I found so much to interest me in Shipton, for there I noticed some old stone buildings, now forming part of what I took to be a farmyard, buildings with Gothic windows of good design and a graceful Gothic doorway in their walls; these could hardly be mere farm-buildings. That they possessed some history was from their character highly probable, but of that history, if there was any, I could glean nothing; as usual, nobody knew anything about them but that "they be very old." That appears to be the stock reply of the villager when you question him about such things. Then I wandered to the church a little way off, and there, for a wonder, I found the clerk within, "tidying up," as he called it. There was not much of interest in the church except a gruesome brass of a figure in a shroud, dated 1548, and a gloomy priest's chamber above the porch, reached by a dark stone stairway. This chamber, the clerk told me, was eight hundred years old; in truth it had an ancient look. Hanging on the wall, though why it should find a place there I could not understand, was a long-winded and framed account of the life of "John Foxe the Martyrologist born 1517," leaving no particulars of his life untold, I gathered from a hasty glance at it. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD.] In the village stands a very ancient inn with a weather-worn aspect and a pathetic look of having seen better days, for its architectural features suggest it has been a house of some importance in times past. The old inn possesses a fine, early, and well-preserved high-pointed Tudor archway that, with its big door below with long exterior hinges, the quaint little two-lighted window by its side, and the old-fashioned mounting-block in front, presents a pleasing bit of ancient architecture. My photograph, here reproduced, will give some idea of this ancient doorway and of the quaint little window shown to the right of it. On leaving the village I caught to the left a delightful vision of a stately, many-gabled, stone-built Elizabethan home, standing in its pleasant park at a friendly short distance from the road. Shipton Court was, I learnt, the name of this picture in stone, for it is a home and a picture in one. Very beautiful did the building look with the warm sunshine resting upon it, for, though ancient, the house had a cheerful countenance; there was nothing gloomy or ghostly about it, nothing mysterious or suggestive of legend, but the word Home was written largely on it.