Hawking too must have been a favourite sport among the gentle-born long after this Lodge was built.
Capsi or Capsey is still the surname of families in Wellington, and it is the christian name of a man in Bridgnorth, Capsey, Cristie or Cristey. It is mentioned after Madeley and before Coalbrookdale; might it not have been what is now called the Castle, and Castle Green. This seems probable enough, as there are no traces or traditions of anything approaching to a castle having existed there since the Conquest.
In a survey of the Lordship of Madeley in 1772, we find no mention of Capsi; but we do of Conygray, Dove House Meadow, Doer close, &c. The lords of the manor after the woods were disaforested succeeded to all absolute authority to hunt, course, hawk, fish, and fowl; and to authority to grant power to others at their will and pleasure to do the same. Before altogether quitting this forest it may be well to notice a circumstance which goes to illustrate what we sometimes hear of places of sanctuary in former times. There were poachers then as now; and at the forest assizes in 1209 it is stated that two men, named Hugh le Scot, and Roger de Welinton had taken a doe. Hugh took refuge in a church, and lived a month there; but admitted to the Foresters and Verderers his guilt. He escaped at last, having disguised himself in woman’s clothes; and both were then declared fugitives. In 1235, the bosc of Madeley, with those of Kemberton, Sutton, Stirchley, and Dawley were said to be in the Bailiwick, of Wombridge: subject to officers such as Foresters, Verderers, or Stewards there. It is not improbable therefore that the chief officer of Wombridge may have had a Lodge where we find one. It might have been one of the houses which the Wenlock Prior had built, and which he was only permitted to retain by payment of £100 fine to the king; or again, it might have been built by him when, as Dukes says, he obtained leave of Edward I., in the 11th year of his reign, to “convert Madeley-Wood, within the perlieu of the forest of Mount Gilbert,” as the Wrekin then was called in honour of a monk resident there, into a park.
Any way, if the reader compares the styles of architecture and the materials of which this Lodge and the Gateway or Lodge of the Court are built he will find strong reasons for coming to the conclusion that the latter are from the same quarry, and that the former also correspond. Both have unglazed circular openings at the top; but the one is covered with heavy shelly limestone slabs, and the other with thick old fashioned tiles. The windows of the Madeley-Wood Lodge are smaller, for protection; the doors are of thick oak, studded with nails driven in when the wood was green; portions of the old oak floors only remain. A paved yard has at one time extended beyond and under the stables, if not the barn, we are told by one of the occupants. Domesday also says there was a wood capable of fattening 400 swine, so that there must have been a good many beeches, ancestors of those near the Lodge, to supply mast, or oaks to furnish acorns.
The Old Court and these Lodges, almost the last relics of the feudal times in Madeley and Madeley Wood, have had their ends hastened by rents and cracks made by undermining, in search of minerals, and will soon disappear. But for iron cramps and strong buttresses of bricks the old Lodge would have gone down long ago.
There is one other relic, and one even of greater antiquity.
The oldest building of all in the parish is the old Mill by the Court house. It is mentioned in Domesday; and looking at the thickness and hardness of some of the beams they seem calculated to last as long as they have done; and even they seem to have done duty in some former building. The old wheel is gone and the one which succeeded it, and the pool, originally a fishpond, which supplied water power has gone too; it was, when we remember it on the upper side the old granary or barn.