Built of dark-red brick, with stone mullions, quoins and copings, this fine old Tudor mansion is believed to have been erected by one William Rowley, draper, and sometime alderman of Shrewsbury, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and is still called Rowley's Mansion. Sad it is to see the woful plight into which the stately old fabric has fallen, the beautiful porch that once adorned its entrance torn away and destroyed, its mullioned windows yawning wide to wind and rain, and each delicately-traceried ceiling thrown down, or utterly defaced. By strolling into the yard of the old Ship Inn, we get another glimpse of Rowley's mansion; its soaring gables and chimney stacks grouping picturesquely, from this point, with the meaner outhouses and dwellings by which it is surrounded. [Illustration: Old Market House Shrewsbury.] We next thread our way through several rather intricate lanes, until, crossing Mardol Head, we soon find ourselves once more in The Square, the very heart of this ancient city. Here the old Market House at once claims our attention; a venerable sandstone structure supported, as our sketch will show, upon a series of semicircular arches, and buttressed at the angles. Overhead its time-stained walls are pierced with mullioned windows, and relieved against the skyline by quaint, fantastic battlements. That clock aloft in the gable is _said_ to occupy the place of the one Falstaff referred to when declaring that, against tremendous odds, he had 'fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.' Be that as it may, we are on surer ground when considering the figure in the canopied niche below; for an inscribed panel alongside announces that 'This statue was removed by order of the Mayor from the tower on the Welsh Bridge in the year 1791.' The effigy, that of a knight in full armour, has a stiff, archaic appearance, and is usually supposed to represent Edward IV., father of Richard, Duke of York. Below this figure, in antiquated characters, are the words: THE XV DAY OF IUNE WAS THIS BUYLDING BEGONN, WM JONES AND THOS. CHARLTON GENT. THEN BAYLIFFES, AND WAS ERECTED AND COVERED IN THEIR TIME. The opposite gable has a similar niche, with the figure of an angel bearing a shield charged with the Arms of England and France, and a half-obliterated sundial. A richly carved canopy upon the western front encloses the arms of Queen Elizabeth, and the date of the erection of the building, 1596.