Haygate inn stands, just as does the “Cock,” at the fork of a bye-road leading to Wellington. The “Cock” caught the travellers from London, the “Falcon” (which was really the sign of Haygate inn, although few knew it by any other name than that already mentioned) those from Wales and Shrewsbury. It was intimately connected with the Shrewsbury “Wonder,” being kept by H. J. Taylor, a brother of Isaac Taylor of the “Lion” at Shrewsbury, who put that famous coach upon the road in 1825. Another brother kept the chief inn at Shiffnal, and so between them they kept the hotel and coaching business in the family along the first eighteen miles from Shrewsbury.

When the “Falcon” was rebuilt, in the flush of the coaching age, it was built to outlast the requirements of rich and jovial posting and coaching travellers for at least a century to come. So much is evident at sight of the house, substantially constructed and designed with all the dignity of a private mansion. Alas! for all such anticipations; the first railway train rolled into Shrewsbury Station in 1839, and shortly afterwards the house became what it is now—a farmstead.

Hay gate derived its name from “the Haye of Wellington,” and was a gate into the forest of the Wrekin in ancient times. Nothing remains of that forest; the pine-trees that now clothe the Wrekin were planted on what was then a bare hillside in the early years of the last century.

Down this road that once led into the forest glades in one direction, and to Wellington in the other, the town is soon reached. Shropshire has few places so uninteresting, and its modesty in thus secluding itself from the old turnpike is therefore not misplaced. The narrow and devious streets of the town are not excused by their houses, almost without exception ugly and dull. A duller and uglier church, very “classic” and grimy, fitly lords it over those secular buildings, and looks down upon the railway station, placed in a cutting in the very centre of the town. A portion of the churchyard, indeed, was cut away to form the site of that station. A depressing monument, as pagan and as “classic” as the church, stands prominent among the humbler tombs. It is black-painted and gilt, like a jeweller’s show-case, and forms a canopy or shrine over an urn that does not contain the ashes of the Reverend John Eyton, who died in 1823, and is commemorated in a very long epitaph. He lies below, and the urn is merely decorative: just of a piece with the rest of the pagan affectation around. The author of that epitaph was evidently not one who “damned with faint praise.” But listen to the virtues of the departed:—

“As a Christian Pastor he was vigilant, affectionate, and faithful; unweariedly devoted to the concerns of the fold, gathering the lambs with his arm, and daily feeding the flock committed to his charge. And now, while the Chief Shepherd places upon his Head a crown of glory that will never fade away——.”

And so forth. Another side of the monument takes up the tale, and tells us what manner of cleric this was:

“A man of whose character and endowments it is difficult to speak in any other language than that of admiration and reverence. His person and appearance interesting and attractive. His deportment and manners graceful and engaging. His intellectual and sacred attainments so various, so extensive, and so captivating as to render him everywhere the Desire and Delight of his edified associates.”

All these advantages and virtues did not avail him much for preferment, for he never became a Right Reverend. And yet this surely would have been the man for a Bishopric. Nay, Primates could be no more—and are commonly less.