A great feature of Shrewsbury is the Quarry. Now the Quarry is not a quarry at all, but a public park beside the Severn, in whose beautiful grounds is probably the largest and most beautiful avenue of limes in the kingdom; and amidst those noble trees there stands a stone effigy of Hercules, covered over with the green stains of weather until he looks quite the most horrid Hercules the explorer is likely to discover anywhere. Also, his muscles are things of a weird and wonderful fascination, more resembling subcutaneous apple dumplings than mere representations of gristle and sinew. Who is there that lives within a circle of fifty miles from Shrewsbury and has not heard of the Quarry and its flower shows? Do not the railway companies run excursions especially for those who flock there? What Shrewsbury would do without its Quarry it is difficult to imagine, and scarce anything more disastrous could be thought of than that it should ever be improved away; for the town is so placed upon its almost island site that the houses huddle closely up to one another in most directions, and this is one of the very few clear spaces within the circlet that the Severn makes. [Illustration: THE COUNCIL HOUSE.] XXVII Indeed, when you have descended Mardol, and so across the Welsh Bridge—the “reddie way to Wales”—have left the town on the way to Holyhead, you are not yet clear of streets and houses. There, on the further shore of Severn, outside Shrewsbury altogether, is the long, steep street of Frankwell, all old houses and tottering tenements, dirty and crazy, and so picturesque that surely some top-hatted, frock-coated smeller of drains will presently level it with the ground and build some sanitary and abominably ugly successor. The pity of these reforms that must needs be so destructive! Not many places are more charming to the artistic eye than Frankwell. There, among many other old houses is the timbered “String of Horses” inn, that perhaps got its name when the road was a steeper ascent even than now, and eight and ten horses in line toiled up the rugged way to Wales. In those old days, going back many centuries ago, the “Frankwell” of to-day was the _Franche ville_, or “Free-town,” where the outlanders might squat; the “beggarly and turbulent” Welsh, for example, who might by no means come and live or ply their trades within the walls, and must go forth from the town every night. Partly as a defence against more threatening dangers, and partly to keep the Frankwell aliens, and other unauthorised and undesirable rabble, outside for the night hours, when the powers of evil are exalted, the gatehouse was long maintained across the Welsh Bridge and the gates duly shut at sundown.