Up along the rise from Queen’s Head, past Aston Park, where sepulchral burrows of prehistoric man are seen beneath the trees, the way lies on to Oswestry. The town of “Odgerstree,” as the country people call it, is entered soon after passing the old toll-house of Gallows Tree Gate. Once called Maserfield, it lost that name at an early date, and acquired its present title when history was very young indeed. It owes the name of Oswald’s-tre, or Oswald’s Town, to the Christian King Oswald of Northumbria, slain here in the year 642 in battle with the heathen Penda, King of Mercia. Oswald had taken the offensive, and as a raider only met his deserts; but the Church accounted him a martyr, made him a saint, and dedicated to him a religious house that in the course of time rose here. The parish church bears the name of St. Oswald to this day, and his Well, not so holy as it once was, may be found near by. From the earliest times Oswestry was a fortified place. It stands two miles on the English side of Offa’s Dyke, that boundary between the Welsh and the Saxons, and, occupying an advanced position, close upon the more rugged Welsh mountains, was greatly exposed to sudden inroads of the Welsh. Five miles away stood the great castle of Chirk, placed there to command the easy road from Wales into England by the Vale of Llangollen; but Oswestry was a fortified post and a market town in one. Sometimes it would be attacked; at others, the Welsh resorted to it as the only place where their needs could be supplied. In course of time the requirements of trade broke down the barrier between the two nations, and Oswestry, from being a Saxon outpost where the roving Welshman, when caught, was surely put to death, became itself half Welsh. The results are plain to see, even now. Offa’s Dyke, along almost the whole of its length, still sharply divides the two races, and only in the immediate neighbourhood of Oswestry is the division blurred and indistinct. Here English names and Welsh mingle, and each understands something of the other: even Welsh place-names exist on the English side of the Dyke. The Civil War of Charles I.’s time was the last occasion of Oswestry being besieged. It was held for the King by a band of Shropshire loyalists who, to render themselves more secure against attack, partly demolished the tower of the church, standing outside the town walls and likely to afford the besiegers a great advantage. But the siege did not last long. A breach was made in the defences, and a youth named Cranage, “enlivened by the Parliamentary generals with wine,” volunteered to go under fire and explode a petard at the Castle gate. The gate was blown in and the garrison surrendered.