ON BATTLEFIELD ROAD, SHREWSBURY.

"And here each season do those cakes abide,
Whose honored names the inventive city own,
Rendering through Britain's isle Salopia's praises known."

The great Shrewsbury cake is the "simnel," made like a pie, the crust colored with saffron and very thick. It is a confection said to be unsafe when eaten to excess, for an old gentleman, writing from melancholy experience in 1595, records that "sodden bread which bee called simnels bee verie unwholesome." The Shropshire legend about its origin is that a happy couple got into a dispute whether they should have for dinner a boiled pudding or a baked pie. While they disputed they got hungry, and came to a compromise by first boiling and then baking the dish that was prepared. To the grand result of the double process—his name being Simon and her's Nell—the combined name of simnel was given. And thus from their happily-settled contention has come Shrewsbury's great cake, of which all England acknowledges the merit.

BRIDGENORTH AND WENLOCK ABBEY.

BRIDGENORTH AND WENLOCK ABBEY.

Following down the Severn River from Shrewsbury, we come to Bridgenorth, an ancient town planted on a steep hill, full of quaint houses, and having an old covered market where the country-people gather on Saturdays. The lower part is of brick, and the upper part is black-and-white-timbered, but the human love for what is old and familiar is shown by the way in which the people still fill up the old market-house, though a fine new one has recently been built. The most prized of the old houses of this venerable town is a foundry and blacksmith shop standing by the river; it was in this house that Bishop Percy, author of the Reliques, was born. On the promontory of sandstone, which steeply rises about one hundred and eighty feet above the river, the upper part of the town is built, and here are the ruins of Bridgenorth Castle, which stood in an exceptionally strong situation. The red sandstone predominates here, but not much of it remains in the castle, there being little left excepting a huge fragment of the massive wall of the keep, which now inclines so much on one side from the settlement of the foundation as to be almost unsafe. This castle was built eight hundred years ago by the third and last of the Norman Earls of Shrewsbury: it was held for King Charles in the Civil Wars, and underwent a month's siege before it surrendered, when the conquerors destroyed it. Bridgenorth is the most picturesque of all the towns on the Severn, owing to the steep promontory up which the houses extend from the lower to the upper town and the magnificent views from the castle. The communication with the hill is by a series of steeply-winding alleys, each being almost a continuous stairway: they are known as the "Steps." A bridge with projecting bastions crosses the river and connects the higher with the lower parts of the town, thus giving the place its name.

About twelve miles south-east of Shrewsbury is the village of Much Wenlock, where there are remains of a magnificent abbey founded by the Black monks, and exhibiting several of the Early English and Gothic styles of architecture, but, like most else in these parts, it has fallen in ruin, and many of the materials have been carried off to build other houses. Portions of the nave, transepts, chapter-house, and abbot's house remain, the latter being restored and making a fine specimen of ecclesiastical domestic architecture built around a court. An open cloister extends the entire length of the house. There are beautiful intersecting Norman arches in the chapter-house. There are some quaint old houses in the town—timbered structures with bold bow-windows—and not a few of them of great age. Roger de Montgomery is credited with founding Wenlock Abbey at the time of the Norman Conquest. The site was previously occupied by a nunnery, said to have been the burial-place of St. Milburgh, who was the granddaughter of King Penda of Mercia. This was a famous religious house in its day, and it makes a picturesque ruin, while the beauty of the neighboring scenery shows how careful the recluses and religious men of old were to cast their lots and build their abbeys in pleasant places.



HOUSE WHERE BISHOP PERCY WAS BORN, BRIDGENORTH.LODGE OF MUCH WENLOCK ABBEY.