Amongst other interesting monuments of greater or less antiquity, we notice a memorial to that skilled and daring seaman Admiral Benbow, a renowned Salopian hero, and 'true patterne of English courage,' who died at Jamaica from honourable wounds in 1702. Beneath the shadow of St. Mary's Church nestles a group of lowly almshouses, a charity established some time prior to 1648. Yonder ancient half-timbered gable, overlooking the churchyard, is the erstwhile Hall of the Drapers' Guild, where, upon passing within, we find ourselves in a spacious, low-ceiled chamber, entirely wainscoted with oak, and having massive oak tables, benches and lockers, coeval with the room. Upon the wall hangs a dark old panel-picture, commonly supposed to be the portrait of Degory Watur, the founder, and his lady wife, who, it is recorded, used to attend with the ministers 'dailye in Our Ladye's Churche, and kneele with them in a long Pewe, in the guise made for them and himselfe.' And the old bedesman who does the honours also displays one or two ancient charters connected with the foundation, which are jealously preserved here under lock and key. Passing on to Pride Hill--so named from a local family of that ilk who lived in a mansion hard by--we presently descry a narrow thoroughfare, looking for all the world like a bit of some mediæval city. This is Butcher Row, a quaint, old-time byway, whose ancient timbered houses lean this way or that, in sociable good-fellowship, above the little shops that flank the lane. A sketch of Butcher Row forms the frontispiece to this volume. 'There they stand, crowding together, with overhanging gables, queer dormer windows, and panelled fronts; a curious chequer-work, wherein the broad black lines are displayed upright, horizontal and diagonal, with varied artifice. And here and there a bracket catches the eye, or a pent-house roof and railed recesses, and breadths of ornament on fascia and cornice. The ground-floors recede, and shops are gloomy, and ceilings low; and upstairs you find the same want of height and breadth of window, by which the olden time contrived to favour at once the picturesque, and the plague.' Far aloft soars the graceful spire of St. Alkmond's Church, ('Stalkmun's,' in the vernacular), the nave whereof was pulled down in a panic a century ago, after its neighbour St. Chad's had fallen, and rebuilt in the contemptible 'style' of that period. 'In the yere 1533,' as an old chronicler tells, 'uppon Twelffe daye, in Shrowsburie, the Dyvyll appearyd in Saint Alkmond's churche there, when the preest was at High Masse, with great tempeste and Darknesse, soe that as he passyd through, he mountyd upp the Steeple in the sayd churche, tering the wyers of the clocke, and put the prynt of his Clawes uppon the 4th Bell, and tooke one of the pynnacles awaye with hym, and for the Tyme stayde all the Bells in the churches within the sayde Towne, that they could neyther toll nor ringe.'