Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway / Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from Worcester to Shrewsbury

by John Randall

HAMPTON’S LOADE.

Lode was a Saxon term for ford, and the name here, as elsewhere, denotes an ancient passage of the Severn. In this case, it was one by which the inhabitants of Highley, Billingsley, and Chelmarsh formerly passed to Quatt and Alveley. A ferry has long been substituted, but the old load still winds along the hillside, past an old stone cross, in the direction of Alveley, an old Saxon manor. The tall grey tower of the old church is seen from the line, occupying a high position on the right. The building is an ancient and interesting structure, with many Norman features, and is greatly admired by antiquarians. Judging from the materials used in older portions of the building, the first church would appear to have been built of travertine. Above Hampton’s Loade, the wooded heights of Dudmaston and of Quatford, with the red towers of Quatford Castle, come into view; but a deviation of the line, and a deep cutting through the Knoll Sands, prevent more than a passing glimpse. Quat is an old British word for wood, and refers to a wide stretch of woodland once included in the great Morfe Forest; and ford to an adjoining passage of the river—one, half a mile higher up, being still called Danes’ Ford. On a bluff headland, rising perpendicularly 100 feet above the Severn, close by, the hardy Northerners, who thus left their name in connection with the Severn, established themselves in 896, when driven by Alfred from the Thames; and on the same projecting rock, defended on the land side by a trench cut in the solid sandstone, Roger de Montgomery afterwards built himself a house.

And tradition adds that, in consequence of a vow made by his second wife, Adeliza, the church close by was built upon

the borders of the forest, then the favourite hunting-ground of the Norman earl. The church, like other neighbouring structures of ancient date, was built of tuffa, or travertine, a material found in the beds of brooks in the district, and portions of the chancel, including its fine Norman arch and pillars, are still composed of the same. Among old endowments of the church, is one, from a source unknown, of a piece of land, the proceeds of which defray the expense of ferrying persons attending church across the Severn.

The old man at the ferry is a fisherman, who knows well where to get “a rise” of trout, or to hook a grayling, and where to look for pike, or perch, or gudgeon.

In the parish of Quatford is Eardington, celebrated for the manufacture of iron for guns, wire, and horse nails; and parochially and manorially combined with Eardington is the More, the ancient tenure of which indicates the manufacture of iron here at a very early period. By it the tenant was required to appear yearly in the Exchequer, with a hazel rod of a year’s growth, and two knives, the treasurer and barons being present. The tenant was to attempt to sever the rod with one of the knives, the other knife was to do the same work at one stroke, and then be given up to the king’s chamberlain; a custom which was continued until recently.

BRIDGNORTH

Population, 6,569.

Market day—Saturday. Fairs—January 20th, February 17th, May 1st, June 9th, July 14th, August 18th, September 15th, October 29th, December 28th.

Principal Hotel—The Crown, for which, as well as for the Swan, the Raven, and the George, see Advertisements.

The station, at the southern termination of the tunnel, is a chaste building of freestone, and forms an additional ornament to the town. It occupies a position from which its two divisions come pleasantly into view, the Low Town lying peacefully in the valley by the Severn, the High Town dotting the terraced sides, and crowning the bold impending rocks that give it, in the eyes of travellers, such an eastern aspect. Caverned in the hill, at many stages from its foot, and reached by winding walks, are picturesque holes and habitations—happily now no longer used, excepting in very few instances indeed—where the first settlers crowded when the ruthless Dane perched himself like a famished eagle on the rocks of Quatford down below. In the foreground are the time-worn relics of its two castles, to which the little colony was indebted for protection from fierce and threatening foes. The one opposite is Pampudding Hill, a smooth, grassy mound, on which the daughter of the great Alfred, Queen Ethelfleda, built a fortress. According to Florence of Worcester, what we now call

Bridgnorth was then Brycge. In his time, as in that of Leland, who so well described its position, the Severn ran nearer to the frowning cliffs on which the town is built than at present.

The discriminating eye of the outlawed Belesme was not slow to perceive the advantages nature had given to the place, when he sought to raise a fortress that should shield him from the wrath of his royal master, and he removed the materials, it is said, of his house at Quatbrigia—a bridge having, it is supposed, succeeded the ford—to Brycge, afterwards Bridgnorth, or the bridge north of the one at Quatford. Florence of Worcester says: “Earl Robert carried on the works night and day, exciting Welshmen to the speedy performance of his wishes by awarding them horses, lands, asses, and all sorts of gifts.” With such aids, and advantages of site, the Norman earl erected a castle that held out three weeks against a large force marshalled by Henry, who, as an old Saxon chronicle states, came here “with all his army” to besiege it. It stood a second siege when Hugh de Mortimer espoused the cause of Stephen, and was attacked by Henry II., whose life was saved by the zeal of an attendant, who received a well-aimed arrow intended for the king. It was taken by the confederate barons, and retaken by Edward II., who afterwards marched to Shrewsbury, where the proud Mortimers humbled themselves and sued for mercy. It served not only as a garrison and a prison, but, from its position on the frontier of Wales, very often as a royal residence. King John came with a splendid retinue, of which the bishops of Lincoln and Hereford, the earls of Essex, Pembroke, Chester, Salisbury, Hereford, and Warwick formed part; upon which occasion the entertainment is said to have cost, for the three days it lasted, a sum equal to £2,000 of modern currency. Prince Edward was a visitor after the battle of Evesham; and the second Edward too—the first time at the head of his army, the second, as a fugitive, crossing the Severn in a small boat at nightfall. Henry IV. was here:

“On Wednesday next, Harry, thou shall set forward;
On Tuesday, we ourselves will march.
Our meeting is Bridgnorth; and, Harry, you
Shall march through Gloucester; by which account
Our general forces at Bridgnorth shall meet.”

Charles I. arrived here from Shrewsbury, October, 1642,

when he remained three days and gave expression to the eulogium, which townsmen quote for the benefit of strangers, respecting the beauty of the castle walk. It was garrisoned for this unfortunate monarch, too, in the struggle which cost him his head, upon which occasion the town was stormed by three divisions of the Parliamentary army, March, 1646. The fight waxed hottest near the north gate, and in the old churchyard, where the leader of the loyalists fell. That the adherents of the king were not “all on one side,” would appear from the fact that the town’s defenders were pelted upon retiring to the castle by the inhabitants, treatment which they seem to have deserved in setting fire to the town, bombarding St. Leonard’s, burning the adjoining buildings and driving the wretched population in search of such shelter as the rocks and woods afforded.

The garrison capitulated on the 26th of April, 1646, in consequence of a mine, by which the Parliamentary leader proposed to blow up the castle and set fire to their magazine, then in St. Mary’s Church, which stood within the castle walls. Ecclesiastical dignitaries often then wore coats of mail as well as cassocks, and daggers in addition to their girdles; and this old church being collegiate, had for one of its deans Rivallis, who forged the charter and seal of Henry III., by which the Irish possessions of the Earl of Pembroke were invaded, and that nobleman cruelly treated and killed. The more distinguished William of Wykeham, who held the Great Seal in the reign of Edward III., and exercised considerable influence in his day, both in church and state, was also a dean of St. Mary’s.

St. Leonard’s occupies a position at the opposite extremity of the town. Its crumbling tower, shattered by the cannon of Charles’ army, remains, but the nave and side aisles have recently been restored—that on the south side at the sole expense of John Pritchard, Esq., M.P., in memory of his brother. The celebrated divine, Richard Baxter, began his ministry at St. Leonard’s, apparently with little success, as he is said to have shook the dust from his feet upon leaving, declaring the hearts of the inhabitants to have been harder than the rock on which their town was built. Nevertheless, he afterwards dedicated his well-known book, “The Saint’s Rest,” to them. Adjoining the churchyard is a hospital for ten poor widows, built and endowed, as a brass plate over

the entrance informs us, by a relative of Colonel Billingsly, who fell in the service of “King Charles ye First,” and whose sword is said now to be in the possession of a descendant of the family, in the parish of Astley Abbots.

Like other ancient towns, Bridgnorth had places founded for the relief of the poor, the destitute, and the diseased. The house of the monks of the “Friars of the Order Grey,” stands near where a dilapidated sign of the Preaching Friar still swings over the entrance of a public-house. It forms part of the carpet works of Mr. Martin Southwell, who uses its oak panelled hall, and a number of cells carved out of the solid rock, as storerooms. In making some alterations recently the little cemetery was disturbed, and skeletons of several of the monks, embedded in spaces cut out of the rock, in the form of a sarcophagus, were exposed. In the Cartway is

the “Old House” in which Bishop Percy, author of the “Relics of Ancient English Poetry,” was born, a fine specimen of the domestic architecture of the 16th century; and in the entrance-hall of which are the following words in large letters in relief, “Except the Lord BVILD THE OWSE The Labourers Thereof Evail Nothing. Erected by R. For * 1580.” Another of these quaint old structures, called Cann Hall, contains some curious unlighted double dormitories in the roof; one is called King Charles’ Room, and another is pointed out as that in which his nephew, Prince Rupert, is said to have slept. The house is supposed to be haunted, and the present tenant is not loth to admit that he sometimes hears strange noises, a fact, if such it be, at which one can scarcely wonder, seeing that the wind and the bats have undisputed sway. The Townhall, in the Market Square, built in the place of the one destroyed during the civil wars, is thus noticed in the “Common Hall Order Book” of the Corporation: “The New Hall set up in the Market Place of the High Street of Bridgnorth was begun, and the stone arches thereof made, when Mr. Francis Preen and Mr. Symon Beauchamp were Bayliffs, in Summer, 1650; and the timber work and building upon the same stone arches was set up when Mr. Thomas Burne and Mr. Roger Taylor were Bayliffs of the said town of Bridgnorth, in July and August, 1652.” The new Market Hall, with the Assembly Room, the rooms of the Mechanics’ Institution, &c., is a handsome building, situated at the lower end of the same large open square.

The grand promenade round the Castle Hill, which King Charles pronounced the finest in his dominion, commands a prospect that cannot fail to interest. Below, the river winds like a thing of life; around, are wave-like sweeps of country, red and green, broken by precipitous rocks into a succession of natural terraces, many of which, being higher than the town itself, afford the most enchanting views.

The Hermitage is one of these, the prospect from which, on a clear, sunny day, is such as to commend the choice of the anchorite, who is said to have exchanged the excitements of a court for retirement in such a spot. The tradition is, that Ethelwald, brother of King Athelstan, who succeeded his father, Edward (924), retired here to escape the perils of the period; a tradition which receives support from the following royal presentations found on the rolls of Edward: “On the

2nd of February, Edward III., 1328, John Oxindon was presented by the king to the hermitage of Athelardestan, near Bridgnorth. On 7 Edward III., Andrew Corbriggs was similarly presented to the hermitage of Adlaston, near Bridgnorth. On 9 Edward III., 1335, Edmund de la Marc was presented to the hermitage of Athelaxdestan,” a name signifying the stone or rock of Ethelwald.

The Cemetery lies embosomed in a sunny opening of the rocks below the Hermitage, where nature and art combined—the former predominating so much by means of a noble amphitheatre of rocks—have given to the spot a quiet, pleasing interest. Outside the Cemetery, a winding path leads to the High Rocks, the road to which the inhabitants have recently improved. This elevated position above the Severn well deserves a visit, commanding as it does the Vale, through which the river winds amidst alluvial lands, bounded by the heights of Apley and Stanley, the hills of the Wrekin and Caradoc, and those of the Brown and Titterstone Clees, with the Abberley and Malvern hills in the distance. The castellated structure at the foot of the High Rocks, now used for manufacturing purposes, occupies the site of the Old Town’s Mills, given by Henry III. to the inhabitants, and out of which he made provision for the hermit of Mount St. Gilbert.