Fleres si scires unum tua tempora me’sem,
Rides cum non sit forsitan una dies,
which has been translated:
Brief is your time: a month, perchance,
Nor even but a day,
Yet ignorant, poor foolish wight,
You laughing go your way.
Adjoining is a disused toll-house, and opposite stands another old inn, the “Green Dragon,” the group forming a little oasis of settlement in the surrounding desert of lonely road. It was between this and the “Welsh Harp” inn at Stonnal, on the Castle Bromwich road, that the “Shrewsbury Caravan” was halted and robbed on April 30th, 1751, by “a single Highwayman, who behaved very civilly to the Passengers, told them he was a Tradesman in Distress, and hoped they would contribute to his assistance.” Whereupon, he handed round his hat and each passenger gave him something, making an involuntary contribution of about £4, “with which he was mighty well satisfied,” as indeed he had every reason to be. But he was not so distressed a tradesman that he could condescend to accept coppers, and so “returned some Halfpence to one of them, saying he never took Copper.” After this, informing his victims that there were two other “collectors” on the road (were they also Distressed Tradesmen?) he rode with the Caravan for some distance, until it was out of danger and he almost in it, when he left with much courtesy, begging the passengers that they would not at their next inn mention the affair, nor appear against him should he afterwards be arrested.
XXXIII
The gently undulating stretch of country from “Four Crosses” to “Spread Eagle,” once dreaded by the name of Calf Heath, is now under cultivation, and the Watling Street, crossing it, broad and well-kept, wears more the look of a high-road. The spreading lakes seen here and there, known as “Gailey Pools,” are reservoirs of the old Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal that presently crosses the road under a hunchbacked bridge and by an old round-house, whose tower stands out prominently for a long distance down the straight perspective. The “Spread Eagle,” an old coaching-inn, once gave a name to the adjoining railway station of Gailey, but where the village hides that now serves sponsor to it is not readily discovered. A mile beyond comes the river Penk, crossed at a pretty spot by a substantial stone bridge, and across the meadows by a red-brick one, where a mill-cut froths and foams, and a cheerful old mill and farmhouse stand. On the other side of the river is the hamlet of Horsebrook, with Stretton down a side lane, supposed to have been the Pennocrucium—the crossing of the Penk—of Roman times.