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
Out in the churchyard, beneath a flat stone slab, rests all that was
mortal of Tom Moody, the famous Whipper-in, who, when his hunting days
were ended, was 'run to earth' at this spot in the year of grace 1796. A
century ago, Tom Moody's was a name to conjure with in all this
countryside; and tradition tells how his sporting comrades, determined
to be 'in at the death,' gathered at the graveside to give their old
friend a parting 'view-halloo!'
[Illustration: An Old Inn-Stick at Broseley]
Past a group of seventeenth-century Almshouses we travel on to Broseley,
home of the Broseley Clays, beloved of fireside smokers. The town, with
its mean brick dwellings, has a decayed look about it; but in one of the
streets, outside a public-house, we chance upon a rare example of local
wrought-iron work, which is illustrated above.
'Fight to the left at the cross-roads, and then you canna miss the way,'
remarks a passer-by of whom we now enquire the route to Benthall. Dumpy,
pot-bellied pottery kilns, bowered in flowering hawthorn, rise by the
roadside, where the brilliant blue Borage is abloom in untended corners.
A fine avenue of forest trees leads us to Benthall Hall, a stately
freestone mansion of the sixteenth century, its mullioned windows and
projecting porch making a goodly show in the landscape. Close at hand,
its only neighbour, appears the parish church, a curious little
whitewashed edifice, destroyed and rebuilt at the time of the Great
Rebellion, when Benthall was held for the King. Its internal economy is
a survival of the churchwarden period, down to the stiff, penitential
box-pews, and the faded red curtains in the southward windows.
In olden times an extensive tract of woodland, called the Royal Hay, or
Forest, of Shirlot, covered the rough broken country lying to the south
of Broseley.
About the centre of this district lies Willey Park, the ancient demesne
of the Foresters; an estate which has never, it is said, been bartered
for filthy lucre since first it was granted by Henry II. to the Keeper
of the Royal Forest.
The Foresters of bygone days seem to have been a free, open-handed race,
and keen sportsmen to boot. Tom Moody himself made his name famous
amongst the fox-hunting squires and parsons, who rode to hounds in the
train of my Lord Forester.
Willey Hall, a solid, substantial stone edifice, stands atop of a gentle
rise, overlooking a chain of lake-like pools embosomed amidst shadowy
woodlands. Half a mile east, in a nook of the park, lies Willey church:
near to which we notice a natural curiosity, an oak and an ash tree
enjoying life on the co-operative principle by sharing a single stem
between them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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