Kinlet.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, the estate of Kinlet appertained to Editha, Edward the Confessor's widow, and in after years passed successively to the houses of Cornewall and of Blount. The Blounts, as Camden tells us, were 'an antient, illustrious, and numerous family in these parts, who have extended their branches a great way, and who certainly have their name from their yellow hair.' Kinlet eventually came into the possession of the Baldwyns, a widely connected Shropshire family, and is now the residence of Captain C. Baldwyn-Childe.
Kinlet church, nestling in a grove of trees almost under the shadow of the Hall, is a small but interesting cruciform structure. In the Blount chapel we find monuments to various members of that family, as well as to the Childes. The finest of these is a richly canopied table-tomb, with the figures of Sir George Blount and his wife kneeling beneath niches, a recumbent effigy in the arched vault below, and a quaint Latin epitaph alongside. This knight was a distinguished soldier, and sometime High Sheriff of Salop; he died in the year 1581. Against the adjacent wall there is a curious representation of the Crucifixion, in stone, and there are one or two sixteenth-century marble monuments in the chancel.
Some idea of the exterior of Kinlet church may be gathered from the little sketch on the previous page, which shews the half-timbered clerestory, the pretty gable-end of the Blount chapel, and a certain small stone structure which rises in the churchyard. It is square on plan, with an arched recess on each side, the one towards the west having a shallow niche on the inner face. It appears to have been surmounted by a cross, of which the base-stone may be seen upon the apex of the roof.
Dotted here and there about the valley of the Rea, as it comes down from Brown Clee Hill, are a number of obscure villages and isolated hamlets, which have remained as primitive, probably, as any in all broad Shropshire. It is the country, par excellence, of stiff red clay, as the oft-repeated name of 'Clee' plainly indicates; and its sunny barley fields, its orchards and bosky woodlands, have given rise to the local adage:
'Blest is the eye 'twixt Severn and Wye,
But thrice blessed he 'twixt Severn and Clee!'
Ditton Priors, with its interesting old church, carved oak roodscreen, stalls and lectern, lies under the shadow of Brown Clee, near the head-waters of the Rea. Cleobury North, on the Ludlow road, had a church subject to Brecon Priory as long ago as Henry the First's time. One or two epitaphs in the graveyard here are worth a passing notice.
Then we come to Burwarton, whose inn, the Boyne Arms, offers bed and board for the wayfarer in a better style than one is wont to find in this remote locality, where as a rule the traveller is fortunate who, like the proverbial Scotsman, is 'contented wi' little, an' cantie wi' mair.'
Burwarton church is mainly of Norman date, having a plain, semi-headed chancel arch of that period, and a little carved woodwork. Brown Clee Hill, lying due west, may be easily climbed from here; and the view from the top, described on a previous page, will well repay the scramble.