GLOUCESTER CITY GATES.
It is said in the history of Gloucester that shortly after the Restoration of Charles II, the King, bitterly remembering his father's defeat before that city, ordered the doors belonging to the gates to be pulled down, and presented them to the city of Worcester, which had long remained faithful to his cause. On the south gate of Gloucester, which was battered down during the siege by the King in 1643 (but was rebuilt in the same year), was inscribed in capital letters round the arch—"A city assaulted by man but saved by God: Ever remember the 5th of September, 1643." This was the day the siege was raised by Essex.
ANCIENT INNS.
The old Black Boy, at Feckenham, is now closed as an inn. It had been in the family of the Gardners about 139 years. The sign, which was of copper, stood the whole of that time, until taken down in 1854.
The present occupiers of "Mopson's Cross" inn, near Wyre Forest, boast that their ancestors have occupied that inn for more than two centuries, and that it is the oldest licensed house in the county. The Talbot inn, Sidbury, Worcester, and the Talbot in the Tything, are very ancient, and the County Sessions were formerly adjourned regularly to those old hostelries.
A FINE MEMORY.
In Yardley church is a memorial to one of the Este family, who, though blind, was said to have attained a perfect knowledge of the Scriptures, by heart, from beginning to end.
LONGDON MARSHES.
The Longdon marshes (formerly a waste of nearly 10,000 acres) are believed to have formed a backwater of the Severn estuary, subject to tidal influence, in those very ancient times when, according to Sir R. Murchison, the "Straits of Malvern" existed. Various sea birds still come there in the winter season, as though a traditionary remembrance had been wafted down among the feathered tribes of the time when this wild spot was more particularly their own sporting ground.