Willey, close Neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot—Etymology of the Name—Domesday—The Willileys—The Lacons—The Welds and the Foresters—Willey Old Hall—Cumnor Hall as described by Sir Walter Scott—Everything Old and Quaint—How Willey came into possession of the Foresters.
“’Bove the foliage of the wood
An antique mansion might you then espy,
Such as in the days of our forefathers stood,
Carved with device of quaintest imagery.”
To commence with its earlier phase, it was clear that Willey would be close neighbour to the Royal Chace of Shirlot, and that it must have been about the centre of the wooded country previously described. The name is said to be of Saxon origin; and in wattle and dab and wicker-work times, when an osier-bed was probably equal in value to a vineyard, the place might have been as the word seems to suggest, one where willows grew, seeing that various osiers, esteemed by basket makers, coopers, and turners, still flourish along the stream winding past it to the Severn. The name is therefore redolent of the olden time, and is one of those old word-pictures which so often occur to indicate the earlier features of the country. Under its agricultural Saxon holders, however, Willey so grew in value and importance that when the Conquest was complete, and King William’s generals were settling down to enjoy the good things the Saxons had provided, and as Byron has it—
“Manors
Were their reward for following Billy’s banners,”
Willey fell to the lot of a Norman, named Turold, who, as he held twelve other manors, considerately permitted the Saxon owner to continue in possession under him. Domesday says: “The same Turold holds Willey, and Hunnit (holds it) of him.” “Here is half a hide geldable. Here is arable land sufficient for ii ox teams. Here those ox teams are, together with ii villains, and ii boors. Its value is v shillings.” At the death of Hunnit the manor passed to a family which took its name from the place; and considerable additions resulted from the marriage of one, Warner de Williley, with the heiress of Roger Fitz Odo, of Kenley. Warner de Williley appears to have been a person of some consequence, from the fact that he was appointed to make inquiry concerning certain encroachments upon the royal forests of Shropshire; but an act of oppression and treachery, in which his wife had taken a part, against one of his own vassals, whose land he coveted, caused him to be committed to prison. Several successive owners of Willey were overseers of Shirlot Forest; and Nicholas, son and heir of Warner, was sued for inattention to his duties; an under tenant also, profiting probably by the laxity of his lord, at a later period was charged and found guilty of taking a stag from the king’s preserves, on Sunday, June 6th, 1253. Andrew de Williley joined Mountford against King Edward, and fell August 4th, 1265, in the battle of Evesham; in consequence of which act of disloyalty the property was forfeited to the crown, and the priors of Wenlock, who already had the seigniory usual to feudal lords, availing themselves of the opportunity, managed so to increase their power that a subsequent tenant, as shown by the Register at Willey, came to Wenlock (1388), and “before many witnesses did homage and fealty,” and acknowledged himself to hold the place of the lord prior by carrying his frock to parliament. They succeeded too, after several suits, in establishing their rights to the advowson of the Church, founded and endowed by the lords of the place.
By the middle of the 16th century Willey had passed to the hands of the old Catholic family of the Lacons, one of whom, Sir Roland, held it in 1561, together with Kinlet; and from them it passed to Sir John Weld, who is mentioned as of Willey in 1666. He married the daughter of Sir George Whitmore, and his son, George Weld, sat for the county with William Forester, who married the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, and voted with him in favour of the succession of the House of Hanover.
Who among the former feudal owners of Willey built the old hall, is a question which neither history nor tradition serves to solve. Portions of the basement of the old buildings seem to indicate former structures still more ancient, like spurs of some primitive rock cropping up into a subsequent formation. Contrasted with the handsome modern freestone mansion occupied by the Right Hon. Lord Forester close by, the remains shown in our engraving look like a stranded wreck, past which centuries of English life have gone sweeping by. Some of the walls are three feet in thickness, and the buttressed chimneys, and small-paned windows—“set deep in the grey old tower”—make it a fair type of country mansions and a realisation of ideas such as the mind associates with the homes of the early owners of Willey.
Although occupying a slight eminence, it really nestles in the hollow, and in its buff-coloured livery it stands pleasingly relieved by the high ground of Shirlot and its woods beyond. In looking upon its quaint gables, shafts, and chimneys, one feels that when it was complete it must have had something of the poetry of ancient art about it. Its irregularities of outline must have fitted in, as it were, with the undulating landscape, with which its walls are now tinted into harmony, by brown and yellow lichens. There was nothing assuming or pretentious about it; it was content to stand close neighbour to the public old coach road, which came winding by from Bridgnorth to Wenlock, and passed beneath the arch which now connects the high-walled gardens with the shaded walk leading to its modern neighbour, the present mansion of the Foresters.
Sir Walter Scott, in his description of Cumnor Place, speaks of woods closely adjacent, full of large trees, and in particular of ancient and mighty oaks, which stretched their giant arms over the high wall surrounding the demesne, thus giving it a secluded and monastic appearance. He describes its formal walks and avenues as in part choked up with grass, and interrupted by billets, and piles of brushwood, and he tells us of the old-fashioned gateway in the outer wall, and of the door formed of two huge oaken leaves, thickly studded with nails—like the gate of an old town. This picture of the approaches to the old mansion where Anthony Foster lived was no doubt a more faithful representation than the one he gave of the character of the man himself. At any rate, it is one which would in many respects apply to old Willey Hall and its surroundings at the time to which the great novelist refers. Everything was old and old-fashioned, even as its owners prided themselves it should be, and as grey as time and an uninterrupted growth of lichens in a congenial atmosphere could make it. Hollies, yews, and junipers were to be seen in the grounds, and outside were oaks and other aged trees, scathed by lightning’s bolt and winter’s blast. Here and there stood a few monarchs of the old forest in groups, each group a brotherhood sublime, carrying the thoughts back to the days when “from glade to glade, through wild copse and tangled dell, the wild deer bounded.” Trees, buildings, loose stones that had fallen, and still lay where they fell, were mossed with a hoar antiquity. Everything in fact seemed to say that the place had a history of its own, and that it could tell a tale of the olden time.