In the year 896 the Danes, to quote an old chronicler, 'toke their way towards Wales, and came to Quadruge, nere to the River of Severne, where, upon the borders thereof, they buildid them a Castle.' Here, on the spot overlooking the Severn still called the Danish Camp, they spent the winter, 'not without dislike of their lodging, and cold entertainment'; withdrawing eventually into East Anglia again.
Towards the close of the eleventh century, Roger de Belesme began the building of his 'New House and Borough,' mentioned in Domesday, which probably occupied the site of the earlier Danish encampment. After the death of Earl Roger, his son, Robert de Belesme, removed both castle and Burgh to the spot where Bridgnorth now stands. 'At Quatford,' says John Leland, 'yett appeare great Tokens of a Pyle, or Mannour Place, longing that tyme to Robert de Belesme.'
Occupying the summit of a rocky standstone knoll, Quatford church is approached by a long flight of steps, leading up to the south porch. In accordance with a romantic vow, the church was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, as a memorial of and thank-offering for escape from shipwreck, by Adeliza, wife of Earl Roger the Norman; and was consecrated in the year 1086. The chancel arch and adjacent walls, built of a peculiar porous stone called tufa, or travertin, quite different from the rest of the structure, may possibly have formed part of that ancient edifice.
In a meadow near Hillhouse Farm, a quarter of a mile north-east of Quatford church, we come to the 'Forest Oak,' a queer old stunted tree which might be of almost any age, with its two short, gnarled stems, supporting a head of wrinkled foliage. So let us give this venerable weed the benefit of the doubt, by accepting the local tradition that here, beneath its shade, the Countess Adeliza met Earl Roger her husband after her perilous voyage, and prevailed upon him to erect the votive church to St. Mary Magdalene, at Quatford.
Away across the Severn, at Eardington, is (or was) a small farm called The Moors; a place that gives rise to a quaint ceremony, performed every year in London. On October 22, a proclamation is made in the Exchequer as follows: 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Tenants and occupiers of a piece of waste ground called "The Moors," in the County of Salop, come forth and do your service!' The tenants in question then proceed to do sergeantry by cutting two faggots of wood, one with a hatchet, the other with a bill-hook.
The fons et origo of this curious feudal custom has long since been lost in the mists of antiquity; but the earliest recorded instance of the service was in the reign of King John, 1210.
Bidding adieu to Quatford, we descend the hill, pass the 'Danery,' or Deanery, Inn, and the site of Quatford bridge, and plod on between hedgerows bejewelled with glistening dewdrops. The 'charm' of the birds, to use the Shropshire phrase, no longer enlivens the byway; but a solitary songster every now and again wakes the echoes of woodland or coppice. Atalanta, yonder, taking heart of grace, suns her glossy wings on a spray of the 'swete bramble floure'; while the rabbits, startled at our approach, bob off to their burrows in the sandy bank.
Dudmaston Hall is left away to our right, and anon we come to Quat, a mite of a place whose name, derived from Coed, a wood, shews it once stood within the bounds of Morf Forest.
Some three miles to the eastward, close to the Staffordshire border, stands Gatacre Hall, the ancestral home of the family of that ilk, which has been settled here, it is said, ever since the reign of Edward the Confessor. Major-General Sir W. Gatacre, one of the victors of Omdurman, is a distinguished scion of this good old stock, having first seen the light, if we are rightly informed, at Gatacre Hall.