with the Rodney Pillar. The fame of the Honourable Thomas Kenyon—“His Honour,” as he was known in his day—will not readily be forgot between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, whose nineteen miles he drove times innumerable in his coach and four. His was a prominent figure, any time between 1803 and 1851, among those “country gentlemen of England,” of whom Sir Robert Peel once declared he would rather be the political leader than enjoy the confidence of princes. Whether as a sportsman or a magistrate, “His Honour” was held in the greatest esteem. He was the third son of Lord Chief Justice Kenyon, and was born in 1780 at Gredington, a few miles north of Ellesmere. “Nimrod” has a characteristic passage showing how early Thomas Kenyon’s love of horses developed. “Nimrod” was fifteen years of age at the time, and a guest with his father at Gredington:—

“Where are Lloyd and George?” asked Lord Kenyon, wishing that my father might see them.

“They are in the garden,” was the answer.

“And where is Tom?”

“Master Thomas _is in the stable_, my Lord,” was the reply given by the footman.

He was, in fact, taking an active part in caring for the horses, just as, in later years, he “delighted in seeing twelve or fourteen horses bedded down, all for his own driving on the Shrewsbury road.”

“The most popular man in the county,” as he was presently to be known, married in 1803, and settled at Pradoe. He became active in the volunteer movement consequent upon the threatened invasion of England by Napoleon, and was Chairman of Shropshire Sessions and High Steward of Oswestry. That he never chose to compete for Parliamentary honours was due to his love of a country life in general and of the road in

## particular. He set up his own four-in-hand and drove it himself, on an

average, three times a week, the thirteen miles from Pradoe to Shrewsbury; at other times the five miles to Oswestry, or, on occasional longer trips, to Llangollen or Bangor. Long before Telford had taken in hand the first portion of his work on the Holyhead Road, “His Honour” and his neighbour, Sir Henry Peyton, had done something to improve the part that ran close by. It was in those days heavy with sand, and “as bad a road as ever coach travelled on.” Grips and watercourses ran athwart, and rendered it specially dangerous at night. He had these defects covered over, and the sandy parts laid with hard material.

[Illustration: THE HONOURABLE THOMAS KENYON. _From an Old Print._]

A rigid punctuality was the chief feature of “His Honour’s” drives. He is described as having been a stylish whip, though by no means a fast driver, and never tempted to any racing rivalry. He was a species of Providence to the country-folk who had business calling them into Shrewsbury, and would always give a lift to any decent wayfarer. Only one condition he insisted upon: that no walking-sticks were allowed. Any one desiring a ride must choose between throwing his stick away and walking. Ducks and geese and market-baskets were permissible, and many an old market-woman rode to or from Shrewsbury on his coach; but sticks never had a place there. The reason of this objection to them does not appear. His punctuality was as invariable as that of the “Wonder” itself; and we have already heard how the country-folk took out their watches as that smart turn-out passed—not to see by how much the coach was overdue, but to set their watches by it. The country people whom he had brought into Shrewsbury learned, by many doleful experiences, to value punctuality as greatly as he; for if, when ready to return, they came to the “Lion” yard a minute too late, they would find the inexorable squire and his coach gone, and have to resign themselves to walking home.