THE QUARRY,
One of the most pleasant walks in the kingdom. It consists of a tract of meadow ground, twenty-three acres in extent. Its situation, its surroundings, its scenery are extremely beautiful, and constitute it a most attractive and delightful promenade. The bank which skirts the Severn is adorned with a graceful avenue of lime trees, extending 450 yards in length, and forming in the intertwining of their lofty branches a natural arcade. The Quarry, which should be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever to the inhabitants, is resorted to, as a rule, only by a few of the residents, most of whom, from their familiarity with it, do not appreciate its charms, but from the stranger the spectacle of so enjoyable and poetic a spot always elicits expressions of admiration. The beauty that every day lies at our own door is often no beauty at all. The Quarry derives its name from a small quarry of red sandstone, formerly worked in what is now called the Dingle. The trees in the lower walk were planted by Mr. Henry Jenks, Mayor, in 1719. The three walks, graced in a similar manner, serve as approaches from the town. In 1569 the Quarry was leased to three burgesses for ten years at a nominal rent upon their undertaking to bring the water from near Crow Meole to Shrewsbury. They fulfilled the condition by laying down leaden pipes, and the work was completed in 1574, in which year Shrewsbury was first supplied with what is now popularly known as “conduit water.” In that year the conduits at Mardol Head, Market Square, High Street, and Wyle Cop were erected and opened. The Quarry has been used for various purposes. In the reign of James I. it was used “for agisting of cattle, for musters of soldiers, and other laudable exercises and recreations.” It is easy to infer from the brutal and coarse pastimes of the period what the “laudable exercises” were, but in truth, the uncertainty of inference is removed by the positiveness of fact, for in the same reign the Quarry was used for “bull-baitings, stage-plays, &c., by consent of the bailiffs,” who, of course, found in this corrupt and debased taste a source of profit to the borough revenue. The stage plays performed here—in that portion which is in the shape of an amphitheatre and is styled the Dingle—were of the nature of those common in the early age of the English theatre. They belonged to the class of Mysteries—a class of a low, vicious, profane, and often blasphemous character. Amongst others Julian the Apostate was performed here in 1565, and it is said that, notwithstanding its utter grossness, it was “listened to with admiration and devotion.” Two years later, in 1567, there was given a representation of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and the actor who took the principal part was killed by being speared in the heart by mistake. An horrible barbarity was committed in the Dingle in 1647, when, on December 24th, a woman was burned to death for having poisoned her husband. Very considerable improvements have been recently made in the Quarry by the erection of a Band Stand, new Entrance Gates, and the transformation of the Dingle into a well ordered pleasure garden, with seats, grottos, ornamental water, &c., the cost of these great improvements has been mainly defrayed by the Horticultural Society whose annual fêtes are looked forward to with the “sweet pleasures of anticipation” by thousands.
The fine brick building on the eminence opposite the Quarry on the other side of the Severn is the new premises for Shrewsbury School, fronted by a wide terrace, and commanding an extensive landscape in both front and rear. The building which cost £12,000, was commenced in 1760, and opened in 1765 for the reception of orphans from the Foundling Hospital in London. It has been appropriated for different purposes from time to time. Becoming disused by the managers of the Foundling Hospital it was for some time uninhabited. A portion of it was then taken as a woollen manufactory, and while one section was thus devoted to business, another was let out in apartments to valetudinarians who in the summer months retired from the town to seek pleasure and health in this beautiful district. It was also used as a place of confinement for Dutch prisoners captured in the American war; and then, in 1784, it was converted to something approaching its original purpose by being purchased under an Act of Parliament for incorporating the town parishes and that of Meole Brace with the object of maintaining the poor. At the rear of the buildings is
KINGSLAND,
an extensive piece of ground, the property of the Corporation. It is supposed to have originally belonged to the Crown—hence its name—and to have been granted by the Crown to the Corporation. In 1529 it was let for pasture at £3 per year—a price which must make modern tenants wish that history might repeat itself. In 1586 it was ordered to be, and was, enclosed. It is a healthy and almost arcadian spot, “beautiful for situation.” There is no locality in the town so well adapted for villa residences.
Once a year, we are reminded, there was something else—Shrewsbury Show, a pageant which showed the degeneracy of the past. With the exception of the Coventry festival and the Preston guild it was the only one of its kind in the kingdom. What was the Show? It was the remnant of a feast religiously observed by the Romish Church, and styled Corpus Christi the feast of the body of Christ. It consisted of a solemn procession, in which the several incorporated companies of the town, preceded by the masters and wardens, attended by the bailiffs, aldermen, and commonalty, and accompanied by priests, who carried the Holy Sacrament under a gorgeous canopy, marched to old St. Chad’s Church, where mass was said amidst the richest and costliest treasures of the church. The religious part of the ceremony was abolished at the Reformation; but the members of the companies, though prohibited from attending mass, resolved to retain as much of the imposing custom as they could. They therefore continued the procession, which they determined upon having on the second Monday after Trinity Sunday. They possessed on Kingsland small parcels of land which the Corporation had allotted to and enclosed for them, and on which they had erected arbours as places of resort, of feasting, and of pastime. They therefore selected Kingsland as the destiny of the procession, and, arrived there, they entertained each other in almost princely style, and indulged in the recreations of the time. The anniversary until very recently was observed, but it was a sorry picture of the old festivities. The procession, which was made up of bands of music, flags, banners, ancient horses ridden by individuals dressed out as kings, queens, and other notabilities, followed by a number of artisans, was perhaps about the most ludicrous sight which the ingenuity of a buffoon could invent. It was a ridiculous travesty of the ancient spectacle; and its concomitants, its influence, and its results are best described in the (slightly altered) words of Hamlet:
The people wake to-day and take their rouse,
Keep wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as they drain their draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of their pledge.
Is it a custom?
Ay, marry, is’t;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax’d of other people:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition.
Leaving the scene of so much that is gay and festive, and that unites the present with the past, we re-cross the Severn, re-walk a portion of the Quarry, and ascend the magnificent centre avenue. The church before us is