Red Castle—A stately ruin—Old houses and new owners—The joy of discovery—High Ercall and its story—Mills and millers—The life of a stone-breaker—Old folk-songs—Haughmond Abbey—Ancient tombs—A peaceful spot—A place for a pilgrimage.

On leaving Wem I sought instruction of the landlord as to the road to Hawkestone, for the roads about Wem are many and winding, and it is not easy for a stranger to find his way on them. He told me to go to Weston, a village adjoining the park, "where there is a good inn. If you ask your way to Hawkestone," said he, "the natives may send you miles round; for Hawkestone is a big place, and there is no inn but at Weston." So to Weston we went, guided by the signposts, and not a signpost, strange to relate, did we see with "Hawkestone" upon it.

Weston proved to be a charming little village of black and white half-timber cottages with an old church set on a hill above them, and by the churchyard wall were its ancient stocks intact. At the end of the village we came to the inn delightfully placed facing the park and its glorious scenery, and with only a low hedge between it and the park. The Hawkestone hotel gave me an agreeable greeting, for on entering it I found myself in a panelled hall, and beyond this I caught a peep of a pleasant little garden belonging to the inn. Again I was fortunate in finding comfortable quarters. I liked my inn; it had a home-like look. I asked about seeing the park, and was told I could have a guide to show me over it, though I was welcome to go alone if I wished. No guide was pressed on me, and I appreciated the fact; but I felt I might miss much if I went without one. The park was extensive, there were many things to see there; so I obtained a guide, and set forth to explore Hawkestone, and I went alone with the guide. After Dr. Johnson's description of the place and all the adjectives he used—I presume he considered them necessary—I feel somewhat at a discount in attempting a further description, and finding fresh, suitable adjectives; but we see places with our own eyes and glean our own impressions. What struck me first about Hawkestone was a certain indefinable theatrical look, a sense of unreality, as though I were viewing a stage production on a large scale. I had never seen Nature and Art so romantically combined before. Though I climbed the precipices by narrow paths cut along their sides, I did not feel "my walk an adventure and my departure an escape," nor did I feel the "sublime, dreadful, vast, or horrible profundity" of the spot—I wondered much at those expressions; to me it appeared fully to justify the terms romantic and picturesque, but not in the least that of dreadful: never were my spirits daunted! The guide was loquacious; had he talked less, I might have remembered more of all he told me, and he told me much of the past history of Hawkestone and of its lords, from the early days when the first castle was built there to close upon the present time; and he expressed his surprise that I had not heard of Hawkestone before. "Not to know Hawkestone is to show yourself unknown," I almost fancy he thought.

I was first shown the Red Castle, built in the reign of King Henry III., of which castle, except some broken masonry, a tall, round keep, standing isolated and stately on a crag, alone remains. "How like one of Salvator Rosa's pictures!" I could not help exclaiming to myself; and really it is. The far view from this tower over a vast extent of peaceful, pastoral, and wooded country to the stormy mountains of Wales, so rugged of outline and contrasting, is wonderfully fine and space-expressing. There was a bigness about it, looking over "the sweep of endless woods," that pleased me, a green spaciousness that was splendid. I forget now how many feet high the guide said the top of the tower on its crag was from the ground; but one had to crane one's neck to see it from below, and this gave one the impression of commanding height whatever its height might be.

Next we went under a wide-arched rock at the end of a ravine, and began to climb the crags on the opposite side by a narrow winding footpath with steps cut here and there in the steepest parts; so we reached a wonderful series of grottos, consisting of arched chambers in the solid rock, with many roughly-hewn pillars. These grottos were lined with shells and spas: the guide gave me the history of them, but I have forgotten it; some one, however, cut them out of the rock, and some ladies decorated them in the manner described. Then I was conducted on to the top of the crag, opposite to which is the Raven's Cliff; from this point the view over the park and rocks is very striking, the rough grey rocks peeping out here and there from the sea of soft green foliage, forming a telling combination and contrast. Then we descended, only to ascend again up a steep and stepped path to the Hermitage, a cavern in the cliff side, over the entrance to which is inscribed—

Procul, O procul este, profani.

It was a strange whim of our ancestors to have a Hermitage in their grounds; and as real hermits were not to be procured, often an aged pensioner was made to take their place for the benefit of visitors—but nobody was of course deceived. I am afraid it was an age of shams, even of sham ruins built to beautify the view! In the present instance, however, a wax figure of a grey-haired and bearded man seated at a table with a skull upon it did duty for a living hermit, though it did not do it very well; for the effect of the figure was marred by the dripping of moisture from the roof of the cave: not even a hermit could endure that for long and live. The guide told me that he was supposed to leave me here and go in by a secret door at the back of the figure and somehow introduce himself beneath its cloak and talk. He was quite open about the proceeding; it was mere acting; and I told him, after such a confession, he need not trouble himself or me. Though actually he declared some young people were taken in by the device, owing to the gloom of the cavern; if this be true, I am afraid there are a good many young innocents abroad. Then I saw the Druid's Cavern and St. Francis's Cave, and a recess in the rock where, according to an inscription, "Rowland Hill, a gentleman renowned for his great wisdom, piety, and charity, who, being a zealous Royalist, hid himself in the Civil Wars of the time of King Charles I.; but being discovered, was imprisoned in his adjacent Red Castle, whilst his house was pillaged and ransacked by the rebels." There were other things of interest in the park, but in truth its gloriously rocky and wooded scenery, and its ruined castle keep, appealed to me vastly more than the rest.

June is a month to joy in, for when in a gracious mood it can produce the pleasantest of weather, and the next morning gave us a sample of its occasional perfectness. A glorious sunshiny day followed the promise of the morning with a deep sea-blue sky above, and hardly a cloud in it—a day that made us feel the joy of being alive. So we made an early start, and wandering about deviously we suddenly espied before us, standing gaunt and deserted and lone in a grass field, the ruined hall of Moreton Corbet, its roofless walls, its upstanding gables and great vacant windows, darkly silhouetted against the bright sky. I recognised the old house from a friend's photograph; it had a familiar look, though I had never been there before and had come upon it unexpectedly. The house covers a considerable area of ground, and some of the quaint carvings on its front appeared to be almost as sharp as the day they were carved, and that was centuries ago. Were I an architect, I think I should try to discover the quarry from whence came that enduring stone, for many a fine building I have seen has suffered sadly from the perishable nature of the stone employed in its construction. An architect cannot be too careful in the selection of his material if he wishes his work to last—and what architect does not—not to mention his client, who surely deserves some consideration?

Moreton Corbet was begun by Sir Robert Corbet in 1606, but he died of the plague before the building was finished; his brother Sir Vincent Corbet continued the work, but the house was never finished or inhabited, and now the rambling ruins are but the home of owls and other birds. Camden the antiquary in his day wrote of it: "Robert Corbet began to build a most gorgeous and stately house, after the Italian model, for his future magnificent and splendid habitation, but death countermanding his designs took him off, so that he left his project unfinished and his old castle defaced." The remains of his "defaced" old castle are at hand, with the initials A. C. for Sir Andrew Corbet over its doorway. There is a hazy local tradition that some enemy of the Corbets, when the house was building, uttered the prophecy that "Moreton Corbet shall never be finished." But who can tell, it may be some day, though late the day, for its walls appear sound, the stone mullions stand in the windows still, and I have known ancient houses even more ruined that have come into the hands of a new owner and have been restored and converted into delightful homes. "Patch and long sit," runs the old proverb, but "build and soon flit" it ends, and from my limited experience of the ways of men there is some truth in the proverb. But proverbs are so often contradictory that I have lost faith in them. One says, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"; then another has it, "Out of sight out of mind," and I might go on quoting familiar proverbs of an antagonistic nature, only to do so would be a waste of space. You can generally by searching find a proverb to fit a special case whichever way you desire—that is the beauty of proverbs.

A ruined home, whether of cottage or mansion, is always, more or less, a pathetic sight and one that appeals to the sentimental traveller, but coming thus suddenly and unexpectedly upon so stately a ruin as Moreton Corbet right in the heart of a quiet country, a country with no suggestion about it but of farms and fields—one expected nothing else—the greater was the appeal to such sentiment. The coming to the notable ruin of an abbey or castle for which the traveller is prepared by guide-book description is quite a different thing; at least I, for one, cannot command my sympathies to the order of a guide-book. To repeat, in effect, a previous remark, I really think that the chief charm of travel is the coming upon the unexpected, the enjoyment of discovery, so that even the lesser sights by the way assume an importance that perhaps is not rightly theirs and become memorable.

Leaving Moreton Corbet we got wandering amongst winding lanes, and very pleasant lanes they were; these eventually brought us to High Ercall, a lonely little village consisting of an ancient church, an old Tudor manor-house of some size standing close by, and a cottage or two. High Ercall had not much to show us, but what it had to show was interesting, chiefly the fine church which retains some features of interest in spite of the fact that it was sadly battered about by the Puritan party, and the time-toned Tudor house built, according to an inscription on it, in 1608. The main portion of the house is of stone, but it has brick gables above that give it an odd appearance. The old home took my fancy. "It looks history," I exclaimed to myself, though at the time I knew nothing of its past. Why I should have imagined that house had a story to tell I cannot say, but so it impressed me, perhaps simply because it was so old. Anyway, on making inquiry I found my intuition not wrong, for I discovered it was one of the many Shropshire houses that had been fortified in the time of the Civil Wars and held for the King, and though but a house, so gallantly was it defended that it successfully resisted several fierce assaults, being indeed the last house in the shire to surrender, only the strongholds of Bridgnorth and Ludlow holding out longer. I wonder if anything eventful will ever happen at High Ercall again. Who would have expected to come upon history there? It looked so innocent of anything of the kind. Certainly the Civil Wars have given the added interest of stirring days to many a now dreamy spot in England, for those wars concerned themselves with the sieges of so many private houses scattered far and wide over the countryside. Those days have passed for ever, for no private house could now be converted into a fortress. Many of these old houses still retain bullet marks on, and sometimes the lead of the bullets in, their thick oak doors; their strong walls too occasionally show, even to this far-off day, the indentations made by some of Cromwell's inexhaustible cannon-balls. You cannot escape from Cromwell's doings when you go a-touring in England.

Beyond High Ercall we crossed over a marshy upland, and over a bridge or two so narrow that there was only just room for the car to pass. The country had a remote look, for we travelled far before meeting a soul, and that soul was a solitary man breaking stones by the side of the road. From the uplands we dropped down to a picturesque old mill, its wheel turned by a sparkling stream; and a pretty picture the old mill made with its foaming weir above, its sleepy pool below, and the green fields gently sloping down to it. The mill was busy that day, and the muffled hum of its machinery, the swish, swish of its wheel and the plash of its weir, broke pleasantly the silence of the spot.

I saw no miller, or any one, about; perhaps the miller was at his dinner whilst his work was being done for him. I wish I could have seen him, for I have a liking for millers, always having found them jovially disposed and not averse to a gossip; now I have a weakness for gossiping with country folk, trusting by so doing to glean something of their views of life. Such folk I have generally found willing to talk about anything but politics—well, I do not care to talk politics, but why they should so carefully avoid the subject I cannot say, nor yet why millers are so cheerful a race, any more than why farmers in contradiction should be given so to grumbling, even when the seasons are good. I remember that picture in Punch of a squire addressing a tenant of his: "Good morning, Mr. Turnips, fine growing day." "Yes, sir," responds the farmer, "'twill make the weeds grow." But the miller looks on the bright side of life; perhaps it is because he seems to have so little work to do, only having to watch whilst the running water or the willing wind do his work for him. I know I have chatted with a miller for an hour or more inside his mill and amongst his whirling wheels, as the flour flowed fast and free from the wooden shoots into the sacks below, and he merely glanced round now and then to see if a sack were nearly filled, so that he might put another in its place; nor did this take him long to do, nor did the work seem hard. It was this miller who so kindly explained to me how much better it was to rely on water than wind power, the latter being so uncertain, for "the wind may drop in the daytime, and then blow at night when you are comfortably in bed, so you may idle away half, or even the whole of a day, but water-power is constant, if you have a decent stream to depend upon." Then the miller told me how in his father's time, for his father was a miller too, the gleaners used to come to the mill to have their gleanings ground, and in those friendly past days the miller used to grind their gleanings without charge in his spare time, as the custom was. "Then helped every one his neighbour," for those were "the good old days," at least they seem good to look back upon.

After the mill followed a stretch of open country with wide cornfields on either hand waving round us like a golden sea and rustling in the wind; then by way of change we entered upon a tree-lined road, with at one spot great rocks by its side, and from this spot Shrewsbury and its church spires came into view vaguely showing in the mist like the city of a dream. Not desiring to revisit Shrewsbury, I stopped the car and consulted my map; it was a fortunate circumstance, for in doing so I discovered "Haughmond Abbey" marked thereon, and apparently not very far off. I seemed to be always making discoveries on my map. Now I had heard of Haughmond Abbey, but what the ruins were like, where they were hidden away, whether extensive or the mere fragments of a building, I had no idea. Bolton, Tintern, Fountains, Glastonbury, Melrose, and other famous ruined abbeys were familiar to me in pictures, engravings, photographs, and poetry long before I saw them, but of Haughmond I had seen neither picture nor engraving, nor, as far as I am aware, has any poet sung its praises. Yet Haughmond Abbey I found to be a beautiful ruin, not so romantically situated as either Tintern or Bolton truly, but set in as sweet a spot as all fair England can show, delightful to the eye with its verdant meadows, shady trees, tranquil water, grey rock, and sheltering wooded hills around—a spot so peaceful in its seclusion, so peace-bestowing, too, and without a hint of the modern world, for at Haughmond nothing is to be seen but quiet woods, gentle hills, and the spacious sky above. Never came I to a more tranquil spot; the monks of old must have left their benediction there, though robbed of their abbey they loved so well and turned adrift into the outer world, and though they doubtless fondly hoped and believed it would "have canopied their bones," or at least they would have been laid to rest in the shade of its church.

But I am a little previous. Close to where I pulled up I saw a man breaking stones by the roadside, and I asked him if he could tell me the whereabouts of the abbey. "It be right down there," said he, pointing ahead with his finger into space, "not more than a quarter of a mile away. You comes to a cottage, and on the other side of the way is a footpath by a stream leading to it." He was a civil man, his instructions were clear, stone-breaking is wearisome work; I was sorry for him to the extent of a sixpence, better expended than on a tramp, I thought, and tramps in my green days wheedled many a sixpence out of me. I remember that the last tramp to whom I gave a trifle exclaimed in the fulness of his heart upon unexpectedly receiving it, "God bless you, sir. May we soon meet in Heaven!" Since then my donations to tramps have ceased. I would chat with that stone-breaker, I would see the world through a stone-breaker's eyes. But his view of the world was limited; manifestly the monotony of his labour had told upon him, perhaps too the loneliness of the life, so that I got little profit out of the conversation. It needs a strong mind to sit by the roadside all day long and break stones, do nothing but break stones, and have any imagination left.

Finding a secluded, shady spot by the wayside I rested there awhile, for the day was hot; moreover I was already beginning to feel hungry, and my luncheon-basket was handy. How hungry one gets motoring in the fresh air, to be sure! Whilst resting there and thinking, it suddenly struck me how seldom in Wales I saw any children romping about in the villages as English children are wont to do; even to-day sometimes on the village greens one finds the latter playing games so old that no one can tell how they originated. Take, for instance, the game of "Old Roger" often played at children's gatherings in the West Country to an old song as follows. I have given this song in a previous book, but it will bear repeating, and I repeat it to show how this old song, long years ago, found its way to America, and how it became altered there. This, then, is how the original "Old Roger" runs:—

Old Roger is dead and lies in his grave—

Hee-haw! lies in his grave.

They planted an apple-tree over his head.
The apples were ripe and ready to drop,
When came a big wind and blew them all off;
Then came an old woman a-picking them up.
Old Roger jumped up and gave her a knock,
Which made the old woman go hipperty-hop.

Now an American lady reading this in my book wrote to me about it, enclosing the words of a song that was sung to her by her grandfather, who had learnt it from his grandfather. "It is very plain," wrote the lady, "that our song came over from your country, and that it originated in your 'Old Roger.' This is very interesting to me. We call our song 'Old Father Cungell.' It goes this way:—

Old Father Cungell went up to White Hall,

Hum, ha! up to White Hall,

And there he fell sick amongst 'em all,

With my heigh down, ho down,

Hum, Ha!

Old Father Cungell was car-ri-ed home,

Hum, ha! car-ri-ed home;

Before he got there he was as dead as a stone,

With my heigh down, ho down,

Hum, Ha!

Old Father Cungell was in the grave laid,
They covered him up with shovel and spade,
And out of his grave there grew a big tree
That bore the best apples that ever ye see!

Before they were ripe and fit for the fall,
There came an old woman and stole them off all;
Her gown it was red, her petticoat green,
The very worst woman that ever was seen.

Old Cungell got up and hit her a knock,
That made the old woman go hipperty-hop.
The neighbours were scared and said in their fright,
'The ghost of Cungell gets up in the night,'

With my heigh down, ho down,

Hum, Ha!"

Rested and refreshed I went in search of Haughmond Abbey, the ruins of which, though near to, are not visible from the road, so the casual traveller might pass them unawares, as doubtless many do. A short stroll along a shady footpath and by the side of a limpid stream soon brought me to the spot; the hoary, ivy-clad ruins peeping through the branching trees made a perfect picture, the sunshine resting on them and brightening the century-gathered gloom of their broken walls and rugged gables. It was, in truth, a pleasant spot the monks selected for their abbey, an ideal spot well secluded from the outer world; even to-day it retains its old-time tranquillity undisturbed. I had the ruins to myself, rejoiced to escape from the noisy prattle of the mere sightseer; to myself, excepting that some birds were holding a profane service on the grass-grown ground where erst the high altar stood. The ruins are of considerable extent, though, but for a portion of a wall and a fine sculptured doorway, the church itself has wholly disappeared; its foundations, however, may still be faintly traced. Unlike most abbeys the ruined churches of which remain whilst their monastic outbuildings and offices have vanished, at Haughmond the reverse is the case. So one generation builds a fane of prayer and another generation levels it to the ground, even glorying in its destruction; and the sad thought of it is, who can say that what we build in our pride to-day may not at some future time share a similar fate? Doubtless the monks who reared this stately abbey thought it would last to Doomsday; it lasted about four hundred years, for it was founded in 1135 by Fitz Alan of Clun, and was suppressed by King Henry VIII. in 1541, he "being mynded to take it into his own handes," as he did many another abbey, "for better purposes." The world knows what those "better purposes" were.

Nettles and weeds now flourish in the abbey's deserted courts and around its roofless buildings, the only roofed portion being the Chapter-house, which is entire with its three richly ornamented arched doorways, of which I give an illustration. It may be noted that between the pillars are statues under canopies, a remarkable feature that I do not remember to have seen in any ecclesiastical edifice before. It struck me that these statues were an after-thought and had been introduced at a later period by cutting pillars away to receive them; I cannot say that they altogether pleased me, for they disturbed the unity and simplicity of the fine Norman arches. The flat oak roof of the Chapter-house appears to be in perfect condition, though I was surprised to find an oak roof there and not a vaulted one of stone. The chief offices appertaining to the abbey appear to have been built round a court beyond the cloisters; of these the Abbot's Lodge retains its beautiful bay-window, and what was probably the guest-house retains all its side windows with their tracery intact. This building has a large gable at one end flanked by shapely turrets.

Of the many stately tombs the abbey church once contained only two inscribed slabs remain, but these are interesting: one to John Fitz Alan, deceased 1270, who was buried before the high altar, bears the following inscription in Norman French, as was the fashion of the time:—

VOVS KI PASSEZ ICI PRIES PVR LAME IOHAN FIS ALEIN
KI GIT ICI DEV DE SA ALME EIT MERCI. AMEN.

ISABEL DE MORTIMER SA FEMME ACOST DE L ... DEV
DE LVR ALME ... MERCI. AMEN.

Another slab has the incised effigy of a woman shown wearing a quaint head-dress with a coat-of-arms on either side of it, her gloved hands folded in prayer; the inscription is in Latin, that prevailed during that later period and for long afterwards, and thus it runs:—

Hic jacet ... filia Iohis Leyton armigi & uxor Ricardi
mynde que obiit in festo Cathedre Sancti Petri
Anno Dni Millesio cccc xxviij cui aie ppiciet Deus Amen.

I loitered long at Haughmond, and loth I was to leave so peace-bestowing a spot; thither the world-weary pilgrim might well come in search of rest, for nowhere could he find a quietude more profound. I wish I could, in words, express the peacefulness of the spot, a peacefulness that grew upon me and that seemed to me on leaving like an unuttered benediction, but not the less a benediction because unuttered. Never bade I farewell to a spot more reluctantly; never have I felt a greater desire to return to one. Such was the spell it cast upon me. "Within its walls peace reigned; from its stately church came the sounds of prayer and praise; its gates were ever open to the pilgrim and the poor; its hospitality and brotherly kindness softened the harsh incidence of the feudal days."