OLD STREET IN SHREWSBURY.
RICHARD BAXTER’S HOUSE, EATON CONSTANTINE.
As we entered Shrewsbury by the English Bridge we caught a glimpse of the Abbey behind us. Leaving the town by the London Road, on our way to see something of the eastern side of the county, we shall pass close by the old red building that was partly spared when Roger de Montgomery’s great monastery was dissolved. It will be worth while to stop the engine for a moment, and to look at the massive Norman piers of the nave, the fine altar-tombs, and the fragment of St. Winifred’s shrine. The founder himself was buried here, after a long life of storm and stress, and three days in a monk’s habit; but the knightly figure that has been thought to represent him is said by the best authorities to be of a later date than his. This Roger is very prominent in Shropshire history, and is, indeed, not unknown in that of England, for he figured in the Battle of Hastings, and wherever he figured he made himself felt. We hear many conflicting things of his character, but from them all we gather that he was a typical man of his day, spending his time chiefly in acquiring his neighbour’s goods, and his leisure moments in building abbeys. Having built this Abbey of Shrewsbury he was careful to see that other people enriched it, and it soon became one of the most important in England. Its actual buildings covered ten acres: yet now all of it that we can see is this restored church, and, across the road, a relic of a later date. There, in the din and dust of a coal-yard, stands the graceful stone pulpit that was once in the refectory wall. From under its delicately carved canopy a lay brother read pious works aloud to the monks while they ate.
As we drive up the Abbey Foregate, between the trees and old houses, the memory of the Benedictines is with us still; for it was down this road that the monks, with their abbot at their head, came once in solemn procession with the bones of St. Winifred. These, by the combined use of a smooth tongue and a stout spade, they had brought triumphantly away from the churchyard of a Welsh village, knowing full well that no wealth of lands and churches enriched a monastery so surely as a handful of saintly dust.
At the top of the Foregate is the column on which Lord Hill stands above a list of his battles. Here we keep to the London Road, and are soon in the open country. We are bound for Boscobel, but as there is a good deal to be seen on the way, a round of forty-three miles is not as short as it seems. Between Shrewsbury and Atcham the scenery is not particularly interesting, but the road is level and the surface good, so we have our compensations. From the picturesque bridge at Atcham there is a lovely view of distant Caradoc, with the Severn in the foreground, and on the river bank the old church that is said to have been largely built, like that at Wroxeter, of the stones from the Roman city of Uriconium. We are very near that city now. If we take the first turn to the right after leaving Atcham, we shall soon be actually passing over the ashes of “the White Town in the Woodland,” as it was called by the Welsh poet who sang of its tragic end; and a moment later we shall see, near the roadside, a fragment of the wall of its basilica. By asking for the key at a cottage close at hand, and by paying sixpence, we may see also the remains of its public baths, and a piece of tesselated pavement that might have been laid down yesterday. Many relics of this town that was built by the Romans, inhabited by the British, and burnt by the Saxons, have been found within the limits of the hundred and seventy acres that it once covered: skeletons of men and women crouching where they had vainly sought safety in the hypocausts of the burning baths; coins scattered by fugitives; pathetic trifles of women’s dress—hairpins, buckles, and a brooch whose pin still works. Older than these are the urns and tombstones found in the Roman cemetery; the tombstone of Petronius, who is thought to have taken part in the victory over Boadicea; and that of “Placida, aged fifty-four, raised by the care of her husband.” Most of the relics have been moved, for safe keeping, to the Museum in Shrewsbury.
From Uriconium a very pretty road leads us to Buildwas. The Severn winds below us on the right, and on the hillside to the left is the little village of Eaton Constantine, which Constantine the Norman—who also gave his name to the Côtentin in France—held in the days of Domesday Book at a rental of a pair of white gloves, valued at one penny. Even at this distance is visible the black-and-white gable of the farmhouse that was once the home of Richard Baxter, author of “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest,” and an amazing number of other books—enough, said Judge Jeffreys, “to load a cart.” Dr. Johnson, however, pronounced them to be “all good.” Here, we learn, Baxter “passed away his Childhood and Youth, which upon Reflection he, according to the Wise Man’s Censure, found to be vanity.” In spite of these austere views, however, his childhood was not without its wild oats, for we are told that he “joyn’d sometimes with other Naughty Boys in Robbing his Neighbours’ Orchards of their Fruit, when he had eno’ at home ... and was bewitched with a love of Romances and Idle Tales.”
Presently, after passing through the pretty village of Leighton-under-the-Wrekin, we see Buildwas, the Shelter near the Water, on the further side of the river. Perhaps this is the most striking view of the fourteen massive pillars of this roofless nave, in which the Cistercians of the twelfth century austerely worshipped; but we can visit the ruins if we wish to do so by crossing the bridge that has quite recently superseded one built by Telford. There is not very much more to be seen at close quarters than from here: the great charm of Buildwas lies in its effect as a whole, in its simplicity and strength, and in its position by the river.
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