Anon we steer a due northerly course, with first a conspicuous Lombardy poplar, and then a curious-looking church steeple, by way of guide-marks. The village to which it belongs lies coyly aside from the highway, necessitating a slight detour, and the crossing of a brawling brook.
Thus we come to Culmington, a bucolic-looking village with several good cottages of stone, timber and thatch; and the church, whose spire we have already observed, rising beside the meadows overlooking the Corve. Thitherward, then, let us now direct our steps.
Though somewhat plain, the old church has several good features, and its curiously stunted broach spire is weathered and mildewed to a thousand tints. The rough, plastered walls of the edifice are only relieved by a few slender lancet windows, which are narrower and more sharply pointed than is usual, while one of them looks like what is known as a leper, or low-side, window.
Very plain and simple too is the interior of the church, a dark oak roodscreen alone breaking the monotony of the whitened wall surfaces. A good Decorated canopy with ball-flower enrichment, an aumbry and piscina, some old carved oak pews, and the quaint memorial to a seventeenth-century Rector, are amongst the notabilia that come under our observation.
A hedgeside inn at the end of the village now comes handy for rest and refreshment, both welcome enough to wayfarers who have borne the burden and heat of the day. Then after a sociable smoke and a chat with mine host anent 'the weather and the craps,' we proceed again upon our travels through the byways of Corve Dale.
The road next takes an upward grade, and, approaching the foothills of Wenlock Edge, enters upon a rough, broken country, known in olden times as Siefton Forest.
Anon we quit the main road, and, turning down a narrow lane, presently espy a large, handsome old stone-built mansion of the Tudor period, the ancient manor-house of Elsich. The front towards the road appears to have been considerably renovated, but the rearward aspect is much more antiquated-looking, a projecting half-timbered stair turret, roofed with thick stone slates, rising with charmingly picturesque effect above the last remnants of the moat.
Elsich was during many generations the home of the Baldwyns, who are said to have first settled here in the reign of Richard II. The original house was probably built about the year 1545 by Richard Baldwyn, whose brother William was cupbearer to Queen Mary. Thomas Baldwyn, son of the last named, was committed to the Tower on suspicion of being implicated in a plot to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and is said to have written the following inscription on the wall while in prison there: thos . baudewine . julie . 1585 : as . virtue . maketh . life . so . sin . causeth . death.
Striking across the fields, we now cut off a corner and look in upon Corfton, where, beside a large tree-covered tumulus, we find a few scanty, very scanty, traces of The Mount chapel, a little old stone building of unknown antiquity, which, though now a mere featureless shell, was still in use, they say, as a place of worship within living memory.
Another mile brings us to Delbury, or Diddlebury, to give the place its full title. Traversing a footbridge where a stream crosses the roadway, we make our way to the church, whose grey old stunted tower rises above the hamlet.