Shiffnal church stands a little apart: a fine red sandstone building with a central tower crowned with a low pyramidical red-tiled roof that only by a little overtops the battlements. Does that sound like a depreciation of it? I hope not, for it is a type characteristically English, and very lovable. One may trace many architectural periods in Shiffnal church, from the Norman when they could not build too heavily, to the Perpendicular, when lightness was coming in. Not that lightness has part or lot here, for the church is stately rather in the massive masculine way. Within a recess of the chancel wall lies the monumental effigy of Thomas Forster, “sometime Prior of Wombridge, Warden of Tongue and Vicar of Idsall,” 1526. In that inscription the old name of the parish is preserved, as it is also on a tablet giving an account of a much more interesting person; a certain William Wakley. It recounts how he “was baptised at Idsall, otherwise Shiffnal, May 1st, 1590, and was buried at Adbaston, November 28th, 1714. His age was 124 years and upwards. He lived in the Reign of eight Kings and Queens.” But this ancient’s record is surpassed, for the tablet goes on to tell of “Mary, the wife of Joseph Yates, of Lizard Common,” who died August 7th, 1776, aged 127 years. “She walked to London just after the fire in 1666, was hearty and strong 120 years, and married a third husband at ninety-two.” Two other curiosities, and we are done with Shiffnal church. The first is the odd Christian name of a woman—“Kerenhapputh”—on a stone in the churchyard: the second a Latin inscription of 1691 on the churchyard wall. It may be Englished thus (the wall supposed to be speaking): “At length I rise again, at the sole expense of William Walford, the kindest of men.” XV Breasting a long incline of nearly three miles, the road comes to Prior’s Lee and Snedshill, and, reaching a commanding crest, looks down upon the industry and turmoil of Lilleshall on the one side, and the equally busy and industrious Coalbrookdale on the other. The prettiness of Prior’s Lee is in name alone. It and Snedshill are wastes of slag and cinder-heaps—some a century old, others the still smoking refuse from the blast-furnaces that roar and whizz and vomit smoke on the left. [Illustration: SNEDSHILL FURNACES.]