Until comparatively recent times, there was an isolated cantle of Shropshire lying derelict, so to speak, far away towards the east, upon the confines of Worcester and Stafford. The quiet old townlet of Halesowen, with its ruined Premonstratensian Abbey founded by King John, was formerly included in Shropshire; as was also the curious little chapel of St. Kenelm, on the slopes of the Clent Hills, and the pleasant estate of the Leasowes, with its groves and pseudo-classic ruined temples, in the taste of the last century, and its memories of Shenstone the poet.
But we digress, so now, revenons à nos moutons.
Laying a south-westerly course from Highley, we set out anon for Kinlet Hall, a place seated in a wild, secluded locality, on the borders of Wyre Forest. Our way lies in the main through a country of low, tumbled hills, thatched with woodland; one or two colliery chimneys, emitting grimy smoke, seeming out of place amid these green, pastoral landscapes.
After passing the vicarage we enter Kinlet Park, a tract of undulating country about 500 acres in area, containing bosky dells and sylvan glades, where flourish some of the finest oaks and beeches in the county.
Kinlet Hall.
The Hall and church soon come in sight, the former a fine, spacious structure of brick, with stone quoins, built in the year 1729 by an ancestor of the present proprietor; the original half-timbered mansion, which stood nearer the church, having been pulled down at that time.
Though lacking the picturesque variety of an earlier style, Kinlet Hall impresses one by a certain serene dignity as it rises, four-square and ruddy, and flanked by large arched gateways, from the smooth, close-cropped greensward of the home-park; a worthy example of an English country residence of the early Georgian period. Some good ancestral portraits lend interest to the interior, including likenesses of the builder of the existing mansion, and his lady.