Grand cumulus clouds, marshalled along the horizon, threaten broken, changeable weather; and a smartish shower now warns us to look out for squalls. But 'for a morning rain leave not yr journey,' as wise old George Herbert has it; so we plod steadily on in the brunt of the breeze, prepared for whatever the Clerk of the Weather may see fit to send our way.
Ere long we come to Worthen, a village of which least said, perhaps, soonest mended; for to our minds the place has little to recommend it. The large parish church is the only building worthy of note, and its attractions are soon exhausted. Worthen Hall, at the farther end of the village, is an early eighteenth-century stuccoed house of unassuming appearance.
Thenceforward we travel along with low, tumbled hills upon our left, while in the opposite quarter we look across the flat Rea valley to the high, wild ridges of the Stiperstones, whose flanks, still shaggy with woodland, formed a royal hunting forest under the Saxon kings.
At Aston Rogers we take a glance at the Pound House, a rather shabby-looking timbered cottage of late fifteenth-century date, with remains of a circular moat; and anon we diverge from our route to visit the site of Caurse Castle.
A stiff climb through a tangle of brushwood brings us to the steep, green mounds, whereon the castle stood, though but little of it remains save a few fragments of rough, weedgrown masonry. So far as one can gather therefrom, the building took the form of a parallelogram, which adapted itself to the natural trend of the ridge, and appears to have had a round-tower at each corner. At the highest point stood the keep; and a well, supplied by the stream hard by, lay somewhere within the enceinte. The position must have been a strong one, in days when artillery was in its infancy; and it commanded the avenues of approach in every direction.
Caurse Castle was founded by Roger Fitz Corbet, one of William's Norman knights, very soon after the Conquest; and, from its exposed situation, must have formed a salient point in the series of border strongholds, which the Normans drew around these Shropshire Marches. After having been taken and burned by the Welsh, the castle was recaptured and garrisoned for Henry II., in 1165. Long afterwards the place passed to the Barons Stafford, and was eventually captured, and its defences 'slighted' by the Parliamentarians, in 1645.
Away to the westward looms a wild, hilly, sparsely peopled region, known in olden times as Caurseland. 'This Caurseland,' to use John Leland's phrase, 'sumtyme longinge to the Duke of Buckyngham, crooketh mervelously about the upper Parts of Shropeshire.' It still maintains its isolated character, though the forest that once overspread this portion of the county has long since ceased to exist.
Leaving Caurse Castle behind us, we next bend our steps towards Westbury, whose church, though of ancient origin, has been shockingly modernized. In the churchyard there is a curious epitaph to one Edward Gittins, a local blacksmith, who probably composed the effusion himself.
