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
The fabric consists of nave and chancel, and has a fine south doorway
enriched with nook-shafts and chevron mouldings; while the walls are
strengthened by the flat buttresses characteristic of that early period,
through two of which, curiously enough, the east and west windows have
been pierced. A plain string-course runs inside and out around both nave
and chancel.
Inside, the old oaken box pews, grey with age, remain in situ, their
timeworn panels bearing touches of carved work and quaint iron hinges;
the walls retain their coating of faded, mildewy plaster; and the whole
wears an air of archaic simplicity, and immemorial repose. Upon the
rough stone-flagged floor stands a plain, bowl-shaped font, evidently
coeval with the building itself, while the beams of the open-timbered
roof look almost equally primitive.
The chancel arch is quite unadorned, save for a little carving upon the
capitals. The altar table and rails around, though plain, are not bad
specimens of their kind, and inside the western gable is suspended the
solitary bell.
As may be readily understood, the congregation here is at the best of
times but a scanty one; indeed, it is said that in bygone days the
parson, perceiving but 'two or three gathered together,' would sometimes
adjourn the service to the snug fireside of a neighbourly farmer's
kitchen! The wonder, indeed, is that a church should ever have been
erected in such a sparsely-peopled, out-of-the-way locality.
Well, let us now bid farewell to the Heath Chapel, not omitting to
notice the old Gothic hinges upon its oaken door, now alas! bereft of
that famous key which, if tales be true, was so fearfully and
wonderfully constructed that the clerk alone could prevail upon it to
'open sesame!'
The day proving fine and clear lures us onwards towards Brown Clee Hill,
whose broad, bulky mass looms prominently, no great distance away to the
eastward. In about a mile and 'a bittock,' after passing through a gate,
we enter upon a wild, go-as-you-please sort of country, and clamber up
the steep grassy vallum of Nordy Bank, a large Roman encampment in an
unusually good state of preservation. The bank is very high and steep,
with a ditch on its outer side, though much lower, as the custom was,
upon its inner face.
Hence a fine, wild glen comes into view, running up into the heart of
the hills, Titterstone rears his dark craggy crest away to the right,
and the Wrekin peeps over the shoulder of Brown Clee Hill, towards which
we now bend our steps.
Dropping to a sandy ford across a stream, we slant gradually away
athwart the open furze-clad hillside, and then breast the rough, steep,
rock-strewn bank, called Abdon Burf, which encircles the loftier of the
twin summits of Brown Clee Hill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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