A slightly longer run, covering about fifty miles altogether, will show us something of the northern part of the county on its western side. We drive out of the town past the station and through the squalid suburb of Ditherington, where, for love of our springs and of humanity, we must perforce drive slowly, by reason of the bumpiness of the surface and the phenomenal number of children. Over this ground rode Henry IV. and Prince Hal to the Battle of Shrewsbury, and there on our right is Haughmond Hill, the “busky hill” to which Shakespeare refers. Presently there appears on the left, a few hundred yards away from the road, the church of Battlefield, raised, with the exception of the tower, quite soon after the battle on the spot where the fight raged most fiercely, in order that masses might be sung perpetually “for the prosperity of the King and the souls of the slain.” Here Harry Hotspur died, and with him thousands of others both gentle and simple, for this was a very notable fight and many interests were concerned in it. Beneath the mounds that we see on the south side of the church are the bones of many of the slain. The King “had many marching in his coats,” as Hotspur puts it in “Henry IV.,” and as they were killed in mistake for him he saved himself by a device more ingenious than kingly.
There is nothing of special note between Battlefield and Hawkestone, which is about twelve miles from Shrewsbury, and is a private park, open to visitors. In the rhododendron season it is well worth while to leave one’s car at the extremely nice hotel at the outskirts of the park, and to walk about a mile through pretty grounds swarming with black rabbits, to see the blaze of blossom for which Hawkestone is famous. And yet I think they will fare still better who choose the time of bluebells. These should drive through the park by the public road. Beyond the gate, where the stream is close to them on the right and woods slope to its edge, they will see, bright in the near foreground but fading away into the distance under the trees in a misty cloud, a soft, ethereal veil of grey-blue. Here and there the green breaks through, and the flowers look like wisps of smoke trailing across the grass. This wonderful sheet of mystic blue borders the river and the road for some way, till the wood ends suddenly, and Hodnet Hall comes in sight.
One really grows a little tired of recording the picturesqueness of Shropshire villages. They are nearly all pretty: for the houses, when they are not of timber and plaster, are often built of the warm red sandstone that is the stone of the county and acquires such soft, mellow colours in its old age. But I sometimes think Hodnet is the prettiest village of them all. Half the houses are black-and-white; and near the church gate a group of timber gables, with the octagonal tower in the background, forms a complete and perfectly composed picture. Bishop Reginald Heber, the author of “From Greenland’s icy mountains,” was rector of Hodnet for some years before he sailed for “India’s coral strand.”
From Hodnet we may either drive back to Shrewsbury or turn to the left in the middle of the village and take a run of about thirty-four miles by Market Drayton and Newport, two picturesque old towns with a good road between them. The scenery in this part of the county is pleasing, but not especially striking. If we choose this way we shall, as we draw near Shrewsbury, pass the ruins of Haughmond, one of the great Shropshire abbeys.
Long ago there was a hermitage at the foot of this “busky hill”; before William FitzAlan’s monastery for Austin Canons rose here, with the great church that has practically disappeared,[2] and the tall gable with the turrets that are so conspicuous to-day, and the chapter-house with the beautiful doorway. This Abbey was greatly patronised by royalty. Stephen gave it a mill, Matilda gave it lands “for the remission of her sins,” Henry II. gave churches, and Henry III. more land, and Llewelyn of Wales “a moiety of Kenwicke.” The list of other benefactions is endless: mills and fisheries, churches and markets, woods and hogs and herds. Many were the “privileges of flesh and fish” enjoyed by the canons of Haughmond; and Abbot Nicholas, in Edward III.’s time, desiring to make the most of all these luxuries, built a new kitchen for the brethren and “appointed them a cook to dress their food.” It was in 1541 that Henry VIII., as his manner was, took possession of Haughmond and all its riches, “beyng mynded to take the same into his own handes for a better purpose”; and so the minster, for which he had no use, gradually vanished. Nothing is left of it but a fragment of wall and a doorway. Two tombs that were once within the chancel now lie open to the sky on the hillside, where their appeal for the prayers of the passers-by is of far more pathetic force than it ever was under the shelter of the Abbey’s roof:—
“Vous Ki Passez Par Ici Priez Pur L’Alme Johan Fitz Aleine Ki Git Ici. Deu De Sa Alme Eit Merci. Amen.”
“Isabel De Mortimer Sa Femme Acost De Li. Deu De Lur Alme Eit Merci. Amen.”
HAUGHMOND ABBEY.
From this road near Haughmond we have perhaps the loveliest view of distant Shrewsbury. The pale hills rim the horizon, the river winds in the foreground, and between them rise the clear outlines of the two incomparable spires that crown The Delight.