The Roman road makes a sudden change of direction here, at a point opposite the “Rising Sun,” where the old Chester road falls in. It is a change that would be inexplicable, were it not for a strange relic that by chance has survived for sixteen hundred years to explain it. This is a mile’s length of deserted road that continues the straight line of Watling Street, and then abruptly ends, as though the Romans had abandoned some contemplated work. It is, as a matter of fact, a monument to the incompetence of the surveyor who had the construction of this division of the Watling Street in his charge. The several changes of direction taken here and there along the whole length of this great military way—as, for example, at High Cross and Gailey—are explained by the work having been in progress from both ends at once, and the surveys being somewhat inaccurate; but the official entrusted with the road from _Etocetum_ seems to have lost his bearings very badly indeed, and to have been road-making at a wide angle from the correct line, when his chief appeared and plotted out the direction afresh from Brownhills. The road now goes downhill again, past a fine old inn, the “Fleur-de-Lis,” and comes to Wyrley Bank, a busy colliery district on the verge of Cannock Chase. Bridgetown, Great Wyrley, and Churchbridge are lumped together in this coal-getting neighbourhood, and the crash of waggons, the shrieking of engines, and coal-dust everywhere bedevil the scene. But, with all these unlovely details, it is far preferable to the stark and hopeless barrennesss of Brownhills. In little more than two miles this coalfield is quite out of sight and sound, and the road approaches the beautiful old “Four Crosses” inn at Hatherton. Dean Swift is commonly said to have visited this old house on his journeys, and it is quite likely he did, but it could not—for reasons shown elsewhere in those pages[1]—have been the house where he wrote his famous epigram on the landlady. But most accounts continue to give this as the scene, and locally it is firmly believed in. Footnote 1: Page 245. [Illustration: THE “FOUR CROSSES,” NEAR HATHERTON.] The old house is of two distinct periods: one dating back to the sixteenth century and exquisite in black oak and white plastered and gabled front; the other probably built about 1710, in a handsome “Queen Anne” style. A curious feature is the Latin couplet carved in 1636, on an oak beam outside the older portion of the house:— Fleres si scires unum tua tempora me’sem, Rides cum non sit forsitan una dies, which has been translated: Brief is your time: a month, perchance, Nor even but a day, Yet ignorant, poor foolish wight, You laughing go your way.