Munslow is a rather scattered village, whose cottages seem to be playing hide-and-seek with one another about a rough, out-cropping hill. As for the church, the place seems at first sight not to possess such an appendage, until, surmounting a steep rocky lane, we presently come upon it down in a secluded nook, embosomed amidst apple orchards, with the comfortable-looking parsonage house peeping out from a grove of trees.
The Old Church Porch. Munslow.
Two or three dark yews and a curious wooden erection, apparently an old lich-gate, lend an air of rusticity to the churchyard. The beautiful old timbered porch shewn in our sketch is the most pleasing feature of the exterior: but the window tracery is worthy of notice, being of excellent though simple character, and original in treatment. The interior of the church has been a good deal renovated, but in one of the nave windows we notice a Virgin and Child in fourteenth-century glass, and a foliated cross cut upon the sill below.
Some later glass in the aisle windows is remarkable for its quaint anagrams and inscriptions, and upon an old slab near by may be seen the following queer effort at rhyme:
Ao 1602:
in . te . hoVVer . of . hIs . poVVer . one . DeaD .
by . ChrIst . Doe . rIse .
anD . VVee . VVhose . boanes . rot . VnDer . stones .
oVr . dVst . heeL . not . despIse .
Some of the original pews in the nave are of massive old moulded oak, with geometrical patterns incised on their ends of earlier character than is usually found in such cases.
Down past the church, from the westward hills, comes a lane that in any but the best of weather must be a mere mountain torrent, paved with the naked rock and overarched by ancient yews. Our way, however, lies through the fields, until, striking the Wenlock road, we diverge to the right, cross the river Corve by a footbridge, and threading our way through deep, sandy lanes, come presently to Tugford. This takes us past Broncroft Castle, a modernized, castellated residence, seated in a curiously out-of-the-way spot for such an imposing pile.