The “Wynnstay Arms,” mentioned in this amusing account, was the chief inn of coaching days, and remains much the same in appearance. It was once known as the “Cross Foxes,” the two names meaning the same thing, for two foxes, “counter-salient,” as the heralds say, placed back to back, form a prominent feature in the arms of the Wynnes of Wynnstay, the great landowning family of this district.
The Wynne arms are satirically referred to by Gwillim, who says: “They are not unlike Samson’s foxes that were tied together by the tails, and yet these two agree; they came into the field like two enemies, but they meant nothing like fighting, and therefore pass by each other, like two crafty lawyers which come to the Bar as if they meant to fall out deadly about their clients’ cause; but when they have done, and their clients’ purses are well spunged, they are better friends than ever they were, and laugh at those geese that will not believe them to be foxes till they, too late, find themselves fox-bitten.”
Another charge in the old coat of the Wynnes is a spread eagle, referred to in the proud motto of the family: “Eryr Eryrod Eryri” = “The Eagle of the eagles of North Wales.”
Much might be said of the Wynnes, if one had a mind to it, for each succeeding Sir Watkin has been a species of Providence to the district, from Oswestry to Llangollen, and many of them great sporting figures in North Wales. One of that long line has put upon record his method of conveying his rents to London in days of old. His precautions might well fit the escorting of a convoy through an enemy’s country, and although dealing only with a period covering the close of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth century, read like a mediæval romance.
First of all, the “fourgon,” as he styles his carriage, was thoroughly overhauled, so that no defects might remain to cause a breakdown on the long and arduous four or five days’ journey. Then the iron bullet-proof lining of the carriage was examined, and four of his most muscular gamekeepers selected to accompany him. All at last being ready, two keepers were seated on the box, each provided with a double-barrelled gun, and two others, similarly armed, in the dickey. Sir Watkin would personally superintend the loading of the carriage with the products of his rent-roll, and would then take his seat, accompanied by his land-bailiff. After a day’s journey of between forty and fifty miles, the coach would be drawn up at some hostelry well known to Sir Watkin, and the treasure guarded throughout the night by two of the keepers and by the two carriage-dogs which had trotted beneath the equipage all day. With such precautions, it is not altogether remarkable that the worthy Baronet’s fortress on wheels was never attacked.
Carriage dogs—Dalmatian hounds or “plum-pudding” dogs—are not so fashionable as they were. Until recent years they were often to be seen trotting at an even pace under the carriages of the aristocracy and the wealthy during the London season, and were almost wholly kept for the sake of style and display. They were then, apart from being somewhat companionable and soothing to the nerves of restive horses, wholly useless; but—just as the waist-belt of a groom is the now meaningless survival of the necessary belt by which ladies riding pillion on horseback in the old days clung to the horseman—they had originally a very good reason for existence. Carriage dogs, in fact, date from more than two centuries ago, when families, travelling in their “chariots” between their country and their town houses, and often carrying great store of valuables with them, were always accompanied by these dogs, whose especial business was by no means comprised solely in keeping pace with the equipage. Indeed, the serious part of their profession only began when the wayside inn was reached, and the carriage put up in the coach-house. Throughout the night they kept watch and ward over their master’s goods; and ill fared the thief, or even the incautious stable-hand, who went near.
XXXI
Modern Oswestry is a place of engineering shops, foundries, and mining interests, and, as the seat of the Cambrian Railway locomotive and carriage works, is busy and prosperous. Not a vestige of its old trade in Welsh flannel remains, for the mills of Lancashire long ago began to produce a cheaper article than the Welsh could make. Very little of old Oswestry is left, and although the streets are still for the most part narrow and crooked, the greater number of the houses are modern. Inns abound in the grimy and slovenly place; a very different state of things from a hundred years ago, when Rowlandson and Wigstead came here and found it “remarkable for having (though rather a large town) the fewest public-houses we ever witnessed.” No one is at all likely to raise that complaint in these times.
The road out of Oswestry passes close by two grassy hills crowned with trees, the original site, according to legend, of the town, and still known as “Old Oswestry.” The Welsh name them, and the ancient entrenchments that ring their summits, “Hen Dinas,” or “Old Fort.” Hidden away behind is Porkington, a historic estate whose real name is Brogyntyn, but thus vulgarised by the invading Saxon certainly as early as the reign of Henry III. Quite recently Lord Harlech, who now owns the estate, has re-adopted the original name, but “Porkington,” after an existence of six hundred years, is not so readily forgotten.
The Great Western Railway crosses the road on the level, three miles out of the town, at Gobowen, on its way to Chester. Gobowen village itself is utterly commonplace, but marks the beginning of one of Telford’s important alterations in setting out a new line of road, in place of the three miles of steep, circuitous, and narrow old road leading from here to the “Bridge Inn” at the crossing of the river Ceiriog. The old road is still in existence, and can be easily explored. It goes off to the left soon after the “Cross Foxes” is passed, beginning where a narrow lane, entered by a turnstile, runs between the “Railway Tavern” and a hideous Wesleyan Chapel: an atrocity in red and yellow brick and blue slates.