After this who shall say that old houses have not their romances, recorded or unrecorded? Mrs. Fraser's account of a hidden chamber and of skeletons found therein is not the only one of the grim kind that has come to my notice. A book indeed would be needful to tell all the strange and, I believe, truthful tales about old houses in remote spots that I have gathered during many years of road wandering. Boscobel, like many another house of its kind, might never have become famed or known to the outer world but for the chance sojourn there of the hunted king.
I have been digressing: it was the sight of that ghostly-looking old house of Madeley Court with its haunting charm of suggested romance that set my thoughts and my pen a-wandering thus. To return to Madeley Court, its walled-in pleasure garden is now but a pathless, grass- and weed-grown space—a play-ground for pigs when I was there. When I opened the gate to peep into it, a miner's wife bade me be careful not to let the pigs out. "Them's our pigs," she exclaimed. Lucky miners to live in a stately, if dilapidated, old hall and to keep pigs galore, and yet to go on strike, as they had lately done, though as the honest old miner I met, as already mentioned, frankly confessed, "we hereabouts has nothing to complain of." As a mere onlooker it appeared to me that these miners felt the need of a trade union to protect their interests, yet were themselves half afraid of the power they had set up over them. One thing remains in the neglected spot that once was, I presume, a garden trim and gay with flowers, and that is a large and remarkable sun-dial or planetarium. This consists of a great square block of stone raised on four stout pillars above some steps; on the four sides of the stone are large cup-like recesses that formerly contained the dials; these, I was informed, not only showed the time, but also the daily or nightly position of the moon and the planets. How they could do all this passes my comprehension; the position of the moon I might possibly grant, but that of the various planets that change positions every twenty-four hours is "a big order."
Had only Madeley Court been a little cared for and in pleasanter surroundings, it would have been one of the most picturesque homes imaginable. But the country about being blest with coal beneath is, by the getting of it, curst with ugliness above. I left Madeley by a rough lane that threaded its way through a hilly country and past many collieries, but in time I escaped the spoilt scenery, where both the buildings and the land looked sombre and sad, and reached a fairer country, though for some distance the atmosphere was dull and grey with the drifting smoke from the chimneys of the mines. Then as the evening came on I found myself in the little town of Shifnal, where I discovered a decent inn, and that, to me, was the chief attraction of the place.
That night I consulted my map to hunt up the position of Boscobel, for I was minded to see that historic and ancient house next day, and the study of my map revealed the fact that Lilleshall's ruined abbey and the remains of White Ladies Nunnery were not far off, so I determined to make a round of it and see them on my way, and a pleasant cross-country expedition, mostly over winding lanes, it promised to be. I had heard of Lilleshall Abbey but not of White Ladies Nunnery that I found marked plainly on my map, at a spot apparently remote and not far from Boscobel.
From Shifnal I went to Sheriff Hales, a small village of no interest, but it was a convenient point to make for first on the complicated way to Lilleshall. Somehow, though I used my eyes and consulted my map, I managed to successfully miss the abbey, notwithstanding the fact that it stood close to the road I was on; but so screened by trees were the ruins that I passed them unawares, and soon found myself a little beyond them in the village of Lilleshall, where there is nothing notable to see unless it be a tall obelisk that crowns the hill above. This obelisk, erected to the memory of a former Duke of Sutherland, is a prominent landmark for miles around, and from the hill-top is a grand panoramic prospect over a goodly country, a prospect that well repays the easy climb.
The church of Lilleshall is uninteresting; the only thing that attracted my attention in it was a monument in the chancel with the recumbent effigy of a stately dame on it, her head bound round with a fresh linen bandage. It appears that the nose of the figure had been broken off, and had been replaced and cemented on again, and that the bandage was there to hold the nose in position until the cement hardened. But in the church's gloom the freshly bandaged head gave the effigy a curious look, as though it were alive and suffering severely from toothache!
At Lilleshall there still exists an ancient pond of considerable size, the water from which once drove the abbey mill, and the course of the mill-race may still be traced. From near this pond I found a footpath over the fields that led to the abbey ruins, and half-way to them I came to a little lonely railed-in well, known of old as "Our Lady's Well."
Above the well a little nook
Once held, as rustics tell,
All garland-decked, an image of
The Lady of the Well.