The Ness gave a name not only to Nesscliff, but to the neighbouring villages of Great and Little Ness, in lonely and sequestered spots at a little distance from the road. Nesscliff itself has put off the outward trappings of romance, and has but a few unremarkable cottages, the very ugly old red-brick “Nesscliff Hotel” of coaching days, and the older and, dazzlingly whitewashed “Old Three Pigeons.” Telford’s fine road, too, disclaims any memories of lawless times, and except where the branch road goes off to Knockin, is in itself as safe and commonplace as any in England. At that point, however, just at the fork, a deep and foul horse-pond offers a likely snare for the outward-bound stranger on dark winter nights; although its sides are guarded by breast-walls as old as Telford’s day, to the traveller making towards Shrewsbury. Gallows-tree Bank, one of the rises on the way, now a name only, and not well known at that, had its significance in the old days, together with another of the same name a mile short of Oswestry; better known because it gives its grim title to “Gallows-tree Gate,” an old toll-house built beside that Golgotha. The especial need for these engines of retributive justice, placed here in old times, is seen in the peculiar political and social condition of the Marches. Nineteen miles separate the towns of Shrewsbury and Oswestry, and only the smallest of villages are found between. There had once been an attempt to establish a town—with markets and fairs and municipal life—midway, but it failed, and the site of that enterprise may be sought at the quite insignificant village of Ruyton, to which a finger-post, pointing along a bye-road, directs. “Ruyton-of-the-Eleven-Towns” is the name of that place, and one that whets curiosity. “Towns,” however, is a misleading term in this connection, and never meant more than the eleven “townships,” or petty subdivisions of land, into which the manor of Ruyton was subdivided. The Earls of Arundel were anciently lords of this manor, as also of that of Oswestry. One of them granted in 1308 a full market charter to Ruyton, with right of scot and lot, and of assize of criminals, and many other privileges, and it is possible that the place would have thrived, only for the fact that another Earl of Arundel, ninety-nine years later, rendered these privileges useless by an arbitrary ordinance that none of the tenants of his various manors were to offer anything for sale at any fair or market until they had first offered it at Oswestry. The penalty for disobeying was a fine of six shillings and eightpence. There is an eloquent piece of fifteenth-century protection! The result, of course, was that Oswestry had the “pick of the market,” and Ruyton decayed.