Parties from the town are often tempted by the beauty of the situation to make this place a holiday retreat, whose enjoyment is enhanced by the accommodations of a good inn, attached to which, above the banks of the Severn, is a pleasant bowling green.
The church, overshaded by two venerable yews, possesses a primitive simplicity, quite in character with the village.
THE VILLAGE OF ALBRIGHTON,
distant three miles N.E. of the town on the Chester road, is a township in the parish of St. Mary, Shrewsbury. The church, a small humble structure, has been so effectually repaired by the modern goths with red stone and brick, that no reasonable conjecture can now be formed as to the period of its erection. A wooden loft issues from the west end, and inside the building is a curious ancient font, that will admit of total immersion, which has no doubt stood here for several centuries.
The fine old mansion near the church was formerly the residence of the ancient family of Ireland, who purchased this manor [215] on the dissolution of Shrewsbury Abbey.
A bridle road across a field leads to Albright Hussey and Battlefield. The former was the moated mansion of the Husseys, Barkers, and Corbets, but is now converted into a farm house. Here was a chapel, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, as appears by the grant of the land on which Battlefield church stands from Henry IV. to Roger Ive, of Leaton, who is there described as rector of the chapel of St. John the Baptist at Albright Hussey, and which chapel was by the said grant for ever annexed to the collegiate church of Battlefield; and Richard Hussey and his heirs were to be perpetual patrons of the same. The only vestige of the chapel is an old arch in a barn called the “chapel barn.”
THE VILLAGE OF MEOLE,
otherwise Meole Brace, is one mile south of the town. [216] The church stands on a little knoll above the Rea brook, and was erected on the site of an ancient edifice in the year 1800. It is a plain cruciform building, with a tower rising from the roof at the west end.
From this place many agreeable walks branch off in the direction of Kingsland, Sutton, and the Sharpstones. Near the latter place, at Bayston Hill, is an earthwork of an irregular form, which seems to have been surrounded on all sides but the east by two fosses, the abrupt formation of the ground in that direction rendering such a protection unnecessary. The entrance was no doubt from the Stretton road at the west. The double entrenchment admits a probability that it belonged to the Anglo-Saxons, but it is difficult to distinguish between their encampments and those of the Danes, both forming their camps nearly alike and on elevated spots. The present site possesses every advantage for a military post of observation to the adjoining country. The residents in the vicinity designate it by the common appellation of the “Buries,” and which appears to have escaped the notice of former topographers.
Two miles beyond this spot is the pleasant