History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and CoalportRandall, John
History
History of Madeley: including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport
Randall, John
Madeley (Shropshire, England) -- History
In a survey of the Lordship of Madeley in 1772, we find no mention of
Capsi; but we do of Conygray, Dove House Meadow, Doer close, &c. The
lords of the manor after the woods were disaforested succeeded to all
absolute authority to hunt, course, hawk, fish, and fowl; and to
authority to grant power to others at their will and pleasure to do the
same. Before altogether quitting this forest it may be well to notice a
circumstance which goes to illustrate what we sometimes hear of places of
sanctuary in former times. There were poachers then as now; and at the
forest assizes in 1209 it is stated that two men, named Hugh le Scot, and
Roger de Welinton had taken a doe. Hugh took refuge in a church, and
lived a month there; but admitted to the Foresters and Verderers his
guilt. He escaped at last, having disguised himself in woman’s clothes;
and both were then declared fugitives. In 1235, the bosc of Madeley,
with those of Kemberton, Sutton, Stirchley, and Dawley were said to be in
the Bailiwick, of Wombridge: subject to officers such as Foresters,
Verderers, or Stewards there. It is not improbable therefore that the
chief officer of Wombridge may have had a Lodge where we find one. It
might have been one of the houses which the Wenlock Prior had built, and
which he was only permitted to retain by payment of £100 fine to the
king; or again, it might have been built by him when, as Dukes says, he
obtained leave of Edward I., in the 11th year of his reign, to “convert
Madeley-Wood, within the perlieu of the forest of Mount Gilbert,” as the
Wrekin then was called in honour of a monk resident there, into a park.
Any way, if the reader compares the styles of architecture and the
materials of which this Lodge and the Gateway or Lodge of the Court are
built he will find strong reasons for coming to the conclusion that the
latter are from the same quarry, and that the former also correspond.
Both have unglazed circular openings at the top; but the one is covered
with heavy shelly limestone slabs, and the other with thick old fashioned
tiles. The windows of the Madeley-Wood Lodge are smaller, for
protection; the doors are of thick oak, studded with nails driven in when
the wood was green; portions of the old oak floors only remain. A paved
yard has at one time extended beyond and under the stables, if not the
barn, we are told by one of the occupants. Domesday also says there was
a wood capable of fattening 400 swine, so that there must have been a
good many beeches, ancestors of those near the Lodge, to supply mast, or
oaks to furnish acorns.
The Old Court and these Lodges, almost the last relics of the feudal
times in Madeley and Madeley Wood, have had their ends hastened by rents
and cracks made by undermining, in search of minerals, and will soon
disappear. But for iron cramps and strong buttresses of bricks the old
Lodge would have gone down long ago.
There is one other relic, and one even of greater antiquity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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