We now arrive at
COTON HILL,
where stood the suburban mansion of the Myttons of Halston, in which that family resided after vacating their town house of Vaughan’s Place. North-west of the turnpike was
ST. CATHARINE’s CHAPEL,
in a pasture still called the Chapel Yard. [188]
Coton appears at a remote period to have been connected with the Suburb of Frankwell by a bank, which caused the river to spread over the meadows called the “Purditches,” forcing its waters from thence under Hencot and Cross Hill in a channel still strongly marked by its rising banks, and discernible at all times, especially during floods, until the stream found its way into the present channel near the Royal Baths. This is particularly evident at the foot of Cross Hill, one mile on the Ellesmere road, to the right of which a toll bar communicates with a pleasant lane, the ancient road to Berwick. From the brow of this lane, the old course of the Severn may be easily defined. From hence, also, the town unfolds itself with peculiar beauty backed by the frontier of Salopian and Cambrian mountains, increasing in variety and picturesque effect throughout this delightful rural walk, until we arrive at Marshall’s Factory, where a wooden bridge over the canal conducts again to the suburb of
THE CASTLE FOREGATE,
the point from which we at first diverged. This long street has become a place of much traffic, owing to a communication having been opened, in 1835, with Birmingham, London, Liverpool, &c. by means of The Shrewsbury Canal, to and from which places goods are received into warehouses erected on its banks. This canal was originally formed in 1797, for the purpose of supplying the town and neighbourhood with coal, brought from Hadley, Ketley, &c. in the eastern part of Shropshire.
The canal terminates on the N.W. side of the County Prison, in a spacious