St. Lawrence's church at Ludlow is undoubtedly one of the finest throughout all broad Shropshire. Its ruddy sandstone walls, its serried buttresses and graceful flamboyant windows, rise in charming contrast above the sombre yew trees whose foliage enshrouds the quiet graveyard; while, high overhead, the great central tower soars aloft into the blue, with the jackdaws wheeling and circling around its topmost battlements, or holding noisy conclave amidst the intricacies of its great traceried windows. The interior of the church, too, displays that spacious dignity characteristic of the Perpendicular style: the clerestoried nave, the chancel with its grand painted windows, and the lofty open lantern beneath the tower, combining to create an appearance of cathedral-like magnificence. What with the rich, subdued glow of ancient glass, the dark oak screens spanning chancel and transepts, and the slender pillars and arches soaring far aloft, the general effect is extremely noble and impressive. A magnificent canopied oak roodscreen divides the nave from the chancel, which is flanked on either side by rows of stalls, used in bygone times by the chantry priests of St. John of Jerusalem, their dark oaken tracery contrasting beautifully with the old grey stonework around. The miserere seats here are worth a close examination, being carved with very quaint emblematical imagery; as, for example, the panel which figures at the end of the present chapter. The great Perpendicular window, which occupies nearly the whole of the east end of the chancel, is filled with ancient stained glass, portraying, in the realistic style dear to the mediæval mind, scenes from the Legend of St. Lawrence, the tutelary saint of the church. Some good old glass in the east window of the adjacent chapel of St. John records the so-called Legend of the King. The treatment is curious and original, as it often was in those days. Indeed, every window of this chapel has some beauty of its own. But to return to the chancel. Beneath the great window, from wall to wall, extends an elegant stone reredos, brought to light some years since in the course of restorations. It is divided up into a series of canopied and crocketed niches, containing small sculptured statues of considerable beauty. Behind this screen is a remarkable little chamber lighted by a single early pointed window, and supposed to have been used either as the church-treasury, or for communicating with lepers, or outcasts. In the south chancel wall there is a handsome sedilia of Perpendicular date; and opposite to it a large, arched recess, where the Easter Sepulchre was displayed in pre-Reformation days.