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
So much, then, for Stanton Lacy church. In other ways, also, the place
seems in bygone times to have been of some importance, for Anderson
tells us that 'Stanton Lacy was free from hundredal subjection, and its
seigneural lords claimed to have a gallows, to hold pleas of bloodshed
and hue and cry, and an assize of ale.'
Upon resuming the onward route we traverse a pleasant vale, the road
following up the course of the Corve, with low, wooded hills on either
hand, and the topmost crests of the Clees peering over their shoulders.
Beyond the fine old timbered farmhouse of Langley the valley broadens
out, and the good red soil of Corve Dale shews rich and ruddy where the
ploughshare has lately passed, and ripening crops by the wayside add a
zest to the general outlook.
Anon we steer a due northerly course, with first a conspicuous Lombardy
poplar, and then a curious-looking church steeple, by way of
guide-marks. The village to which it belongs lies coyly aside from the
highway, necessitating a slight detour, and the crossing of a brawling
brook.
Thus we come to Culmington, a bucolic-looking village with several good
cottages of stone, timber and thatch; and the church, whose spire we
have already observed, rising beside the meadows overlooking the Corve.
Thitherward, then, let us now direct our steps.
Though somewhat plain, the old church has several good features, and its
curiously stunted broach spire is weathered and mildewed to a thousand
tints. The rough, plastered walls of the edifice are only relieved by a
few slender lancet windows, which are narrower and more sharply pointed
than is usual, while one of them looks like what is known as a leper, or
low-side, window.
Very plain and simple too is the interior of the church, a dark oak
roodscreen alone breaking the monotony of the whitened wall surfaces. A
good Decorated canopy with ball-flower enrichment, an aumbry and
piscina, some old carved oak pews, and the quaint memorial to a
seventeenth-century Rector, are amongst the notabilia that come under
our observation.
A hedgeside inn at the end of the village now comes handy for rest and
refreshment, both welcome enough to wayfarers who have borne the burden
and heat of the day. Then after a sociable smoke and a chat with mine
host anent 'the weather and the craps,' we proceed again upon our
travels through the byways of Corve Dale.
The road next takes an upward grade, and, approaching the foothills of
Wenlock Edge, enters upon a rough, broken country, known in olden times
as Siefton Forest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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