[154] Continuing our walk for three miles along the London-road, we arrive at the little village of Atcham, with its picturesque church on the margin of the Severn, which river is here crossed by an elegant stone bridge, designed by the architect Gwyn.
The village of Atcham is memorable as the birth-place of Ordericus Vitalis, one of the best of our earliest Historians, who was born 16th February, 1075.
Within sight of the village, on the confluence of the rivers Tern and Severn, is the noble edifice of Attingham Hall, the seat of the Right Honourable Lord Berwick, built from designs by the celebrated Athenian Stuart. The mansion consists of a centre and two wings, connected by corridors, and is adorned by a handsome tetrastyle portico of the composite order.
[157] Continuing our walk we speedily reach the peaceful and sequestered village of Meole Brace, celebrated for its excellent trout stream, on the banks of which was born and educated Thomas Barker, from whom honest Izaak Walton, in his delightful book, “The Complete Angler,” acknowledges that he derived the greater portion of his information, relative to fly-fishing. Mr. Barker published in 1691 a work entitled “Barker’s Delight, or the Art of Angling,” which ran through three editions in the space of eight years, and which is still in much repute among the lovers of the “gentle art.” Near the Bridge are Evans’s Alms-houses, built in 1844, under the will of the late Mr. John Evans of this town, for nine poor widows, who each have a liberal yearly allowance.
At the distance of a mile from Meole are the Sharpstones Hill and Bomere Pool, noted for their lovely scenery, and as the habitats of many of the rarer species of plants indigenous to the vicinity.
[176] At a distance of two miles on the Holyhead road stands Shelton Oak, which, according to tradition, “the irregular and wild Glendower” ascended to reconnoitre the state of the contending armies on the Battlefield; but finding that the king was making a powerful head, and had “beat down young Harry Hotspur and his troops,” he precipitately retreated with his army into Wales. This majestic veteran of the forest,
“Whose boughes are moss’d with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,”