Eyton village lies only a mile away now, on a hill overlooking the Severn. Eyton claims, we believe, to be the birthplace of that accomplished scholar and author, Lord Herbert of Chirbury. The remains of Eyton Hall are now incorporated with a farmhouse; it was built by Sir Thomas Bromley, one of the executors of King Henry the Eighth's will, and Lord Chancellor of England, in the last year of Edward VI. From the Bromleys the estate subsequently passed, by the marriage of Sir Thomas's heiress, to the Bridgman family. An obscure, winding lane, brings us in due course to the village of Wroxeter. Here we are on ground classic to the archæologist, for beneath our feet lie the ruins of Roman Uriconium. 'The site of this long-deserted town,' writes Professor Paley, in the _Nineteenth Century_ magazine, 'probably the most important one between Dover and Chester (London not even excepted, till the latter days of the Roman occupation), is of great extent, and it must have formed one of the chief places of defence against the turbulent inhabitants of Wales. Probably it was built as a precaution that the extremely strong position of the Wrekin should not be occupied by the enemy.' Towards the close of the fifth century Uriconium was overwhelmed by the Saxons; when the 'high-placed city of Wrecon,' as Llywarch-Hên, the old Welsh bard, styles it, was utterly destroyed, and reduced to a heap of ruins. In mediæval days these ruins doubtless fell a prey to the pious monkish builder, who was very busy about that period: and, as time still wore on, meadows and cornfields covered the forgotten site, and the countryman wondered to see the coins and curious ornaments turned up by his passing ploughshare. Thus matters remained until about the middle of the present century; when the Shropshire Antiquarian Society opened up so much of the ruins as funds would allow, though by far the larger portion of the 'English Pompeii' remains to this day a terra incognita. Some fine day, perhaps, this fascinating search will be renewed; for, in its glorious uncertainty, the quest for antiquities is like prospecting for gold. 'You can't tell anything about gold,' a digger once remarked, 'you're just as likely to find it where it ain't as where it are!' A green mound, running across country in a horseshoe form, marks the limits of ancient Uriconium. Of this wall, the only portion remaining above ground is a large mass measuring about 20 feet in height, by 3 feet or so in thickness, and constructed, as was usual in Roman work, with bonding-courses of thin red tiles, alternating at intervals with the small squared stones of the masonry.