From hence we take the road upwards, and call to mind in our walk two notable but not pleasant incidents. The first goes as far back as 1582, in which year, on February 4th, one John Prestige “was hanged upon a gibbet, erected on the green, by the water side, near the Abbey Mill, and opposite his own house, for the murder of his wife, by throwing her over the Stone (the English) Bridge in the Severn: he hung there three days.” The second brings us down to 1774 when, on Good Friday, April 1st, a disastrous fire broke out in the Abbey Foregate by which forty-seven houses, sixteen barns, fifteen stables, four shops, and several stacks of hay were utterly destroyed. This serious conflagration led to the purchase by the Worshipful Company of Drapers of a fire engine, a quantity of buckets and fire hooks, and to the erection of fire plugs for the use of the town. These disagreeable memories are relieved by the sight of LORD HILL’S COLUMN, built with Grinshill stone, and said to be the largest Grecian-Doric column in the world. The first stone was laid on the 27th December, 1814, and the last on June 18th, 1816. The total height of the column is 133 feet 6 inches. The colossal statute on the summit was executed from a model by Panzetta. The inscriptions on the pedestal relate the skill and courage displayed by Lieutenant-General Rowland Lord Hill in Spain, Portugal, the South of France, and on the memorable plains of Waterloo. Admission to the Column is obtained by means of a gratuity to the keeper who resides in the adjacent pretty Doric cottage on the left, and from the top a splendid panoramic view of Shropshire rewards the ascender of the winding staircase. To the right of the Column is ST. GILES’S CHURCH, built early in the reign of Henry I. for the use of a Hospital of Lepers which stood north-west of the existing edifice, and which was founded by King Henry II. It became parochial about the middle of the fifteenth century when it was united with the parish of Holy Cross within the monastery. It is said that in the reign of Stephen, when the monks obtained the bones of that popular martyr, St. Wenefreda, those relics were deposited on the altar of this church until a shrine worthy of their reception could be prepared within the Abbey. A few yards beyond is the old Militia Depôt, erected in 1806. Having seen all that is to be seen at this end of the town we return to the Abbey Foregate. About half-way down we diverge to the right and come to WHITEHALL, a fine Elizabethan building erected in 1582, by Richard Prince, Esq., a celebrated lawyer. Churchyard speaks of it “so trim and finely that it graceth all the soil it is in.” At a little distance is the Race Course on which Charles I. drew up his army in 1642.