Within the mansion one finds a congeries of wainscoted and panelled chambers, whose walls are hung with ancient tapestry, and adorned by ancestral portraits of the Plowden family. Here is Edmund Plowden, the eminent lawyer, who was 'accounted the oracle of the law,' and with whose memory is associated the saying, 'The case is altered; no priest, no mass; no mass, no violation of the law'; a saying which in course of time passed into a common proverb. On the death of his father in 1557, Edmund Plowden succeeded to the estates, and began the building of the present Hall. He was treasurer of the Hon. Society of the Middle Temple, in whose church he lies buried; and might have been Lord Chancellor under Queen Elizabeth, had he chosen to renounce the ancient Faith of his fathers. The hall, with its carved oak chimney-piece and quaint Dutch tiles, its panelled walls and oaken floors, has a sombre, dignified air about it. In one wing of the old house is the private chapel, dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi, with a portrait of the patron saint attributed to Michelangelo. Set into the wall of this chapel is a curious old brass, representing Humphrey Plowden and his seven daughters, which was brought hither years ago from Bishop's Castle church. In an adjacent corner a sliding panel gives access to a secret passage-way, by which in the Reformation days, the officiating priest might at a moment's notice effect his escape from the mansion. The whole place, indeed, is honeycombed from cellar to roof with hidie-holes, closets and secret passages, turning and twisting amidst hatchways and bulkheads, or terminating in breakneck ladders. One of these queer gangways is said to lead out to a lonely spot amidst the woods known as the Lady's Chair; and it goes without saying that the old house has earned the reputation of being haunted. One would suppose the builders of Plowden Hall had had in their minds the Spaniards' proverb: 'The rat that has only one hole is easily caught.' The Plowden family can trace, it is said, an unbroken lineage from Roger de Plowden, the Crusader, down to Edmund of that ilk, who died no longer ago than 1838, nearly 700 years. This Roger distinguished himself at the siege of Acre, in 1191; and, upon being taken prisoner by the enemy, made a vow that, if ever he returned in safety to his Shropshire home, he would build a chapel by way of thank-offering; and, as we shall see by-and-by at Lydbury North, the pious knight was as good as his word. From Edmund Plowden the estate passed to his nephew William, whose son, W. F. Plowden, Esq., is the present owner of the property. Farewell now to Plowden. Our onward way leads beneath a green avenue of oaks and beeches, whose branches, meeting overhead, cast a dappled shade athwart the lane, and afford a playground for squirrels, woodpeckers, and many another of Nature's children.