About a mile beyond Buildwas is Ironbridge, named from the first bridge ever built in England of iron, which here spans the Severn at a height of forty feet, by a single arch of a hundred feet in width. It was the work of Abraham Darby, the third of his name, and was finished in 1779. A gradient of 1 in 10 takes us through Ironbridge, and less than two miles further on is Madeley, which appears at first sight the very type of all that is unromantic, a prey to coal-dust and miners; yet if we turn off the main road to the left we shall presently find, hidden in a hollow near Madeley Court Station, as poetic a spot as we shall see in many a day’s journey. Perhaps its very contrast to its surroundings adds to its charm; perhaps to some it may not seem charming at all, but merely a tumble-down, ill-kept house. But to others this little nook, with the weather-stained, crumbling walls and tiled gables of the Court House, the swinging ivy, the still pond, the bulrushes and water-lilies, and the red-and-black timbered barn that once sheltered a fugitive king, are a “faery land forlorn,” the very home of glamour and romance. Here Charles II. arrived one night, dressed in green breeches and a noggen shirt. He was tired and hungry, his hands and face were smudged with soot, and he answered to the name of William Jones. He was refreshed in this house, and spent the next day in the barn with Richard Penderel, one of the five brothers to whom he owed his safety. When night fell he walked to Boscobel.

It was hours before he was there, whereas we, if we were as much hurried as he was, might be there in half an hour or so. But though there is nothing to keep us at Shifnal we must pause at Tong, where there are some especially pretty timbered cottages and a church that is really remarkable, for it contains a collection of tombs which I should imagine to be unequalled in a village church. They are those of the Vernon family, and among them is that of Dame Margaret Stanley, the sister of Dorothy Vernon, of Haddon Hall. Charles Dickens said himself that it was of Tong Village he was thinking when he wrote the end of “The Old Curiosity Shop,” and those to whom Little Nell appeals may think of her and her grandfather in the porch of this church. Some of us, however, will take more interest in the shot-marks that have scarred the northern wall ever since the days of the Civil War.

In a park near the village stands the astonishing structure called Tong Castle. It was once a real castle of stone; in the sixteenth century Sir Henry Vernon rebuilt it of brick; in the eighteenth a new owner thought that Moorish cupolas would make a pretty finish to it. When, in 1643, it was in the possession of the Parliamentarians, it was said on that account to be a “great eye-sore to his Majesty’s good subjects who pass’d yt road.” For other reasons it is so still.

A writer of the seventeenth century describes Boscobel as “a very obscure habitation, situate in a kind of wilderness”; and no doubt it was to this obscurity that Charles II. owed his safety. Even to-day it is wonderfully isolated, and we reach it by a series of rather circuitous by-roads; but we can drive right up to the house, and leave our car in a safe enclosure, while we walk a hundred yards to the Royal Oak—not the original “asylum of the most potent prince King Charles II. ... the oak beloved by Jove,”[1] which was mostly made into snuff-boxes and other treasures for the loyal—but an oak grown from an acorn of that “fortunate tree.” When Charles reached Boscobel at three o’clock in the morning he was taken into the big panelled room that we shall presently see, and was refreshed with bread and cheese and a posset of milk and beer. Colonel Carlis, another fugitive from Worcester, “pulled off his Majesty’s shoos, which were full of gravel, and stockens which were very wet,” and at daybreak went with him into the wood, where they both climbed into the oak—here, where we are standing—with a cushion for his Majesty to sit on. Here, for a great part of the day, the tired King slept with his head on Colonel Carlis’s knee. “He bore all these hardships and afflictions with incomparable patience,” says a contemporary historian. At night he was hidden in the house, buried beneath the garret floor in a box-like priest’s-hole, with a load of cheese on the lid. We may climb the stairs and see it; get into it if we will—and ask ourselves if, after spending a night in it, we should be as lighthearted as this man who at any moment might lose his life and had already lost everything else. In the morning he called for a frying-pan and butter, and, having first despatched Colonel Carlis with a dagger to slaughter a neighbour’s sheep, he gaily cooked himself some mutton collops, while the Colonel, “being but under-cook (and that honour enough too), made the fire and turned the collops in the pan.”

From Boscobel we strike due north to Ivetsey Bank, where we shall find an inn capable of providing a good, if homely, luncheon or tea. Thence sixteen miles on Watling Street will bring us without a pause (unberufen!) through Wellington to the point where we left the main road on our outward journey. It is worth while, by the way, to avoid the unpleasant bit of road through Oakengates by striking across to the main road from Shifnal; to do which we must take a turn in St. George’s, where a lamp-post stands out prominently. We enter Shrewsbury, as we left it, by the London Road.

A slightly longer run, covering about fifty miles altogether, will show us something of the northern part of the county on its western side. We drive out of the town past the station and through the squalid suburb of Ditherington, where, for love of our springs and of humanity, we must perforce drive slowly, by reason of the bumpiness of the surface and the phenomenal number of children. Over this ground rode Henry IV. and Prince Hal to the Battle of Shrewsbury, and there on our right is Haughmond Hill, the “busky hill” to which Shakespeare refers. Presently there appears on the left, a few hundred yards away from the road, the church of Battlefield, raised, with the exception of the tower, quite soon after the battle on the spot where the fight raged most fiercely, in order that masses might be sung perpetually “for the prosperity of the King and the souls of the slain.” Here Harry Hotspur died, and with him thousands of others both gentle and simple, for this was a very notable fight and many interests were concerned in it. Beneath the mounds that we see on the south side of the church are the bones of many of the slain. The King “had many marching in his coats,” as Hotspur puts it in “Henry IV.,” and as they were killed in mistake for him he saved himself by a device more ingenious than kingly.

There is nothing of special note between Battlefield and Hawkestone, which is about twelve miles from Shrewsbury, and is a private park, open to visitors. In the rhododendron season it is well worth while to leave one’s car at the extremely nice hotel at the outskirts of the park, and to walk about a mile through pretty grounds swarming with black rabbits, to see the blaze of blossom for which Hawkestone is famous. And yet I think they will fare still better who choose the time of bluebells. These should drive through the park by the public road. Beyond the gate, where the stream is close to them on the right and woods slope to its edge, they will see, bright in the near foreground but fading away into the distance under the trees in a misty cloud, a soft, ethereal veil of grey-blue. Here and there the green breaks through, and the flowers look like wisps of smoke trailing across the grass. This wonderful sheet of mystic blue borders the river and the road for some way, till the wood ends suddenly, and Hodnet Hall comes in sight.

One really grows a little tired of recording the picturesqueness of Shropshire villages. They are nearly all pretty: for the houses, when they are not of timber and plaster, are often built of the warm red sandstone that is the stone of the county and acquires such soft, mellow colours in its old age. But I sometimes think Hodnet is the prettiest village of them all. Half the houses are black-and-white; and near the church gate a group of timber gables, with the octagonal tower in the background, forms a complete and perfectly composed picture. Bishop Reginald Heber, the author of “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” was rector of Hodnet for some years before he sailed for “India’s coral strand.”

From Hodnet we may either drive back to Shrewsbury or turn to the left in the middle of the village and take a run of about thirty-four miles by Market Drayton and Newport, two picturesque old towns with a good road between them. The scenery in this part of the county is pleasing, but not especially striking. If we choose this way we shall, as we draw near Shrewsbury, pass the ruins of Haughmond, one of the great Shropshire abbeys.

Long ago there was a hermitage at the foot of this “busky hill”; before William FitzAlan’s monastery for Austin Canons rose here, with the great church that has practically disappeared,[2] and the tall gable with the turrets that are so conspicuous to-day, and the chapter-house with the beautiful doorway. This Abbey was greatly patronised by royalty. Stephen gave it a mill, Matilda gave it lands “for the remission of her sins,” Henry II. gave churches, and Henry III. more land, and Llewelyn of Wales “a moiety of Kenwicke.” The list of other benefactions is endless: mills and fisheries, churches and markets, woods and hogs and herds. Many were the “privileges of flesh and fish” enjoyed by the canons of Haughmond; and Abbot Nicholas, in Edward III.’s time, desiring to make the most of all these luxuries, built a new kitchen for the brethren and “appointed them a cook to dress their food.” It was in 1541 that Henry VIII., as his manner was, took possession of Haughmond and all its riches, “beyng mynded to take the same into his own handes for a better purpose”; and so the minster, for which he had no use, gradually vanished. Nothing is left of it but a fragment of wall and a doorway. Two tombs that were once within the chancel now lie open to the sky on the hillside, where their appeal for the prayers of the passers-by is of far more pathetic force than it ever was under the shelter of the Abbey’s roof:—

“Vous Ki Passez Par Ici Priez Pur L’Alme Johan Fitz Aleine Ki Git Ici. Deu De Sa Alme Eit Merci. Amen.”

“Isabel De Mortimer Sa Femme Acost De Li. Deu De Lur Alme Eit Merci. Amen.”

From this road near Haughmond we have perhaps the loveliest view of distant Shrewsbury. The pale hills rim the horizon, the river winds in the foreground, and between them rise the clear outlines of the two incomparable spires that crown The Delight.

Another of the Shropshire monasteries that must certainly be seen is Wenlock Priory, which lies on the way to Bridgnorth. It is a fairly level road that leads to it by Cross Houses and Cound and pretty Cressage, which in Domesday Book is Cristes-ache, or Christ’s Oak. Christianity was preached here, it is said, under an old oak-tree, in days so early that when St. Augustine visited the place he found it already Christian. Between Harley and Wenlock there is a hill which the Contour Book describes with perfect accuracy as “a precipitous hill on which innumerable accidents have happened.” The accidents, I fancy, have mostly happened to horse-drawn vehicles and bicycles—especially the latter—when descending the hill, for it is a mile long and has a turn in the middle. There is no reason why it should inconvenience a good car, for the average gradient is nothing more alarming than 1 in 8, and it is well worth climbing for the sake of the wide view from the top, just beyond which Much Wenlock lies.

Milburga, Saxon princess and saint, built the first religious house at Wenlock, and became its abbess, and was finally buried within its precincts. William of Malmesbury tells us how, long after her death, she enriched the place to which she had given her life and all she possessed. “Milburga,” he says, “reposes at Wenlock ... but for some time after the arrival of the Normans, through ignorance of the place of her burial, she was neglected. Lately, however, a convent of Clugniac monks being established there, while a new church was erecting, a certain boy, running violently along the pavement, broke into the hollow of the vault, and discovered the body of the virgin, when a balsamic odour pervading the whole church, she was taken up, and performed so many miracles that the people flocked thither in great multitudes. Large spreading plains could hardly contain the troops of pilgrims, while rich and poor came side by side, one common faith compelling all.”

The convent of Clugniac monks in question was built by that notable man Roger de Montgomery, and was the same whose ruins speak so plainly to-day of the ornate tastes of the monks of Clugny. We saw no arcaded walls such as these of the chapter-house, nor richly moulded doorways, nor any such elaborate ornament at Cistercian Buildwas, whose lands marched with the lands of this Priory, and whose monks found the Rule of Clugny too soft, the tastes of Clugny too enervating. Go to Wenlock in the spring, when its slender columns rise above a sea of sweet-scented flowers, and its old wall is bright with rock-plants—for the Priory stands in private grounds and is cared for like a garden. It is the third religious house that has stood on this spot, for between the days of Milburga, the royal saint, and those of Roger and his Clugniacs, there was another monastery founded here by Leofric of Mercia and his wife Godiva, a well-loved woman whom we are glad to connect with this beautiful spot. The picturesque old Prior’s Lodge is inhabited, and it is only on Tuesdays and Fridays that the world at large is admitted to the ruins. Perhaps nothing recalls to one so vividly the daily life of the monks in this place as the long causeway that stretches across the field near the Priory garden. It was here that the brothers took their daily exercise, raised above the surrounding marsh—a long procession of dark figures, walking slowly to and fro—and among them, unsuspected, that interesting swashbuckler of whom we long to hear more, that man of extremes whose strange career is all summed up for us in one short, pregnant sentence. “In 1283,” we learn, “a brother of Wenlac became a captain of banditti.” We hear no more of him, alas! except that he was hanged.

The road to Bridgnorth is a continuation of the one by which we entered the town, so we must drive back, past the beautiful old Guildhall and market-place, up the street to the Gaskell Arms, where we may have luncheon if, as may well occur to motorists, we are too hungry to wait till we reach the more imposing “Crown” at Bridgnorth. At the Gaskell Arms we turn sharply to the left, and thence eight or nine miles of good road, with several steep hills, will bring us to Bridgnorth.

Ever since the Danes built a fort here this town, nearly as consistently as Shrewsbury and Ludlow, has concerned itself with history. It has been visited by half the kings of England. Henry I. besieged it; Henry II. defended it; John and Edward I. stayed in it; Edward II. took refuge in it; Henry IV. gathered his army here on his way to the Battle of Shrewsbury; Charles I. was besieged here by Cromwell, who narrowly escaped death before the walls. The Castle, of course, was the centre of interest on all these occasions—the Castle that was built so hurriedly by Robert de Belesme, Roger de Montgomery’s son, and is now so conspicuous on account of its leaning tower. Round its ruins is a path that must be practically the same as that which Charles I. declared to be as pleasant a walk as any in his kingdom. Robert de Belesme, who has been described with apparent justice as “an implacable villain,” also founded the church of St. Mary Magdalene, but the present building was designed by Telford. Another interesting church is St. Leonard’s, where in the churchyard the Roundheads once beat the Royalists in a skirmish, and where Richard Baxter was a curate. He lived in the little black-and-white cottage close at hand, and seems to have had a poor opinion of his flock. “He found the people here generally ignorant and dead-hearted,” he says, “... so that though by his first Labours among them he was Instrumental in the Conversion of several Persons, and was generally Applauded, yet ... Tippling and Ill Company rendred his Preaching ineffectual.” If his preaching was ineffectual it at all events began early, for “when he was a little Boy in Coats, if he heard other Children in Play speak Profane Words he would reprove them, to the wonder of those that heard him.” At this time—when he was a little Boy in Coats—he lived at Rowton in this county; it was not till he was ten years old that he moved to Eaton Constantine and indulged in dark deeds in his neighbours’ orchards.

An extremely steep dip with an awkward corner in the middle of it will take us to the birthplace of another famous divine, Bishop Percy, best known in connection with “Percy’s Reliques.” The house, which stands in the Cartway, may be approached quite comfortably from below, and is worth seeing for its own sake, being a good example of black-and-white work.

Our best way home from here is by Ironbridge and Buildwas, on the road by which we drove to Boscobel. Between Bridgnorth and Ironbridge some of the country is pretty, and at Broseley especially it must have been lovely in its natural state, before it was ruined by the potteries. We cross the river by Abraham Darby’s iron bridge.

A run of forty-seven miles or so, by Wem, Whitchurch, and Ellesmere, will show us a good deal of the north-west part of the county, and if, when we reach Whitchurch, we choose to lengthen the distance to fifty-four miles by slipping over the Welsh border to Overton and Erbistock, we shall not regret it.

We leave Shrewsbury by the road that branches to the left immediately opposite to the station. Almost at once, at the point where the road touches the Severn, we pass a long, low house of timber and plaster on our right. It was from this house that Admiral Benbow ran away to sea. He was living here as an apprentice, to his father or another, and, since it was the custom to entrust the house-key to the care of the apprentice, he had, fortunately for himself and England, special facilities for making his escape. He hid the key in the tree that is marked with a ring of whitewash, and stands between the house and the railings; and there to this day it hangs.

Between Shrewsbury and Whitchurch there is nothing of particular interest except the old farmhouse called Albright Hussey, which stands in a field on the right about three miles out of Shrewsbury. It is a pretty old moated house, partly black-and-white; but its greatest beauty is within, where there is as charming a room as one need wish to see, a room to make a housewife weep tears of covetousness—low, oblong, oak-panelled to the ceiling, with seats in the mullioned windows and a carved fireplace. The house is inhabited, but I believe there is never any difficulty in obtaining leave to see it. Its sixteenth-century walls were once threatened by a party of Parliamentarian horse. There were only eight men to defend the place, but their leader was a crafty man, and shouted his orders aloud within hearing of the enemy. “Let ten men stay here, and ten go there, and twenty stay with me!” he cried; and the attacking force, dismayed by the number of mythical defenders, rode away and left the stone and timber, the mullioned windows and oaken wainscotes, to be a joy to us to-day.

In Wem, however, through which we presently pass, it was the “Parliament men” who were in the ascendent. The place acted a prominent part in the Civil War, and has a history many centuries long, but on the surface is commonplace enough. In the List of the Owners of the Manor of Wem the twenty-fourth name is the grim one of “Sir George Jeffreys, Knight and Baronet, and Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, created in 1685 a peer of England by the style and title of Baron Jeffreys of Wem.”

At Whitchurch we must draw up at the door of St. Alkmund’s Church; not because it is old or beautiful, for the original church fell down in 1711 and was entirely rebuilt; nor because Dean Swift subscribed to the rebuilding of it; but because it contains the dust of the great Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, “the scourge of France.” His valiant heart lies beneath the white stone in the porch, where careless thousands have trodden it underfoot. It was found there in an urn when the church was rebuilt, and with it were some figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary from Talbot’s rosary. His bones are in the chancel, whither, about fifty years after his death, they were brought from the battlefield of Chastillon, where a little chapel had been raised on the spot where he fell.[3] His effigy lies on a tomb that is an exact copy of the original one. While this restoration was in progress the bones of the great soldier were shown to the public, with the skull cleft by the axe that killed him. “This is that terrible Talbot,” says Thomas Fuller, “so famous for his sword ... which constantly conquered where it came, insomuch that the bare fame of his approach frighted the French from the siege of Bordeaux. Being victorious for twenty-four years together, success failed him at last.... Henceforward we may say ‘Good-night to the English in France,’ whose victories were buried with the body of this earl.”

From Whitchurch we drive about fourteen miles in a westerly direction to Overton Bridge, by Hanmer and Overton village, a pretty little place with a churchyard surrounded by yew-trees. Having crossed the bridge, which is about two miles beyond the village, we turn to the left at right angles and approach Erbistock by a road whose greatest recommendation to inveterate lovers of speed will be that it is short. After one experience, however, most of us will agree, I think, that this by-road needs no recommendation but the fact that it leads to Erbistock. A tiny church and a tiny inn at the brim of the Dee—that is all that there is at Erbistock. But it is all enclosed in trees, and the trees dip into the river, and the river is rather big and gentle and gurgles sweetly at one’s feet, and the woods on the other side are tangled and mysterious and full of fairies. One may have one’s tea close beside the water, or one may cross the river in a ferry, and soon be quite alone in the woods. There is no need to hurry, for when we leave Erbistock we need not stop again till we reach Shrewsbury.

For Ellesmere, “wher was a castelle,” says Leland, “and very fair polis yet be,” has now nothing left of its castle but the memory of it, and the fair pools may be seen as we pass. More than once Ellesmere was given as a dowry to the daughters of English kings, on their marriage with Cymric princes; for as the rulers of the two countries were sure to fall out soon after the wedding the gift was quickly taken back by the donor, and so was ready for the next bride. Thus, though Henry II. gave it to his sister Emma, there was nothing to prevent King John from giving it to his daughter Joan, twenty-seven years later, when she married Llewelyn the Great.

I think it must have been beside the lake, where on the level ground there would be room for the dramatic scene, that Rupert, halting here at Ellesmere, made his prisoners cast lots upon the drum to decide which of them should die. Thirteen were doomed; but at the last moment one of them was saved by Sir Vincent Corbet, who as he rode past interceded for the man, who had been a servant in his family. The rest were hanged there and then. Yet it is not they who haunt the rushy banks of the mere; but the White Lady of Oteley. Long ago, it is said, she robbed and ruined a monastery, and built herself a home here with the spoils—a home that she has never left since then, except to walk by night along the margin of the water. She was not even allowed to move to the new house when it was built about a hundred years ago, for a fragment of the old one was left standing in the park on purpose for her accommodation. The new house faces us very conspicuously as we drive close beside the water on the opposite side of the mere, and go on our way to Shrewsbury, which is about sixteen miles away.

In the south-west, which is the hilliest, and therefore the prettiest, part of Shropshire, there is a variety of little runs, which may be lengthened or shortened according to circumstances and tastes. A pretty round of about fifty miles is by Chirbury and Bishop’s Castle, whence either of two lovely roads will bring us back to Shrewsbury. Nineteen miles of nearly level road lead to Chirbury through several villages—Westbury, Worthen, Marton, and others—all of which are fairly picturesque, but with nothing very noteworthy about them. Just before Marton is reached there is an exceedingly sharp turn, which should be borne in mind. At Chirbury our road turns to the left in the middle of the village.

The name of this obscure little place has been known to the world for some centuries in connection with that strange person Lord Herbert of Chirbury, half ruffler, half scholar, who in a house only a few miles from here, across the Welsh border, wrote the famous autobiography that Horace Walpole called “perhaps the most extraordinary account that was ever given seriously by a wise man of himself.” His home for the greater part of his life, when he was not seeking adventures and duels in France or London, was in Montgomery Castle, whose ruins we may see by driving four miles further. Nothing but a fragment is left of it now, but when the Herberts lived there it must have been a fine sight on its wild crag; a more fitting home for Edward the soldier than for his gentler and still more famous brother George. Chirbury itself had a castle and a priory once; but of the castle, which was built by the ever active Ethelfleda, nothing remains but the site; and of the monastery there are only fragments left, for the present church, ancient as it is, was not used by the monks, but was then, as now, the parish church.[4] It has seen strange doings. It is hard to realise, when the bells ring in this lonely little village, and the quiet country folk take their seats for the morning service, that here within these very walls the congregation of Chirbury was once electrified by the clashing of armour and the clatter of horses’ hoofs in the aisle. It was during the Civil War, and Mr. Edward Lewis, “a very goodly man, did preach twice a day”; a rash thing for a Puritan to do when Captain Corbet was no further off than Caus Castle. A party of Royalist horse “rode into the church to the great fright and amazement of the people; and with their pistols charged and cocked went up into the pulpit and pulled down Mr. Lewis, pulling and tugging him in a most unworthy manner ... and so left the people without their pastor because they would not be content with one sermon a day.”

It was this same Edward Lewis who brought to Chirbury the chained library that almost certainly belonged to George Herbert; for Isaac Walton tells us of “a choice library which Mr. Herbert had fastened with chains in a fit room in Montgomery Castle.” This choice library contains books dating from 1530 to 1684, and among them is a black-letter folio copy of Chaucer. They are kept in the vicarage, and I believe may be seen by any one.

Turning to the left in Chirbury we soon pass Marrington Hall, or Havodwen, the White Summer-house, as the Welsh call it; a very fine example of sixteenth-century black-and-white work. The lovely little valley beyond it is Marrington Dingle, and a mile or two further on is Churchstoke. It is in this pretty part of Shropshire that the uses of the motor-car are especially noticeable, for railway stations are few and distant from each other, and the hilliness of the country is not encouraging to bicyclists. Of Bishop’s Castle there is little to be said, for pretty as the country is all round it, the town itself is unattractive, and the castle is no more. But all the ways back to Shrewsbury from here are lovely. We may join the Stretton road, which we already know, at Marshbrook, and so see one of the most charming little bits of wooded country in Shropshire; or we may follow the hilly road through the wild scenery near Ratlinghope, down Cothercott Hill, and through Longden and Hookagate. Cothercott Hill is very steep and has a bad surface, but it is only for a short way that the gradient is really severe, and the view from the top is one of the wildest in the country. Personally, however, I should recommend the third way back to Shrewsbury—over the moor to the Roman Gravels, and down through the woods of the winding Hope Valley to Minsterley.

As there is nothing in the whole of this little run to delay us, we may lengthen it, if our car is good on hills and we are of an enterprising temperament, by going on from Bishop’s Castle to Clun, or even to Knighton, and round by Leintwardine to join the Ludlow road. This is a beautiful bit of country, and full of interest. Leland tells us of the “faire forest of Clun.” “Cumming from Bisshop’s Castelle to Clunne lordshippe,” he says, “cummeth doune a greate woode grouing on a hille.” Much of this great wood is gone now, but there is still enough to make the country very “faire,” and to compensate a motorist for the climbing of a long hill. Suddenly, as we round a corner, Clun comes into sight between two hills, with the stern tower of its castle standing conspicuously above the river. “Clunne Castell,” says Leland, “longynge to the Erle of Arundel, sumewhat ruinus. It hath bene bothe stronge and well builded.” It is more than somewhat ruinous now, which is hardly surprising when one considers all it has gone through at the hands of Welshmen and Roundheads since it was built in Stephen’s reign. There is a story that the stones of which it is made were passed from hand to hand by a chain of men, from the quarry, a mile away, to the river-bank where the castle stands; but be that as it may, these crumbling stones, with their soft tints of grey and yellow, embody enough romance to satisfy us, I think, seeing that they are connected with all the greatest names of Wales. They have been stormed and burnt by Rhys of the south; they have been attacked in vain by great Llewelyn of the north; they have been overcome by Owen Glyndwr. They are connected with modern romance, too, for it is supposed that the “Garde Dolareuse,” in the “Betrothed,” represents the Castle of Clun, and the Buffalo Inn claims to have sheltered Sir Walter Scott while he was writing part of the book.

Everything is old at Clun: the church; the fine old bridge, of whose building there is no record; and the “Hospital of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at Clunn,” which was founded by the Duke of Norfolk in 1614 for distressed tradesmen, who were each to receive yearly “a gown ready-made of strong cloth or kersey, of a sad colour.”

The road between Clun and Knighton is not one to be undertaken lightly by small cars of uncertain hill-climbing powers, for it is mostly composed of long and precipitous hills, with gradients varying from 1 in 8 to 1 in 10; but the surface is good, and though the scenery is not particularly interesting at first, it becomes really lovely as we draw near Knighton, which lies in a valley, surrounded by wooded hills. Here we turn to the left, and by way of compensation the road from Knighton to Leintwardine is particularly level, along a narrow valley between green hills that belong to Shropshire on the left and to Herefordshire on the right. As the valley widens out into open country we reach Brampton Brian, associated for ever with the name of Brilliana, Lady Harley. That gallant-hearted lady was alone in her husband’s castle of Brampton when it was threatened by the forces of Charles I., for the Harleys were “Parliament men.” “I acknowleg,” she writes, “I doe not thinke meself safe wheare I am.” Safe she certainly was not, but she thanked God that she was “not afraide”; and when the Royalists bade her surrender she simply answered, “I must endeavour to keep what is mine as well as I can, in which I have the law of nature, of reason, and of the law on my side, and you none to take it from me.” The siege lasted some weeks, and Lady Harley, always delicate, suffered greatly; but when pressed to yield said “she would rather choose an honourable death.” She died; but this first siege was raised before her “heavenly and happy end,” and so she never knew that the castle was besieged again, was surrendered, and burnt to the ground.[5]

A few miles further on is Leintwardine, which I believe to be full of antiquarian interest, and know to be picturesque as an artist’s dream; and here, if we care to face a narrow byway with a rough surface, we may leave the main road and take the more direct route to Craven Arms by way of Clungunford. At Craven Arms we rejoin the road from Ludlow to Shrewsbury.

Of the many main roads that converge in Shrewsbury I have left to the last the one that is in some ways the most important, the one that is certainly the most famous; that road of great memories and great achievement, by which so many Royal Mails have travelled breathlessly at the dashing pace of eleven miles an hour, and by which we may travel to-day at a pace that nothing shall induce me to betray: Telford’s road to Holyhead. It is the road by which, if we are fortunate, we are going into North Wales. If, however, it is our sad fate to turn our backs on that most beautiful land, we must on no account neglect to run over to Llangollen, a distance of thirty miles: for though I have left it to the last on the assumption that we are going on to Wales, it is one of the most enjoyable drives in this neighbourhood.

We leave Shrewsbury by the Welsh Bridge, the scene of Henry VII.’s remarkable entry into the town over the body of the stout, wise bailiff; and as we reach the top of the hill beyond it we pass on the right the house in which Charles Darwin was born. At the corner where the Holyhead road turns sharply to the right, about half a mile beyond the last houses of the town, there stands in a private garden a famous tree known as the Shelton Oak. I mention it merely because its fame rests on a libel. There are those who will tell you—cheerfully taking a great man’s name in vain—that Owen Glyndwr sat in this tree watching the Battle of Shrewsbury when he should have been taking part in it. Our knowledge of this fiery prince’s characteristics might be enough, one would think, to discredit the tale, without the proved fact that he was extremely occupied in South Wales at the time! But still the tale is told.

Soon, at Montford Bridge, we cross the Severn, white with water-weeds in the summer, and fringed with purple wild-flowers, and then, with what speed we may, spin happily towards the Welsh hills. We can see them on our left; the striking outline of the Breidden, with Rodney’s Pillar on its topmost point, and beyond it a long blue range that limits all the western horizon. At one spot only we have a choice of roads. Telford’s road goes by Oswestry, an ancient town with an immense history but few relics; but if at the “Queen’s Head,” fourteen miles from Shrewsbury, we turn to the right, following the telegraph-posts, we shall cut off more than a mile of distance and shall see Whittington.

There are some places that are peculiarly haunted. One is infinitely more conscious in them of the past than of the present. Such are Hay and Beaupré—both of which we shall see later on. But Whittington is not so much haunted as haunting. Hay and Beaupré are enchanted: Whittington is itself the enchantment. It stands in a clump of trees by the wayside, in the middle of the village, and one comes upon it suddenly: a great fortified gateway of pale grey stone, reflected in the weed-grown water of what was once its moat—and leading nowhere. One thinks, not of its history, but of itself. One cannot believe that it is merely the entrance to a vanished mediæval castle; it is rather the Gate of Dreams, through which every man sometimes passes in search of his heart’s desire.

There is an old Norman-French romance that tells us how the White Tower was built by William Peverel of the Peak, and how he promised it as a dowry to Melette, the fairest of his nieces. “But none found favour with her. And William reasoned with her, and besought her that she would discover unto him if there was in the world any knight whom she would take for lord.... ‘Certes, Sire,’ said she, ‘no knight is there in all the world that I would take for the sake of riches and the honour of lands, but if I ever take such an one he shall be handsome, and courteous, and the most valiant of his order in Christendom.’” So William proclaimed a tourney at the Peak, with Melette and the White Tower for the prize; and among those who came to try their fortune was one Guarin de Metz, well clad in red samite, with a crest of gold. “To record the blows and the issues I am not minded,” says the story, “but Guarin de Metz and his company proved that day the best, the fairest, and the most valiant, and above all, Guarin was the most praised in all ways.” So Guarin won the fastidious Melette of the White Tower, “and with great joy did he take her, and the damsel him.”[6]

This romance is not very reliable history, I fear, but it is true that Whittington belonged at one time to the Peverels, and later to the Fitz-Warines or Guarins, of whom it was probably the third who built this gate in the reign of John.

Two miles beyond Whittington is Gobowen, where we rejoin the main road; and soon afterwards we dip into the narrow valley below Chirk, and with the railway and the canal high above us on the left, cross the little Ceiriog into Wales.

A TOUR IN NORTH WALES

Here, on the very border of Wales, one is conscious of the Celtic atmosphere. We left the quiet orderliness of England behind us when we dipped down into this little valley, where the sparkling, bubbling Ceiriog—every inch a Celt—calls to us to follow it up into the hills. And so we will, as soon as we have climbed the other side of the valley into Chirk village; turning there to the left, though our rightful road, the road to Llangollen, lies directly in front of us. In Wales we shall find ourselves constantly tempted to leave the highway, and in most cases we shall be rewarded if we yield to the temptation without ado. In this particular case we shall be rewarded with a dear little glen, feathery birch-trees on the steep slopes, a yellow carpet in primrose time, and a most charming little hotel about six miles up the valley, at Glyn Ceiriog.

Near Chirk the road sweeps round under the trees of the deer-park, where “there is on a smaul hille a mighty large and stronge castel with dyvers towers”; towers that have stood here for many generations, defying time and war; for this castle of Chirk is no ruin like most of its contemporaries, but an inhabited house. Yet not these towers, I believe, but the old Welsh Castell Crogen, stood here when Henry II., with “the chosen warriors of England,” and of several other countries, marched up this valley to join battle with the great Owen Gwynedd and all the might of Wales, who were encamped near Corwen. The English, finding the trees in their way, cut them down as they advanced, which so much infuriated some of the Welsh who were separated from their main army, that the Ceiriog ran red with the blood of Henry’s chosen warriors. This Battle of Crogen took place just below the older castle.

Perhaps the most dramatic event in the life of the present Chirk Castle was when it fell into the hands of the cavaliers, and its owner, Sir Thomas Myddleton, a Parliamentary leader, was obliged to besiege his own house in his own person. I believe that on one day of the week the world at large is allowed to pass through the beautiful gates of wrought iron, and up the long slope of the avenue, and into the castle itself, to see all the treasures of art and history that George Borrow saw when he was here: the cabinet of Charles II., and the portraits of Nell Gwynne, and of “the very proud daughter of the house,” as Borrow calls Addison’s wife, “the Warwick Dowager who married the Spectator, and led him the life of a dog.”

Across Chirk Park runs Offa’s Dyke, the long embankment “that was cast up with great labour and industry by Offa the Mercian, as a boundary between his Subjects and the Britains, from the mouth of Dee to that of the River Wye.... Concerning which Joannes Sarisburiensis in his ‘Polycration’ saith that Harald establish’d a law that whatever Welshman should be found arm’d on this side the limit he had set up, then ... his right hand should be cut off by the King’s Officers.” It touches the high-road a few miles beyond Chirk, just before we begin the wonderful descent into the Vale of Llangollen; that long slope down which we swing for several miles on a perfect gradient and a perfect surface—marred, however, by an awkward turn—with the whole beautiful valley spread out before us, and the Dee sweeping far below us, spanned by the remarkable aqueduct called Pont-y-Cysylltau. Beyond it rise the Eglwyseg crags, and far away the shattered fortress of Dinas Bran is visible almost from the first on its peak above Llangollen. “The castelle of Dinas Brane,” says Leland, “was never a bigge thing, but sette al for strenght as in a place half inaccessible for enemyes.” Even in his day it was “al in ruine,” and now there is only a fragment left of it to remind us of those princes of ancient Powys who built it in days so old as to be unchronicled, and defied the power of the Saxon from within its walls; and of its owner in later days, Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor, who built the Abbey of Valle Crucis; and of the fair Myfanwy, “all smiles and light,” who was loved by a poor bard of the fourteenth century, and celebrated by him in a poem that still exists.

At the foot of the crag on which Dinas Bran is perched lies Llangollen—a little town that owes its charm entirely to its position. Only a few miles away, in Shropshire, an ugly house is an exception: in Wales it is unfortunately the rule. A town or village that is really pretty in itself, apart from its surroundings, is almost unknown. But so lovely is the position of Llangollen that in spite of its rather squalid streets it is an entrancing place; so entrancing that Robert Browning lived for some time at the Hand Hotel, and the two famous “Ladies of Llangollen,” Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, chose it out of all the world for their life-long home. Llangollen is still dominated by “the Ladies,” almost as much as by Dinas Bran itself. They adorn the windows of all its photograph shops; they shine in crude colours from all its china mugs; and in its churchyard we learn from an extremely ugly tombstone that one of them, in the opinion of the other, had “manners worthy of her Illustrious Birth.” It must be admitted that such is not the impression given by the impartial. It became the fashion for travellers of mark to visit this quaint couple in their house up there on the hill, and they themselves insisted on its being also the fashion to give them presents—carvings, miniatures, curiosities of all kinds. If we care to climb a steep hill we may see the outside of Plas Newydd now, a black-and-white house, which must have been really pretty in its original simplicity, but is now overladen with a mass of carving. From the road we can see the porch in which “the Ladies” once stood “fussing and tottering about in an agony of expectation,” waiting for Sir Walter Scott, and looking, says Lockhart, “like a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors.” “Who could paint,” he goes on, “the prints, the dogs, the cats, the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass-cases, books, bijouterie, dragon-china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the whole house outside and in covered with carved oak ... and the illustrated copies of Sir W.’s poems, and the joking, simpering compliments about Waverley.” But whether their manners were worthy of their Illustrious Birth or not, they were true friends to each other, and the guardian angels, as Lockhart admits, of Llangollen. It is an interesting fact (which should not be forgotten) that the church under whose shadow they lie is dedicated to St. Collen ap Gwynnawg ap Clydawg ap Cowrda ap Caradog Freichfras ap Llyr Merimap Eini Yrth ap Cunedda Wledig.

Far more important than Plas Newydd or its memories of vanished mandarins and whirligigs is the work of that prince of Powys, whose name I mentioned in connection with Dinas Bran—Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor. In Pant-y-Groes, or the Valley of the Cross, stands Madoc’s ruined abbey, the most perfect retreat, surely, that ever brought comfort to the sad or sinful. It was of the Vale of Llangollen that Ruskin characteristically wrote: “The whole valley, when once I got up past the Works (whatever the accursed business of them) seemed to me entirely lovely in its gentle wildness.” And it is this very quality of gentle wildness that gives such charm to the little Glen of the Cross, which joins the larger valley of the Dee just above Llangollen, and is reached by way of the old stone bridge that was the first of its kind in Wales.

When, in a few minutes, we see the gable of Valle Crucis Abbey below us on the right, we leave our car by the roadside. We leave, indeed, the whole world behind us as we pass through the heavy door by which there was once no returning. The narrow wooded valley hems us in, the trees are close round us, the waters of the fishpond, in their absolute stillness, add to the sense of aloofness and peace. And under our very feet, perhaps, is the dust of Iolo Goch, the famous bard who sang of “Owain Glyndwr, the great, the good”; for Iolo’s unmarked grave is here; and here, too, lies Madoc, who built this abbey in the last year of the twelfth century; and Myfanwy, the beautiful princess, “fairer than the cherry’s bloom”; and others who died long, long before them. To antiquarians the tombs of Valle Crucis are full of interest, for there are some that seem to prove, says the custodian—himself an antiquarian—that this Cistercian house rose on the site of an older Benedictine building. The Cistercians never used warlike symbols, but always the sign of the Cross; yet here on two stones of very early date—the sixth or seventh century—are carved the sword, the spear, and the battleaxe. Fragments of stained glass, too, have been unearthed, and coloured tiles, though the Cistercian Rule forbade the use of colour in any form. This austere Order, however, while avoiding the use of the sword as a symbol, was apparently not averse to using it as a weapon on occasion, for it was by fighting the Benedictines in a neighbouring field, according to the custodian’s theory, that they became possessed of the site of their abbey. Truth to tell, the extreme austerity of the Cistercians seems to have relaxed in later days, for we hear after a time of four courses of meat in silver dishes at Valle Crucis, and of an abbot with three of his fingers covered with rings. But these are disturbing thoughts. Let us rather take away with us a picture of the quiet fishpond, with its water-weeds and clumps of yellow flags, and the gable of the church reflected in it line for line, and on the bank a hooded figure, dressed in white, with a placid face and a busy fishing-rod.

Quite near the abbey in a field is a far older relic, Eliseg’s Pillar, the rough stone monument that gave its name to the Valley of the Cross, though as a matter of fact it was probably never a cross. It was once much higher than it is now, but in the days of the Civil War the name of the valley was enough to make it suspect, and the pillar was thrown down by the Puritans on the chance of its once having been a cross. It has been much discussed and disagreed about, but at all events its very great antiquity is a certainty, and the inscription that is now illegible was luckily copied several centuries ago. “Concenn,” it tells us, “the great grandson of Eliseg, erected this stone to the memory of his great-grandfather, Eliseg. This is that Eliseg who recovered his inheritance of Powis by his sword from the power of the Angles.”

Returning to Llangollen we cross the Dee again and go on our way upon the road to Holyhead, up the ridge of Rhysgog, past Berwyn Station, and so out of the Vale of Llangollen into that of Edeyrnion. The Dee is still below us on the right, with thickly wooded hills beyond it; and on the left are rocky heights, sometimes bare and sometimes softened by trees. We have a lovely run before us down the valley, but if we are prudent we will drive slowly in the neighbourhood of Corwen.

But here, at the head of the valley, we are eight miles away from Corwen, and have other things to think of—great things, indeed: the last struggle for Welsh freedom, and the man who was the heart and the head of it, that strange mixture of ruthless vengeance and lovableness, Owen Glyndwr, who as a pattern squire, rather scholarly and very hospitable, spent many quiet years, living sometimes here at Glyndyfrdwy beside the Dee and sometimes at his other house at Sycharth, and then suddenly, at the touch of injustice, unfurled the red dragon of Uther and became the implacable devastator whose name meets us in every ruin in Wales. Nothing remains now of his house, for Prince Hal descended upon it one day, and, having left it level with the ground, wrote to his “very dear and entirely beloved” Wardens of the Marches to tell them all about it. After describing the burning of Sycharth and of many houses round it he goes on: “Then we went straight away to his other place of Glyndourdy, to seek for him there. There we burnt a fine lodge in his park, and all the country round; and we remained there all that night.” Above the spot where the fine lodge stood is a curious tumulus crowned with firs, quite close to the road. It is known as Owen’s Mount, not because he made it, for it is far older than he, but because there is a story that he used it as a kind of watch-tower. It was at Corwen, some say, that he first raised his standard; but the other memories of him here are legendary and trivial.

From Corwen to wild Cerrig-y-Druidion—the Rock of the Druids—the road rises steadily, and leads to nothing of note but the lovely little Pass of Glyndyffws, a deep and narrow defile of sudden unexpected beauty that connects two tracts of rather dull country. Here, where the Ceirw flings itself into the ravine from a great height and foams among the rocks far below us, Telford has thoughtfully supplied us with several little recesses in the wall from which to enjoy the view. I have heard that he cut his name in the stone of one of them, but I have never been able to find it. Perhaps it was to his name that George Borrow objected when he came here and laughed at “Mr. T.” for being eager for immortality. There was no need for Telford to be over-anxious about his immortality; nor yet, indeed, was there any for Borrow to flout him because he was not a Welsh bard!

Tyn-y-nant, where “little Dick Vickers,” late of Shrewsbury Mail, hanged himself rather exclusively, is a place of a dreary sort; and so is Cerrig-y-Druidion; and so, most of all, is the straight road from Cerrig to Cernioge, a piece of road that catches all the winds of heaven, and always seems longer than it was last time. Open the throttle here, and be thankful—if the weather be cold—that your good engine is humming before you, and is making a better pace than the eleven miles an hour of which the shivering travellers on this road used to boast. Cernioge is to us merely an unkempt farmhouse, but to them it meant a fire and hot drinks, for it was once a posting-house of considerable renown.

At Cernioge begins the descent into the valley of the Conway; and it is here that we first see, stretched out before us like the Promised Land, the distant grandeur of Snowdonia, the wild, impenetrable fortress of the Welsh and the trap of the invading English. When Pentre Voelas is passed the beauty grows and grows, mile by mile, and we are gently gliding down into the very heart of it; wild crags to the right of us, and before and below us a sea of woodland, valley beyond valley and hill beyond hill. There is one turn of the road where nearly every car draws up. The valley of the Conway lies at our feet, with here and there the river shining through the trees; the Lledr Valley stretches away and merges into the distant moors; Moel Siabod’s peak rises at the end of it; and over Siabod’s shoulder appears, on a clear day, a wedge-shaped corner of Snowdon, faintly blue. I have seen this view at many times of the year, and the best time of all is May.

For the woods that are at our feet, the woods that gave its name to Bettws-y-Coed, the Chapel in the Wood, are at their best in May, when every tree has its own individual shade of colour, the larch its tender green, and the budding oak its pink and gold. But, indeed, Bettws is always lovely. Nothing can spoil its innate simplicity; not even the smart hats and parasols that look so incongruous in its little street in July and August. It exists only for tourists; there are several good hotels, and, roughly speaking, all the other houses are lodgings; yet in spite of all, Bettws is a village still. Those who like to settle down comfortably and motor round a centre, instead of touring from place to place, will find this much the most central and convenient spot from which to explore North Wales. And in any case, I think we must stay here for a night or two. We must drive to Rhuddlan and Conway and Dolwyddelan; we must stand on the Pont-y-Pair and watch the tempestuous Llugwy; we must inspect David Cox’s famous signboard at the Royal Oak; and in the evening, when the dusky yews are all in shadow, we must sit in the churchyard beside the Conway, where the great artist loved to paint. The church—the “Chapel in the Wood”—is uncouth and bare, and not improved by modern windows; but it has stood here for many centuries, and among its ugly pews we realise with a thrill that the tomb at our feet holds the dust of a prince of Llewelyn’s house.