Nooks and Corners of ShropshireTimmins, H. Thornhill (Henry Thornhill)
History
Nooks and Corners of Shropshire
Timmins, H. Thornhill (Henry Thornhill)
Shropshire (England) -- Description and travel
At the time of the Norman Conquest, the estate of Kinlet appertained to
Editha, Edward the Confessor's widow, and in after years passed
successively to the houses of Cornewall and of Blount. The Blounts, as
Camden tells us, were 'an antient, illustrious, and numerous family in
these parts, who have extended their branches a great way, and who
certainly have their name from their yellow hair.' Kinlet eventually
came into the possession of the Baldwyns, a widely connected Shropshire
family, and is now the residence of Captain C. Baldwyn-Childe.
Kinlet church, nestling in a grove of trees almost under the shadow of
the Hall, is a small but interesting cruciform structure. In the Blount
chapel we find monuments to various members of that family, as well as
to the Childes. The finest of these is a richly canopied table-tomb,
with the figures of Sir George Blount and his wife kneeling beneath
niches, a recumbent effigy in the arched vault below, and a quaint Latin
epitaph alongside. This knight was a distinguished soldier, and
sometime High Sheriff of Salop; he died in the year 1581. Against the
adjacent wall there is a curious representation of the Crucifixion, in
stone, and there are one or two sixteenth-century marble monuments in
the chancel.
Some idea of the exterior of Kinlet church may be gathered from the
little sketch on the previous page, which shews the half-timbered
clerestory, the pretty gable-end of the Blount chapel, and a certain
small stone structure which rises in the churchyard. It is square on
plan, with an arched recess on each side, the one towards the west
having a shallow niche on the inner face. It appears to have been
surmounted by a cross, of which the base-stone may be seen upon the apex
of the roof.
Dotted here and there about the valley of the Rea, as it comes down from
Brown Clee Hill, are a number of obscure villages and isolated hamlets,
which have remained as primitive, probably, as any in all broad
Shropshire. It is the country, par excellence, of stiff red clay, as the
oft-repeated name of 'Clee' plainly indicates; and its sunny barley
fields, its orchards and bosky woodlands, have given rise to the local
adage:
'Blest is the eye 'twixt Severn and Wye,
But thrice blessed he 'twixt Severn and Clee!'
Ditton Priors, with its interesting old church, carved oak roodscreen,
stalls and lectern, lies under the shadow of Brown Clee, near the
head-waters of the Rea. Cleobury North, on the Ludlow road, had a church
subject to Brecon Priory as long ago as Henry the First's time. One or
two epitaphs in the graveyard here are worth a passing notice.
Then we come to Burwarton, whose inn, the Boyne Arms, offers bed and
board for the wayfarer in a better style than one is wont to find in
this remote locality, where as a rule the traveller is fortunate who,
like the proverbial Scotsman, is 'contented wi' little, an' cantie wi'
mair.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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