THE QUARRY,
“Whose walks are ever pleasant; every scene
Is rich in beauty, lively, or serene.”
This fine public promenade occupies a rich sloping meadow of about twenty acres, and derives its name from a disused stone quarry, nearly in the centre, which supplied a considerable part of the red sandstone visible in the older portions of the walls and churches of the town. Its site has long been designated “the Dingle,” and is planted with a bold clump of most magnificent horse-chesnut and lime trees. A noble avenue of lofty lime trees, gracefully unite their topmost boughs into a rich embowered arch, and with their lower branches feathering to the gentle windings of the beauteous river, forms the principal walk; to the middle and each end of which, three other shaded walks lead from various streets of the town. The still retirement and pleasing gloom of this delightful grove, from which the noise of the busy town, and even a prospect of its buildings, are almost entirely excluded,—the refreshing coolness of its shade,—the rich verdure which ever clothes its meadows,—the fine sweep of its umbrageous arch,—and the majestic flow of the river, which here
“with gentle murmur glides,
And makes sweet music with th’ enamel’d stones;
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.”
all combine to render it the favourite and constant resort of the inhabitant, and a principal attraction to the stranger. The ground was laid out and planted in 1791, during the mayoralty of Henry Jenks, Esq., by Mr. Wright, a celebrated and intelligent nursery-man, resident in the adjacent village of Bicton.
On the west side of the Quarry, in the Dingle, called the Dry Dingle, are the remains of a rude amphitheatre, with ascending seats cut in the bank, where the Friars of the adjacent Convent performed the ancient religious Mysteries, or Miracle-plays, so famous in the days of our ancestors. Here, also, during the reign of Elizabeth many plays were exhibited in which the scholars of the Free Schools sustained the principal characters.
Close adjoining to the Quarry are