There seem to be signs of a camp on the east side of the river, over-against the castle, in a close where is an old chapel now become a barn: a spring riles a little above it: if so, then this was the garrison before the Romans built the city on the west side. Warwick is a very neat and beautiful town; many fine houses and public buildings of good stone, dug up at hand. The old castle is very perfect, and a noble seat: many fine pictures of the Greville family, and others, particularly an original of Sir Philip Sidney: the whole length of the place is one suite of rooms very magnificent; one wainscotted with cedar: they all look over the river. One may see here much of the ancient manner of fortification: their methods of defence, two gates, two portcullices at the entrance; with hole to drop down poles, and an immense strength of stone-work: before the towers at the gates are iron hooks fastened into the wall, which they told us were for hanging wool-sacks on in a siege: a tower in the corner of each wing, very high; that at the corner next the river they call Cæsar’s tower, made of three circular segments; that at the corner next the town is twelve-angled, called Guy’s tower: the keep is very high, now made with a circular walk to the top. At the priory, in two galleries which seem to be part of the first building, are some paintings on glass, of religious stories. The chapel at Guy’s cliff is double, having two arches within, that divide its length into two ailes or chapels. Under the castle-walls, by the river side, upon the rock grows much liver-wort, thriving in so agreeable a place. I observed the lowermost rocks are perpetually dripping, which gathering together in a channel underneath, makes a small rivulet. This seems to indicate, that fountains are the effect of exudation from the most elevated protuberances into some internal cavity; which though by drops only, yet the sum amounts to enough to make a spring run perpetually; as the alembic distills the vapors. Now the tops of the hills are kept always moist by the natural ascent of the water below. I know nothing against this doctrine, but springs arising in very large quantity from narrow apexes, and where no other higher ground is near, if any such springs there be: but we want sufficient number of instances and data to determine this great question. People since the creation have been very negligent, or very injudicious, in making observations for this purpose. This is not an useless inquiry; for if we found out Nature’s method in this affair, it would assist in making artificial springs, or finding out natural ones, to the great enrichment of barren lands, and watering all in a dry season; water being the universal instrument of all increase and nutrition.
Warwick bridge has twelve arches. The potamogeiton majus grows in the river; a large yellow flower, tripetalous, with an apple like the Egyptian lotus.
COVENTRY.
Dr. Philemon Holland, who translated Camden’s Britannia, is buried in the choir of Trinity church. In the window is a piece of painted glass of Leofric earl of Chester, lord of this place, and Godiva his wife: he holds a charter in his hand with this writing, I Luryche for love of thee grawnte Covetre tol fre. Stichell, a mile south of Coventry, has its name from the clays. The road here is paved very broad for a great length. St. Michael’s church is a very stately and magnificent building: the spire is very fine, and the highest of any I have seen for its base, but built of a mouldering stone. Over-against it is the town-house, a large stone building, and old, like a church: a very old wooden chair there, said to be that wherein king John was crowned; much old rusty armour; pictures of several kings of England, and other benefactors; and many inscriptions, Latin and English, relating to them. A vintner bought some ground north of St. Michael’s, and built a house upon it: he dug up great ruins of the old convent, and many coffins, and among the rest (as they say) that of Leofric and Godiva. This is a very large and populous city, but narrow irregular streets; and the houses chiefly of wood, and very old, hanging over the streets. The gates are many and stately: no doubt the walls were answerable, but now demolished for the most part, after the rebellion: in some places, where parcels are left, it is very thick, and so strong, that they only undermined it, and threw it down flat; as particularly in the meadows north of St. Michael’s, where it passed over the brook by an arch. Between that and the church stood the priory, founded by Leofric before the Conquest: some old walls of it remain. Here have been many elegant brasses in the churches, but broke up. The famous Cross is of a pretty model, but of perishing stone. The basis of St. Michael’s steeple is but twelve yards from outside to outside of the buttresses. Every road hence is paved with a broad high-raised causeway, from every gate a mile.
Griff coal-works here, forty ells deep, of vast compass. No sort of fossils found in them. Griff, from grave, grooff, digging. The soil sandy from Coventry hither, then black earth. The coal-mine runs from Coventry to Tamworth in a line: here are such breaches that intercept the strata, and such trapping and dipping as in Somersetshire: the fissures, upon breaking the track and parallelism of the strata, make them diverge generally. Great old toads are often found in the solid coal, leaving a cavity of their own shape. They draw away the water from the mines by an invention originally of the earl of Worcester, improved by Captain Savery and others: it works with a vast power from the atmosphere pressing into a receiver exhausted of air, by vapor, and then condensed. I saw the ruined chapel of Nuneaton. Many religious houses thereabouts, and remains of camps, castles, &c. and nothing else can make amends for the badness of the roads.
MANDVESSEDVM.
Dugdale says, divers Roman coins of brass and silver have been found here. It stands on the river Anker. The first syllable of the name remains, Man-castle or ’cester. At Oldbury a square fort of thirty acres, with very high rampires, situate on an eminence: this, no doubt, was a camp: to the north of it have been found frequently flint axes of the old Britons, about four inches and a half broad, ground to an edge: there are no flints within forty miles of the place. Either our maps are wrong, or the Roman road goes very much winding, perhaps to avoid the great Arduen forest. The name of this forest left in divers places, Weston in Arden, Henly in Arden, Ardbury, &c.
I called on Mr. Henry Beighton, an ingenious gentleman, who is making a map of this county; and we visited this station. South a little of the bridge, under which the Anker passes the Watling-street, I found the old city: it lies on both sides the road, and is of a square form: the road passes exactly through the middle of its length, which is 600 foot, its breadth 200, on each side the road. The field in Leicestershire is called Old-field banks; that in Warwickshire, Castle banks. The ditch is very perfect quite round, and the bank whereon stood the wall. The people know of great stones, and mortar work exceeding strong, being dug up; much Roman brick, iron, and great numbers of coins brass and silver, and some gold: in sinking wells the like things found. Several vaults go quite through, and cattle have sometimes dropt into them. A spring at the north-east gate. Oldbury is a great camp upon a high hill, west of the place; whence a most delightful prospect. The hill whereon stands the church of Mancester, which is a field or two off the bridge, seems to have been a camp too: it is intrenched very deeply, but I cannot say with so much regularity, as to its present appearance, that will ascertain it to the Romans: it is in the way to Oldbury. The houses reached from the castle to the bridge; for in the ploughed piece between, called the Furlong, foundations have been discovered, and many bridges. A great family has lived at Mancester, and of that name, who probably made, or altered, the ditches there. Geo. Astley esq. of Wolvey, near High-cross, has a great collection of coins found at High-cross, and all the neighbouring places; as Monks Kirby, where urns and ashes have been often found. The prospect from Oldbury is exceeding extensive all over the country; the camps of Shugbury, Arbury, and Borough, all in view, and the country that way, where the Watling-street runs, as far as Watford gap; so all into Nottinghamshire, and westward to a great distance. Withersley, and several villages round, parish to Mancester as their mother-church. The church there is a pretty large building with a tower-steeple. The country there is all a rock, and abounds with springs: the rock is of very hard stone, and dips westward, as the adjacent coal-mines. Mancester stands on much higher ground than the road and old city. More coal-mines about Dudley, Wolverhampton in Staffordshire. Sometimes the ends of the coal at those breaches bend the contrary way: this shows the breaches were made before the coal was perfectly hardened. When the damps exanimate a man at these coal-pits, they draw him up instantly, and make a round hole in the earth, put his head in, and cover it with fresh mold, which infallibly restores him. Between Wormleighton and Stanton they found, in a pit, a trunk of a tree hewn into a coffin, with bones in it; and many coins, particularly of Constantine. At Wolfencote, upon the Leam, in sinking a well they came to a vault with urns and coins: in digging at the priory at Coventry they found the old cloysters, with many grave-stones of monks; and in the old walls, which were very thick, bones and skulls with teeth, &c. were laid in, as fillings-up, from ruins of the older monastery.
BIRMINGHAM.
A large rich town, the very shop of Vulcan. The vicinity of the coal-mines has made it the chief place in England for all sorts of iron work, sent hence throughout the whole world, in great abundance: it is a pleasant, woody, plentiful country hereabouts: they have repaired an old church, and built a new one: the streets are large and good buildings: there is a pretty square, inclosed and planted like Soho: the town lies on a declivity. In the old church are tombs, in alabaster, of a Jerusalem knight, two other knights, and some others. Deritend chapel built of timber, 5 R. II. by the river side. Here is a large school-house founded by Edward VI. not long since rebuilt: they have marked out large tracts of ground on the hill round the new church for buildings.