Moat Hall. Hanwood.
The finest of these is Moat Hall, a place which, though altered by recent restorations, retains some interesting features. No less than three very handsome old carved oak chimney-pieces are still to be seen, the arms of the Beringtons being traceable among their ornamentation; and the domestic chapel, used in bygone times by those of the 'old faith,' retains its panelled dadoes and rich plaster ceiling. The place was of course haunted; but the ghost, with a fine sense of propriety, none too common amongst such gentry, has departed with a former owner of the estate.
At Hanwood we traverse a small local Black Country, where an outlier of the Shropshire coalfield lies under foot, and where stumpy colliery chimneys and whimsey-wheels deface the nearer landscape. But all this soon gives place to the good open country, as the train approaches Pontesbury station; and tall, cloud-capped hills begin to assert themselves, in the direction whither we are bound.
There is not much to detain the traveller here, for 'Ponsbyri,' as John Leland has it, 'is but an uplandisch Tounlet, 4 miles from Shrewsbyri.' The church, nevertheless, was originally a collegiate foundation, and still boasts a fine, massive tower, besides one or two other good features. Of the 'great Manor Place, or Castelle,' whose ruins Leland saw 'on the south side of the Chirche Yarde,' not one stone now remains upon another. To Pontesbury, some six centuries ago, came the famous Bishop Swinfield; paying, as is recorded, the modest sum of one penny for the ten-mile journey across the hills from Stretton, which may stand, we take it, as a record fare even to this day.
Be that as it may, we now pass on to Minsterley, the terminus of the line; a place that, whatever attractions it may possess, can certainly lay small claim to beauty. Even the Miners' Arms Inn, by its bleak-looking, brick façade, belies the comfort to be found within; and it is not until we come to the parish church that things take a turn for the better.
The little edifice is, perhaps, rather curious than beautiful. Built in the seventeenth century, it has superseded an earlier church of great but unknown antiquity, reputed to have been one of the most ancient ecclesiastical foundations in Shropshire.
Externally, the red-brick front presents a queer combination of skulls, hour-glasses, scythes and cherubs' heads, wrought amidst the classic entablature of the Jacobean portal; a good example of the bad style then in vogue. There is not much else to detain us here, so let us look within.
The interior of Minsterley church is sober, plain and simple; but is relieved from the commonplace by the rich, dark woodwork of its massive oak pulpit and chancel screen, and the great sounding-board which impends above the former.