The Project Gutenberg eBook, Motor Tours in Wales & the Border Counties, by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell, Illustrated by R. De S. Stawell

Motor Tours in Wales and the Border Counties

VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.

[Frontispiece

MOTOR TOURS
IN
WALES & THE BORDER
COUNTIES

By
Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

With Photographs by
R. De S. Stawell

BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1909

[CONTENTS]

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

Much of the material of this book has appeared in the Car Illustrated, and is here reproduced by the kind consent of Lord Montagu.

[SHORT RUNS IN SHROPSHIRE]

There was once a tramp who said—“Och, now, it’s true what I’m tellin’ ye; I never got a bit o’ good out o’ me life till I took to the road!”

He was quite serious about it. He was a nice tramp, with a fine sense of romance and a large trust in the future, and on this first day of the tour his words ring in my head above the rush of the wind and the throbbing of the engine. For though all the days will be good, this first day is surely the best. To be on the road again; to have one’s luggage behind one and all the world in front; to watch the villages slipping by and mark their changing character; to saunter through strange towns and swing across great, desolate moorlands; to pause at some attractive inn, or eat sandwiches and sunshine by the wayside—this is the first day. History and the camera must wait; the first day must be given up to the sheer joy of the road.

So, as we shall not be able to hurry in Shropshire, seeing that there history cannot be ignored, we shall do well to cross its border in the evening, and spend the night in Ludlow. We will drop gently down the hill by Ludford House, and cross the Teme when the light is growing dim, and we can only tell by the deepening of the shadows in the trees on the left that the castle stands among them. Then we will climb a short, steep hill into the town through the only one of the old gates that is still standing, turn to the right through the Bull Ring, and draw up before the famous carved front of the “Feathers.”

LUDLOW CASTLE.

THE FEATHERS HOTEL, LUDLOW.

Here in this little town, in its historic inn, in its church and its great castle, we may find the concentrated essence, as it were, of the glamour of Shropshire—that borderland where the local stories have helped to make the history of England, and the quiet towns have seen wild deeds of courage and horror, and the fields have been red with blood; where every tiny village has its own tale of love or battle, of fair lady or fugitive king. This very house, the “Feathers,” has a world of romance in its timbered walls and panelled rooms, for it is far older than the beautiful Jacobean chimney-piece before which we shall presently dine. These moulded ceilings and elaborate carvings, it is said, were once the property of a member of that Council of the Welsh Marches that Edward IV. established to bring order into the affairs of this stormy neighbourhood, where the “Lords Marchers” had hitherto taken what they chose, and kept it if they could. It is said that the English King once asked by what warrant the Lords Marchers held their lands. “By this warrant,” said one of them grimly, drawing his sword—and the inquiry went no further.

The President of this Council lived in the great castle that still stands so imposingly above the Teme, with its outer and inner baileys, its Norman keep and curious round chapel, and all its long, long memories.

TUDOR DOORWAY, LUDLOW CASTLE.

THE ROUND CHAPEL, LUDLOW CASTLE.

Within these grey walls we may dream of many things, both pitiful and gay: of all the children who have played and the poets who have written here; of young Prince Arthur, who died here; of his bride, Katherine of Arragon; of poor Princess Mary—“my ladie Prince’s grace,” as they called her quaintly—the Queen of blood and tears. Edward IV. and his brother Edmund, dressed in green gowns, played in these courts as boys, and wrote a letter to their “right noble lord and father,” begging him daily to give them his hearty blessing, and to send them some fine bonnets by the next sure messenger; and here on the right is the roofless tower whose crumbling walls are haunted by the most touching memories in all Ludlow. For these weed-grown stones have echoed to the voices of Edward IV.’s little sons, who lived and laughed here with no thought of that grimmer Tower that is connected for ever with their names. There is still existing a wonderful letter written by the King to “his Castle of Lodelowe,” in which he gives the most minute instructions as to the education and general deportment of the Prince of Wales—not forgetting the baby’s bedtime. His Majesty, indeed, was definite on all points.

“We will that our said son have his breakfast immediately after his mass; and between that and his meat to be occupied in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive.”

His age at this time was three years. Not only was the virtuous learning to occupy him from breakfast till dinner, but during the latter meal “such noble stories as behoveth to a prince to understand and know” were to be read aloud to him; and “after his meat, in eschewing of idleness,” he was to be “occupied about his learning” again. It is a relief to read that after his supper he was to have “all such honest disports as may be conveniently devised for his recreation.” At eight o’clock his attendants were “to enforce themselves to make him merry and joyous towards his bed”; and, indeed, after so hard a day of virtuous learning and noble stories and honest disports, the poor child must have been glad to get there!

Later on, when Sir Henry Sidney was President of the Council, this ground where we are standing was trodden by his son Philip, the pattern of chivalry, who “fearde no foe, nor ever fought a friend”; and it was through that doorway at the top of the inclined plane—then a flight of marble steps—that little Lady Alice Egerton, not knowing that she was on her way to immortality, passed on the evening that she took part in the first performance of Comus, which Milton had written for her.

It is curious that in this venerable town so many of our thoughts should be claimed by the very young. Ludlow Castle, as one sits here thinking of the past, seems to be peopled with the ghosts of children. And even in the church whose great tower gives Ludlow so distinguished an air, the church where the solemn Councillors of the Marches have their pompous tombs, we find the grave of Philip Sidney’s little sister. “Heare lyethe the bodye of Ambrozia Sydney, iiijth doughter of the Right Honourable Syr Henrye Sydney ... and the Ladye Mary his wyef.” It is sometimes said, too, that Prince Arthur, Henry VII.’s young son, is buried here, but this is not the case. There is a cenotaph that was, perhaps raised in his memory, but his body was taken to Worcester Cathedral.

These are the gentler memories of Ludlow. Of the fiercer kind there is no lack, from the old fighting days of the de Lacy who built the keep, and the de Dinan who built the round chapel, down through centuries of siege and battle to the time of the Civil War, when the King’s flag flew here longer than on any other castle of Shropshire.

Ludlow might well be chosen as a centre for motor drives in Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire. But for the moment we are concerned with Shropshire only, and the centre of that county, in every sense, is Shrewsbury; and so, sad though it is to leave Ludlow so soon, we must glide away down the steep pitch beyond the door of the “Feathers,” past the railway station, past the racecourse, and over the twenty-nine miles of excellent and level road that lie between Ludlow and Shrewsbury.

ENTRANCE TO HALL IN WHICH “COMUS” WAS FIRST PERFORMED.

The first village on this road, Bromfield, is very typical of the villages of Shropshire at their best. The black-and-white cottages seem to have been set in their places with an eye to pictorial effect; the stream and bridge are exactly in the right spot; and to complete the picture, a beautiful old gatehouse stands a little way back from the road. It is built half of stone, half of timber and plaster, and was once the gateway of a Benedictine Priory which is mentioned in Domesday Book as being of some importance. It leads now to the church, and is one of those unexpected touches of beauty and interest that may meet one’s eye at any turn of a Shropshire road.

Photo by]

[W. D. Haydon.

STOKESAY CASTLE.

At Onibury we cross the line and the river Onny, and about a mile and a half further on we should begin to look for Stokesay Castle on the left. As it is a little way from the main road, and partly hidden by trees, it is easy to miss it when travelling at a good pace; but it is perhaps the most attractive ruin in Shropshire from an artist’s point of view, and should on no account be neglected. It is really a fortified house rather than a castle, and the mingling of the warlike with the domestic gives it a peculiar charm. The northern end, with its irregular roof and overhanging upper storey, the “Solar Room,” with its magnificent carved chimney-piece, and even the timbered gateway, are all merely suggestive of a dwelling-house; and it is only when we turn to the curious polygonal tower that we remember how in the old days an Englishman’s house was either very literally his castle or was likely to become some other Englishman’s house at an early date. As far as I know, however, the only time that Stokesay had to make any use of its defences was when it was garrisoned for the King during the Civil War, and on that occasion it seems to have yielded without much ado.

It is by very pleasant ways that this road is leading us—between wooded hills and over quiet streams. The valley narrows and is at its prettiest near Marshbrook and Little Stretton; then the pointed hill of Caradoc became conspicuous, and beyond it the famous Wrekin appears—famous not for its beauty, but because, being in the centre of the county, it can be seen by nearly every one in Shropshire, and so has gathered round it the sentiment of all Salopian hearts. “To friends all round the Wrekin!” is the famous Shropshire toast, and there, far away to the right, is the isolated rounded hill that means so much to those born within sight of it. At Stretton we leave the hills and wooded valleys behind us, and pass through a few miles of rather dull country. It is at the village of Bayston Hill that we first see, dimly blue against a background of hills, the slender spires—almost unrivalled in beauty—of that fair town which long ago the Welsh named Y Mwythig, the Delight.

The history of Shrewsbury is stirring, and very, very long. When England was still in the making she stood there on her hill, looking down at the encircling river that has defended her for so many centuries. Nearly every street is connected in some way with history; every second house is haunted by some great name. Many large and solemn books have been written about Shrewsbury, and not one of them is dull. Even in these few hundred yards between the river and our hotel how many memories there are! As we turn on to the English Bridge to cross the Severn we should glance backwards to the right at the red tower and great west window of the Abbey founded by the Conqueror’s kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, a man of mark; and then, having crossed the steep rise and fall of the bridge, we climb into the heart of the town by the hill called the Wyle Cop. It was up this steep hill that, not so very long ago, the London coach used to dash, turning into the yard of the Lion Hotel at a pace that is still spoken of with awe and admiration. If we were to do the like we should probably have to pay five pounds and costs, so we will ascend the Cop in a way more conducive to dreaming of the past: of Harry Tudor on his way to “trye hys right” at Bosworth, with the welcoming citizens strewing flowers before him; of the more stately procession that wound up the hill when he came back as Henry VII. with his Queen and young Prince Arthur; of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his stepson Essex, after their reception by bailiffs and aldermen, “and other to the number of xxiiij scarlet gowns, with the scollars of the freescoole,” listening wearily “at the upper end of the Wylde Coppe,” to three orations! Henry Tudor, when he reached the Wyle Cop, was glad to take shelter for the night in that picturesque little black-and-white house with the overhanging top storey and the tiled roof—it is on the left, rather more than half-way up the hill—for he had not won his way into the town without difficulty. “The gates weare shutt against him and the portculleys lett downe,” and a bailiff of the town—“a stout, wise gentleman,” we are told—vowed that Henry should only enter over his prostrate body. So, when Henry had made it clear that he did not mean to hurt the town, “nor none therein,” the only way for the stout, wise gentleman to keep his word was by lying down on the ground and allowing his future king to step over him. Thus did Henry of Richmond come in triumph to the little house on the Wyle.

If we are going to the “Raven,” or the “Crown,” as is probable, we turn to the right near the top of the hill, and pass the beautiful old timbered house—which stands on the right hand, a little back from the street—where Princess Mary stayed on her way to Ludlow after she had been created Prince of Wales; and a little further up, on the left, is the many-gabled house where Prince Rupert lived for a time when he was here with Charles I. On each side of us rises one of the slender spires that are the pride of Shrewsbury. St. Alkmund’s Church, on the left, was founded by Alfred’s daughter Ethelfleda, known as the Lady of the Mercians; a lady, it would seem, of some force. “A woman of an enlarged soul,” William of Malmesbury calls her; and adds: “This spirited heroine assisted her brother greatly with her advice, and was of equal service in building cities.” It is gravely recorded in a serious chronicle that in 1533 “the dyvyll apearyd in Saint Alkmond’s Churche there when the preest was at highe masse with greate tempest and darknes, so that as he passyd through the churche he mountyd up the steeple in the sayde churche, teringe the wyer of the sayde clocke, and put the prynt of hys clawes uppon the iiijth bell.” This steeple on our left was the very scene of this feat; but the body of the church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Another old Shrewsbury church, St. Chad’s, had fallen down, and the congregation of Saint Alkmund’s feared a repetition of the disaster. In the case of St. Alkmund’s, however, it was the rebuilding that was the disaster.

The story of St. Mary’s lovely spire, on our right, is full of incident. In 1572 it was “blown aside by wind”; in 1594 “there fell such a monstrous dry wind, and so extreme fierce ... that the like was never seen of those that be living ... the force whereof removed the upper part of St. Mary’s steeple out of his place towards the south about five inches”; in 1662 the steeple was “taken down six yards from the top”; in 1690 it was damaged by an earthquake; in 1754 it was “shattered by a high wind”; in 1756 the newly-built part was again “blown aside”; in 1818 the upper part “became loose”; and during a terrific storm in 1894 fifty feet of its masonry fell through the roof of the nave shortly after the evening service. Most wonderfully this last disaster did no damage to the stained glass, which is St. Mary’s great glory and has itself had an eventful existence; for some of it was in old St. Chad’s when it fell, and much of it, long ago, filled the windows of religious houses in Germany.

The slender columns and pointed arches of this lovely church have rung to the voice of Charles I., who once proclaimed his good intentions within these walls, and knelt, harassed and nearly uncrowned, before this altar. It was in St. Mary’s, too, that James II. touched for the King’s Evil.

Just beyond the church is the Crown Hotel, and whether we stay there or at the “Raven,” a hundred yards away, we shall hear the bells of St. Mary’s, once described as “the comfortablest ring of bells in all the town,” and the chiming clock that was the bequest of Fanny Burney’s Uncle James, and the curfew, which still rings every night at nine. And after the curfew we shall hear the number of the day of the month rung out—a relic of the times before cheap almanacs existed.

There is no doubt that the most satisfactory way of seeing Shropshire is to spend a few nights in Shrewsbury, and make it the basis of operations; for Shrewsbury lies exactly in the centre of the county, and is the meeting-point of a particularly large number of good roads. The old town itself, too, does not deserve to be hurried through. The longer one stays in it the more one feels the charm of its gentle old age.

The Old School Buildings are within a stone’s-throw of us, with all their memories of the wise and great: memories that are, as a matter of fact, older than themselves; for though Charles Darwin was educated within these very walls, it was in an older building of wood, standing on the same spot, that Philip Sidney was a schoolboy—gentle and grave, and as much loved then as he was destined to be all his life, and is still. It was while he was here that his father wrote him a “very godly letter ... most necessarie for all yoong gentlemen to be carried in memorie,” which his mother, who added a postscript “in the skirts of my Lord President’s letter,” considered to be so full of “excellent counsailes,” that she begged Philip to “fayle not continually once in foure or five daies to reade them over.” The counsels were certainly excellent. “Be humble and obedient to your master,” says Sir Henry, “... be courteous of gesture.... Give yourself to be merie ... but let your mirth be ever void of all scurrillitie and biting words to any man.... Above all things, tell no untruth, no not in trifles”; and he ends quaintly: “Well, my little Philip, this is enough for me, and I feare too much for you.” If my Lord President had not also been my Lord Deputy of Ireland one might have loved him nearly as much as his son.

Neither he nor Philip ever saw the timbered gatehouse that stands opposite to the Old School Buildings, but in the red Council House to which it leads, Sir Henry always stayed when he made official visits to Shrewsbury. There were fine doings on these occasions; banquets and processions, with “knightly robes most valiant,” and many scarlet gowns; masquerades, too, by the boys of the school, who appeared now as soldiers, now as nymphs, and made orations in both characters. Later on the same red house sheltered Charles I., when he came here to collect men and money. Half the plate in the county disappeared into his mint, which was set up, some say, in a little tottering house that may still be seen in an alley on Pride Hill—a fragment of green and weather-worn stone that is one of the most picturesque things in Shrewsbury. Some of the money that Charles “borrowed” on this occasion was well spent in repairing the Castle, which is quite near the Council House. The Castle is now a private dwelling, and one cannot walk about the grounds without permission; but the oldest part of it is the great entrance-gate, which all may see; the gate that was built by Roger de Montgomery and attacked by Stephen; the gate through which Henry IV. rode out to the famous Battle of Shrewsbury. The Castle itself, as it now stands, was probably mostly built by Edward I.; but it suffered so much through the centuries from siege, and treachery, and time, that many repairs were necessary to secure it a peaceful old age as a dwelling-house. Every motorist who is properly grateful to his benefactors, will be interested to know that it was the engineer Telford who carried out these repairs. He actually lived in the Castle for a time, I believe, and he certainly built the “Laura” tower, which stands on the foundations of the old watch-tower. Telford was in Shrewsbury when the tower of Old St. Chad’s showed signs of collapsing, and, on his advice being asked, said the church should be repaired without delay. The Parish Vestry begged him to meet them in St. Chad’s to discuss the matter, and demurred so long at the expense that at last Telford walked out of the church, saying grimly that he would rather talk the matter over in some place where there was less danger of the roof falling on his head. Two or three days later it fell.

Not far from the fragments of this ruined church is the High Street, where are some of the oldest and prettiest houses in the town; and hard by is the Tudor marketplace, with its statue of Richard, Duke of York. The claims of the Unitarian chapel in the same street are not based on beauty, but on the fact that Coleridge’s voice once rose in it “like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,” according to William Hazlitt, who had walked ten miles to hear Coleridge preach here, and was as much delighted, he says, “as if he had heard the music of the spheres.” Charles Darwin attended the services of this chapel as a boy, but was baptized in New St. Chad’s, the eighteenth-century church near the Quarry, within whose classical walls Dr. Johnson once worshipped. The Doctor’s famous rolling walk, too, of which we have all heard so much, was once seen under the splendid limes of the Quarry.

Photo by]

[W. D. Haydon.

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.

Photo by]

[W. D. Haydon.

BUILDWAS ABBEY.

MADELEY COURT.

About a mile beyond Buildwas is Ironbridge, named from the first bridge ever built in England of iron, which here spans the Severn at a height of forty feet, by a single arch of a hundred feet in width. It was the work of Abraham Darby, the third of his name, and was finished in 1779. A gradient of 1 in 10 takes us through Ironbridge, and less than two miles further on is Madeley, which appears at first sight the very type of all that is unromantic, a prey to coal-dust and miners; yet if we turn off the main road to the left we shall presently find, hidden in a hollow near Madeley Court Station, as poetic a spot as we shall see in many a day’s journey. Perhaps its very contrast to its surroundings adds to its charm; perhaps to some it may not seem charming at all, but merely a tumble-down, ill-kept house. But to others this little nook, with the weather-stained, crumbling walls and tiled gables of the Court House, the swinging ivy, the still pond, the bulrushes and water-lilies, and the red-and-black timbered barn that once sheltered a fugitive king, are a “faery land forlorn,” the very home of glamour and romance. Here Charles II. arrived one night, dressed in green breeches and a noggen shirt. He was tired and hungry, his hands and face were smudged with soot, and he answered to the name of William Jones. He was refreshed in this house, and spent the next day in the barn with Richard Penderel, one of the five brothers to whom he owed his safety. When night fell he walked to Boscobel.

It was hours before he was there, whereas we, if we were as much hurried as he was, might be there in half an hour or so. But though there is nothing to keep us at Shifnal we must pause at Tong, where there are some especially pretty timbered cottages and a church that is really remarkable, for it contains a collection of tombs which I should imagine to be unequalled in a village church. They are those of the Vernon family, and among them is that of Dame Margaret Stanley, the sister of Dorothy Vernon, of Haddon Hall. Charles Dickens said himself that it was of Tong Village he was thinking when he wrote the end of “The Old Curiosity Shop,” and those to whom Little Nell appeals may think of her and her grandfather in the porch of this church. Some of us, however, will take more interest in the shot-marks that have scarred the northern wall ever since the days of the Civil War.

In a park near the village stands the astonishing structure called Tong Castle. It was once a real castle of stone; in the sixteenth century Sir Henry Vernon rebuilt it of brick; in the eighteenth a new owner thought that Moorish cupolas would make a pretty finish to it. When, in 1643, it was in the possession of the Parliamentarians, it was said on that account to be a “great eye-sore to his Majesty’s good subjects who pass’d yt road.” For other reasons it is so still.

A writer of the seventeenth century describes Boscobel as “a very obscure habitation, situate in a kind of wilderness”; and no doubt it was to this obscurity that Charles II. owed his safety. Even to-day it is wonderfully isolated, and we reach it by a series of rather circuitous by-roads; but we can drive right up to the house, and leave our car in a safe enclosure, while we walk a hundred yards to the Royal Oak—not the original “asylum of the most potent prince King Charles II. ... the oak beloved by Jove,”[1] which was mostly made into snuff-boxes and other treasures for the loyal—but an oak grown from an acorn of that “fortunate tree.” When Charles reached Boscobel at three o’clock in the morning he was taken into the big panelled room that we shall presently see, and was refreshed with bread and cheese and a posset of milk and beer. Colonel Carlis, another fugitive from Worcester, “pulled off his Majesty’s shoos, which were full of gravel, and stockens which were very wet,” and at daybreak went with him into the wood, where they both climbed into the oak—here, where we are standing—with a cushion for his Majesty to sit on. Here, for a great part of the day, the tired King slept with his head on Colonel Carlis’s knee. “He bore all these hardships and afflictions with incomparable patience,” says a contemporary historian. At night he was hidden in the house, buried beneath the garret floor in a box-like priest’s-hole, with a load of cheese on the lid. We may climb the stairs and see it; get into it if we will—and ask ourselves if, after spending a night in it, we should be as lighthearted as this man who at any moment might lose his life and had already lost everything else. In the morning he called for a frying-pan and butter, and, having first despatched Colonel Carlis with a dagger to slaughter a neighbour’s sheep, he gaily cooked himself some mutton collops, while the Colonel, “being but under-cook (and that honour enough too), made the fire and turned the collops in the pan.”

From Boscobel we strike due north to Ivetsey Bank, where we shall find an inn capable of providing a good, if homely, luncheon or tea. Thence sixteen miles on Watling Street will bring us without a pause (unberufen!) through Wellington to the point where we left the main road on our outward journey. It is worth while, by the way, to avoid the unpleasant bit of road through Oakengates by striking across to the main road from Shifnal; to do which we must take a turn in St. George’s, where a lamp-post stands out prominently. We enter Shrewsbury, as we left it, by the London Road.

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.

Another of the Shropshire monasteries that must certainly be seen is Wenlock Priory, which lies on the way to Bridgnorth. It is a fairly level road that leads to it by Cross Houses and Cound and pretty Cressage, which in Domesday Book is Cristes-ache, or Christ’s Oak. Christianity was preached here, it is said, under an old oak-tree, in days so early that when St. Augustine visited the place he found it already Christian. Between Harley and Wenlock there is a hill which the Contour Book describes with perfect accuracy as “a precipitous hill on which innumerable accidents have happened.” The accidents, I fancy, have mostly happened to horse-drawn vehicles and bicycles—especially the latter—when descending the hill, for it is a mile long and has a turn in the middle. There is no reason why it should inconvenience a good car, for the average gradient is nothing more alarming than 1 in 8, and it is well worth climbing for the sake of the wide view from the top, just beyond which Much Wenlock lies.

Photo by]

[W. D. Haydon.

WENLOCK PRIORY, ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL.

Milburga, Saxon princess and saint, built the first religious house at Wenlock, and became its abbess, and was finally buried within its precincts. William of Malmesbury tells us how, long after her death, she enriched the place to which she had given her life and all she possessed. “Milburga,” he says, “reposes at Wenlock ... but for some time after the arrival of the Normans, through ignorance of the place of her burial, she was neglected. Lately, however, a convent of Clugniac monks being established there, while a new church was erecting, a certain boy, running violently along the pavement, broke into the hollow of the vault, and discovered the body of the virgin, when a balsamic odour pervading the whole church, she was taken up, and performed so many miracles that the people flocked thither in great multitudes. Large spreading plains could hardly contain the troops of pilgrims, while rich and poor came side by side, one common faith compelling all.”

The convent of Clugniac monks in question was built by that notable man Roger de Montgomery, and was the same whose ruins speak so plainly to-day of the ornate tastes of the monks of Clugny. We saw no arcaded walls such as these of the chapter-house, nor richly moulded doorways, nor any such elaborate ornament at Cistercian Buildwas, whose lands marched with the lands of this Priory, and whose monks found the Rule of Clugny too soft, the tastes of Clugny too enervating. Go to Wenlock in the spring, when its slender columns rise above a sea of sweet-scented flowers, and its old wall is bright with rock-plants—for the Priory stands in private grounds and is cared for like a garden. It is the third religious house that has stood on this spot, for between the days of Milburga, the royal saint, and those of Roger and his Clugniacs, there was another monastery founded here by Leofric of Mercia and his wife Godiva, a well-loved woman whom we are glad to connect with this beautiful spot. The picturesque old Prior’s Lodge is inhabited, and it is only on Tuesdays and Fridays that the world at large is admitted to the ruins. Perhaps nothing recalls to one so vividly the daily life of the monks in this place as the long causeway that stretches across the field near the Priory garden. It was here that the brothers took their daily exercise, raised above the surrounding marsh—a long procession of dark figures, walking slowly to and fro—and among them, unsuspected, that interesting swashbuckler of whom we long to hear more, that man of extremes whose strange career is all summed up for us in one short, pregnant sentence. “In 1283,” we learn, “a brother of Wenlac became a captain of banditti.” We hear no more of him, alas! except that he was hanged.

The road to Bridgnorth is a continuation of the one by which we entered the town, so we must drive back, past the beautiful old Guildhall and market-place, up the street to the Gaskell Arms, where we may have luncheon if, as may well occur to motorists, we are too hungry to wait till we reach the more imposing “Crown” at Bridgnorth. At the Gaskell Arms we turn sharply to the left, and thence eight or nine miles of good road, with several steep hills, will bring us to Bridgnorth.

Photo by]

[W. D. Haydon.

WENLOCK PRIORY, CHAPTER HOUSE.

BISHOP PERCY’S BIRTHPLACE, BRIDGNORTH.

Ever since the Danes built a fort here this town, nearly as consistently as Shrewsbury and Ludlow, has concerned itself with history. It has been visited by half the kings of England. Henry I. besieged it; Henry II. defended it; John and Edward I. stayed in it; Edward II. took refuge in it; Henry IV. gathered his army here on his way to the Battle of Shrewsbury; Charles I. was besieged here by Cromwell, who narrowly escaped death before the walls. The Castle, of course, was the centre of interest on all these occasions—the Castle that was built so hurriedly by Robert de Belesme, Roger de Montgomery’s son, and is now so conspicuous on account of its leaning tower. Round its ruins is a path that must be practically the same as that which Charles I. declared to be as pleasant a walk as any in his kingdom. Robert de Belesme, who has been described with apparent justice as “an implacable villain,” also founded the church of St. Mary Magdalene, but the present building was designed by Telford. Another interesting church is St. Leonard’s, where in the churchyard the Roundheads once beat the Royalists in a skirmish, and where Richard Baxter was a curate. He lived in the little black-and-white cottage close at hand, and seems to have had a poor opinion of his flock. “He found the people here generally ignorant and dead-hearted,” he says, “... so that though by his first Labours among them he was Instrumental in the Conversion of several Persons, and was generally Applauded, yet ... Tippling and Ill Company rendred his Preaching ineffectual.” If his preaching was ineffectual it at all events began early, for “when he was a little Boy in Coats, if he heard other Children in Play speak Profane Words he would reprove them, to the wonder of those that heard him.” At this time—when he was a little Boy in Coats—he lived at Rowton in this county; it was not till he was ten years old that he moved to Eaton Constantine and indulged in dark deeds in his neighbours’ orchards.

An extremely steep dip with an awkward corner in the middle of it will take us to the birthplace of another famous divine, Bishop Percy, best known in connection with “Percy’s Reliques.” The house, which stands in the Cartway, may be approached quite comfortably from below, and is worth seeing for its own sake, being a good example of black-and-white work.

Our best way home from here is by Ironbridge and Buildwas, on the road by which we drove to Boscobel. Between Bridgnorth and Ironbridge some of the country is pretty, and at Broseley especially it must have been lovely in its natural state, before it was ruined by the potteries. We cross the river by Abraham Darby’s iron bridge.

A run of forty-seven miles or so, by Wem, Whitchurch, and Ellesmere, will show us a good deal of the north-west part of the county, and if, when we reach Whitchurch, we choose to lengthen the distance to fifty-four miles by slipping over the Welsh border to Overton and Erbistock, we shall not regret it.

We leave Shrewsbury by the road that branches to the left immediately opposite to the station. Almost at once, at the point where the road touches the Severn, we pass a long, low house of timber and plaster on our right. It was from this house that Admiral Benbow ran away to sea. He was living here as an apprentice, to his father or another, and, since it was the custom to entrust the house-key to the care of the apprentice, he had, fortunately for himself and England, special facilities for making his escape. He hid the key in the tree that is marked with a ring of whitewash, and stands between the house and the railings; and there to this day it hangs.

Between Shrewsbury and Whitchurch there is nothing of particular interest except the old farmhouse called Albright Hussey, which stands in a field on the right about three miles out of Shrewsbury. It is a pretty old moated house, partly black-and-white; but its greatest beauty is within, where there is as charming a room as one need wish to see, a room to make a housewife weep tears of covetousness—low, oblong, oak-panelled to the ceiling, with seats in the mullioned windows and a carved fireplace. The house is inhabited, but I believe there is never any difficulty in obtaining leave to see it. Its sixteenth-century walls were once threatened by a party of Parliamentarian horse. There were only eight men to defend the place, but their leader was a crafty man, and shouted his orders aloud within hearing of the enemy. “Let ten men stay here, and ten go there, and twenty stay with me!” he cried; and the attacking force, dismayed by the number of mythical defenders, rode away and left the stone and timber, the mullioned windows and oaken wainscotes, to be a joy to us to-day.

In Wem, however, through which we presently pass, it was the “Parliament men” who were in the ascendent. The place acted a prominent part in the Civil War, and has a history many centuries long, but on the surface is commonplace enough. In the List of the Owners of the Manor of Wem the twenty-fourth name is the grim one of “Sir George Jeffreys, Knight and Baronet, and Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, created in 1685 a peer of England by the style and title of Baron Jeffreys of Wem.”

At Whitchurch we must draw up at the door of St. Alkmund’s Church; not because it is old or beautiful, for the original church fell down in 1711 and was entirely rebuilt; nor because Dean Swift subscribed to the rebuilding of it; but because it contains the dust of the great Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, “the scourge of France.” His valiant heart lies beneath the white stone in the porch, where careless thousands have trodden it underfoot. It was found there in an urn when the church was rebuilt, and with it were some figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary from Talbot’s rosary. His bones are in the chancel, whither, about fifty years after his death, they were brought from the battlefield of Chastillon, where a little chapel had been raised on the spot where he fell.[3] His effigy lies on a tomb that is an exact copy of the original one. While this restoration was in progress the bones of the great soldier were shown to the public, with the skull cleft by the axe that killed him. “This is that terrible Talbot,” says Thomas Fuller, “so famous for his sword ... which constantly conquered where it came, insomuch that the bare fame of his approach frighted the French from the siege of Bordeaux. Being victorious for twenty-four years together, success failed him at last.... Henceforward we may say ‘Good-night to the English in France,’ whose victories were buried with the body of this earl.”

From Whitchurch we drive about fourteen miles in a westerly direction to Overton Bridge, by Hanmer and Overton village, a pretty little place with a churchyard surrounded by yew-trees. Having crossed the bridge, which is about two miles beyond the village, we turn to the left at right angles and approach Erbistock by a road whose greatest recommendation to inveterate lovers of speed will be that it is short. After one experience, however, most of us will agree, I think, that this by-road needs no recommendation but the fact that it leads to Erbistock. A tiny church and a tiny inn at the brim of the Dee—that is all that there is at Erbistock. But it is all enclosed in trees, and the trees dip into the river, and the river is rather big and gentle and gurgles sweetly at one’s feet, and the woods on the other side are tangled and mysterious and full of fairies. One may have one’s tea close beside the water, or one may cross the river in a ferry, and soon be quite alone in the woods. There is no need to hurry, for when we leave Erbistock we need not stop again till we reach Shrewsbury.

For Ellesmere, “wher was a castelle,” says Leland, “and very fair polis yet be,” has now nothing left of its castle but the memory of it, and the fair pools may be seen as we pass. More than once Ellesmere was given as a dowry to the daughters of English kings, on their marriage with Cymric princes; for as the rulers of the two countries were sure to fall out soon after the wedding the gift was quickly taken back by the donor, and so was ready for the next bride. Thus, though Henry II. gave it to his sister Emma, there was nothing to prevent King John from giving it to his daughter Joan, twenty-seven years later, when she married Llewelyn the Great.

I think it must have been beside the lake, where on the level ground there would be room for the dramatic scene, that Rupert, halting here at Ellesmere, made his prisoners cast lots upon the drum to decide which of them should die. Thirteen were doomed; but at the last moment one of them was saved by Sir Vincent Corbet, who as he rode past interceded for the man, who had been a servant in his family. The rest were hanged there and then. Yet it is not they who haunt the rushy banks of the mere; but the White Lady of Oteley. Long ago, it is said, she robbed and ruined a monastery, and built herself a home here with the spoils—a home that she has never left since then, except to walk by night along the margin of the water. She was not even allowed to move to the new house when it was built about a hundred years ago, for a fragment of the old one was left standing in the park on purpose for her accommodation. The new house faces us very conspicuously as we drive close beside the water on the opposite side of the mere, and go on our way to Shrewsbury, which is about sixteen miles away.

In the south-west, which is the hilliest, and therefore the prettiest, part of Shropshire, there is a variety of little runs, which may be lengthened or shortened according to circumstances and tastes. A pretty round of about fifty miles is by Chirbury and Bishop’s Castle, whence either of two lovely roads will bring us back to Shrewsbury. Nineteen miles of nearly level road lead to Chirbury through several villages—Westbury, Worthen, Marton, and others—all of which are fairly picturesque, but with nothing very noteworthy about them. Just before Marton is reached there is an exceedingly sharp turn, which should be borne in mind. At Chirbury our road turns to the left in the middle of the village.

The name of this obscure little place has been known to the world for some centuries in connection with that strange person Lord Herbert of Chirbury, half ruffler, half scholar, who in a house only a few miles from here, across the Welsh border, wrote the famous autobiography that Horace Walpole called “perhaps the most extraordinary account that was ever given seriously by a wise man of himself.” His home for the greater part of his life, when he was not seeking adventures and duels in France or London, was in Montgomery Castle, whose ruins we may see by driving four miles further. Nothing but a fragment is left of it now, but when the Herberts lived there it must have been a fine sight on its wild crag; a more fitting home for Edward the soldier than for his gentler and still more famous brother George. Chirbury itself had a castle and a priory once; but of the castle, which was built by the ever active Ethelfleda, nothing remains but the site; and of the monastery there are only fragments left, for the present church, ancient as it is, was not used by the monks, but was then, as now, the parish church.[4] It has seen strange doings. It is hard to realise, when the bells ring in this lonely little village, and the quiet country folk take their seats for the morning service, that here within these very walls the congregation of Chirbury was once electrified by the clashing of armour and the clatter of horses’ hoofs in the aisle. It was during the Civil War, and Mr. Edward Lewis, “a very goodly man, did preach twice a day”; a rash thing for a Puritan to do when Captain Corbet was no further off than Caus Castle. A party of Royalist horse “rode into the church to the great fright and amazement of the people; and with their pistols charged and cocked went up into the pulpit and pulled down Mr. Lewis, pulling and tugging him in a most unworthy manner ... and so left the people without their pastor because they would not be content with one sermon a day.”

It was this same Edward Lewis who brought to Chirbury the chained library that almost certainly belonged to George Herbert; for Isaac Walton tells us of “a choice library which Mr. Herbert had fastened with chains in a fit room in Montgomery Castle.” This choice library contains books dating from 1530 to 1684, and among them is a black-letter folio copy of Chaucer. They are kept in the vicarage, and I believe may be seen by any one.

Turning to the left in Chirbury we soon pass Marrington Hall, or Havodwen, the White Summer-house, as the Welsh call it; a very fine example of sixteenth-century black-and-white work. The lovely little valley beyond it is Marrington Dingle, and a mile or two further on is Churchstoke. It is in this pretty part of Shropshire that the uses of the motor-car are especially noticeable, for railway stations are few and distant from each other, and the hilliness of the country is not encouraging to bicyclists. Of Bishop’s Castle there is little to be said, for pretty as the country is all round it, the town itself is unattractive, and the castle is no more. But all the ways back to Shrewsbury from here are lovely. We may join the Stretton road, which we already know, at Marshbrook, and so see one of the most charming little bits of wooded country in Shropshire; or we may follow the hilly road through the wild scenery near Ratlinghope, down Cothercott Hill, and through Longden and Hookagate. Cothercott Hill is very steep and has a bad surface, but it is only for a short way that the gradient is really severe, and the view from the top is one of the wildest in the country. Personally, however, I should recommend the third way back to Shrewsbury—over the moor to the Roman Gravels, and down through the woods of the winding Hope Valley to Minsterley.

As there is nothing in the whole of this little run to delay us, we may lengthen it, if our car is good on hills and we are of an enterprising temperament, by going on from Bishop’s Castle to Clun, or even to Knighton, and round by Leintwardine to join the Ludlow road. This is a beautiful bit of country, and full of interest. Leland tells us of the “faire forest of Clun.” “Cumming from Bisshop’s Castelle to Clunne lordshippe,” he says, “cummeth doune a greate woode grouing on a hille.” Much of this great wood is gone now, but there is still enough to make the country very “faire,” and to compensate a motorist for the climbing of a long hill. Suddenly, as we round a corner, Clun comes into sight between two hills, with the stern tower of its castle standing conspicuously above the river. “Clunne Castell,” says Leland, “longynge to the Erle of Arundel, sumewhat ruinus. It hath bene bothe stronge and well builded.” It is more than somewhat ruinous now, which is hardly surprising when one considers all it has gone through at the hands of Welshmen and Roundheads since it was built in Stephen’s reign. There is a story that the stones of which it is made were passed from hand to hand by a chain of men, from the quarry, a mile away, to the river-bank where the castle stands; but be that as it may, these crumbling stones, with their soft tints of grey and yellow, embody enough romance to satisfy us, I think, seeing that they are connected with all the greatest names of Wales. They have been stormed and burnt by Rhys of the south; they have been attacked in vain by great Llewelyn of the north; they have been overcome by Owen Glyndwr. They are connected with modern romance, too, for it is supposed that the “Garde Dolareuse,” in the “Betrothed,” represents the Castle of Clun, and the Buffalo Inn claims to have sheltered Sir Walter Scott while he was writing part of the book.

Everything is old at Clun: the church; the fine old bridge, of whose building there is no record; and the “Hospital of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at Clunn,” which was founded by the Duke of Norfolk in 1614 for distressed tradesmen, who were each to receive yearly “a gown ready-made of strong cloth or kersey, of a sad colour.”

The road between Clun and Knighton is not one to be undertaken lightly by small cars of uncertain hill-climbing powers, for it is mostly composed of long and precipitous hills, with gradients varying from 1 in 8 to 1 in 10; but the surface is good, and though the scenery is not particularly interesting at first, it becomes really lovely as we draw near Knighton, which lies in a valley, surrounded by wooded hills. Here we turn to the left, and by way of compensation the road from Knighton to Leintwardine is particularly level, along a narrow valley between green hills that belong to Shropshire on the left and to Herefordshire on the right. As the valley widens out into open country we reach Brampton Brian, associated for ever with the name of Brilliana, Lady Harley. That gallant-hearted lady was alone in her husband’s castle of Brampton when it was threatened by the forces of Charles I., for the Harleys were “Parliament men.” “I acknowleg,” she writes, “I doe not thinke meself safe wheare I am.” Safe she certainly was not, but she thanked God that she was “not afraide”; and when the Royalists bade her surrender she simply answered, “I must endeavour to keep what is mine as well as I can, in which I have the law of nature, of reason, and of the law on my side, and you none to take it from me.” The siege lasted some weeks, and Lady Harley, always delicate, suffered greatly; but when pressed to yield said “she would rather choose an honourable death.” She died; but this first siege was raised before her “heavenly and happy end,” and so she never knew that the castle was besieged again, was surrendered, and burnt to the ground.[5]

A few miles further on is Leintwardine, which I believe to be full of antiquarian interest, and know to be picturesque as an artist’s dream; and here, if we care to face a narrow byway with a rough surface, we may leave the main road and take the more direct route to Craven Arms by way of Clungunford. At Craven Arms we rejoin the road from Ludlow to Shrewsbury.

Of the many main roads that converge in Shrewsbury I have left to the last the one that is in some ways the most important, the one that is certainly the most famous; that road of great memories and great achievement, by which so many Royal Mails have travelled breathlessly at the dashing pace of eleven miles an hour, and by which we may travel to-day at a pace that nothing shall induce me to betray: Telford’s road to Holyhead. It is the road by which, if we are fortunate, we are going into North Wales. If, however, it is our sad fate to turn our backs on that most beautiful land, we must on no account neglect to run over to Llangollen, a distance of thirty miles: for though I have left it to the last on the assumption that we are going on to Wales, it is one of the most enjoyable drives in this neighbourhood.

We leave Shrewsbury by the Welsh Bridge, the scene of Henry VII.’s remarkable entry into the town over the body of the stout, wise bailiff; and as we reach the top of the hill beyond it we pass on the right the house in which Charles Darwin was born. At the corner where the Holyhead road turns sharply to the right, about half a mile beyond the last houses of the town, there stands in a private garden a famous tree known as the Shelton Oak. I mention it merely because its fame rests on a libel. There are those who will tell you—cheerfully taking a great man’s name in vain—that Owen Glyndwr sat in this tree watching the Battle of Shrewsbury when he should have been taking part in it. Our knowledge of this fiery prince’s characteristics might be enough, one would think, to discredit the tale, without the proved fact that he was extremely occupied in South Wales at the time! But still the tale is told.

Soon, at Montford Bridge, we cross the Severn, white with water-weeds in the summer, and fringed with purple wild-flowers, and then, with what speed we may, spin happily towards the Welsh hills. We can see them on our left; the striking outline of the Breidden, with Rodney’s Pillar on its topmost point, and beyond it a long blue range that limits all the western horizon. At one spot only we have a choice of roads. Telford’s road goes by Oswestry, an ancient town with an immense history but few relics; but if at the “Queen’s Head,” fourteen miles from Shrewsbury, we turn to the right, following the telegraph-posts, we shall cut off more than a mile of distance and shall see Whittington.

There are some places that are peculiarly haunted. One is infinitely more conscious in them of the past than of the present. Such are Hay and Beaupré—both of which we shall see later on. But Whittington is not so much haunted as haunting. Hay and Beaupré are enchanted: Whittington is itself the enchantment. It stands in a clump of trees by the wayside, in the middle of the village, and one comes upon it suddenly: a great fortified gateway of pale grey stone, reflected in the weed-grown water of what was once its moat—and leading nowhere. One thinks, not of its history, but of itself. One cannot believe that it is merely the entrance to a vanished mediæval castle; it is rather the Gate of Dreams, through which every man sometimes passes in search of his heart’s desire.

There is an old Norman-French romance that tells us how the White Tower was built by William Peverel of the Peak, and how he promised it as a dowry to Melette, the fairest of his nieces. “But none found favour with her. And William reasoned with her, and besought her that she would discover unto him if there was in the world any knight whom she would take for lord.... ‘Certes, Sire,’ said she, ‘no knight is there in all the world that I would take for the sake of riches and the honour of lands, but if I ever take such an one he shall be handsome, and courteous, and the most valiant of his order in Christendom.’” So William proclaimed a tourney at the Peak, with Melette and the White Tower for the prize; and among those who came to try their fortune was one Guarin de Metz, well clad in red samite, with a crest of gold. “To record the blows and the issues I am not minded,” says the story, “but Guarin de Metz and his company proved that day the best, the fairest, and the most valiant, and above all, Guarin was the most praised in all ways.” So Guarin won the fastidious Melette of the White Tower, “and with great joy did he take her, and the damsel him.”[6]

This romance is not very reliable history, I fear, but it is true that Whittington belonged at one time to the Peverels, and later to the Fitz-Warines or Guarins, of whom it was probably the third who built this gate in the reign of John.

Two miles beyond Whittington is Gobowen, where we rejoin the main road; and soon afterwards we dip into the narrow valley below Chirk, and with the railway and the canal high above us on the left, cross the little Ceiriog into Wales.

WHITTINGTON CASTLE.

THE LLEDR VALLEY, FROM THE HOLYHEAD ROAD.

[A TOUR IN NORTH WALES]

Here, on the very border of Wales, one is conscious of the Celtic atmosphere. We left the quiet orderliness of England behind us when we dipped down into this little valley, where the sparkling, bubbling Ceiriog—every inch a Celt—calls to us to follow it up into the hills. And so we will, as soon as we have climbed the other side of the valley into Chirk village; turning there to the left, though our rightful road, the road to Llangollen, lies directly in front of us. In Wales we shall find ourselves constantly tempted to leave the highway, and in most cases we shall be rewarded if we yield to the temptation without ado. In this particular case we shall be rewarded with a dear little glen, feathery birch-trees on the steep slopes, a yellow carpet in primrose time, and a most charming little hotel about six miles up the valley, at Glyn Ceiriog.

Near Chirk the road sweeps round under the trees of the deer-park, where “there is on a smaul hille a mighty large and stronge castel with dyvers towers”; towers that have stood here for many generations, defying time and war; for this castle of Chirk is no ruin like most of its contemporaries, but an inhabited house. Yet not these towers, I believe, but the old Welsh Castell Crogen, stood here when Henry II., with “the chosen warriors of England,” and of several other countries, marched up this valley to join battle with the great Owen Gwynedd and all the might of Wales, who were encamped near Corwen. The English, finding the trees in their way, cut them down as they advanced, which so much infuriated some of the Welsh who were separated from their main army, that the Ceiriog ran red with the blood of Henry’s chosen warriors. This Battle of Crogen took place just below the older castle.

Perhaps the most dramatic event in the life of the present Chirk Castle was when it fell into the hands of the cavaliers, and its owner, Sir Thomas Myddleton, a Parliamentary leader, was obliged to besiege his own house in his own person. I believe that on one day of the week the world at large is allowed to pass through the beautiful gates of wrought iron, and up the long slope of the avenue, and into the castle itself, to see all the treasures of art and history that George Borrow saw when he was here: the cabinet of Charles II., and the portraits of Nell Gwynne, and of “the very proud daughter of the house,” as Borrow calls Addison’s wife, “the Warwick Dowager who married the Spectator, and led him the life of a dog.”

Across Chirk Park runs Offa’s Dyke, the long embankment “that was cast up with great labour and industry by Offa the Mercian, as a boundary between his Subjects and the Britains, from the mouth of Dee to that of the River Wye.... Concerning which Joannes Sarisburiensis in his ‘Polycration’ saith that Harald establish’d a law that whatever Welshman should be found arm’d on this side the limit he had set up, then ... his right hand should be cut off by the King’s Officers.” It touches the high-road a few miles beyond Chirk, just before we begin the wonderful descent into the Vale of Llangollen; that long slope down which we swing for several miles on a perfect gradient and a perfect surface—marred, however, by an awkward turn—with the whole beautiful valley spread out before us, and the Dee sweeping far below us, spanned by the remarkable aqueduct called Pont-y-Cysylltau. Beyond it rise the Eglwyseg crags, and far away the shattered fortress of Dinas Bran is visible almost from the first on its peak above Llangollen. “The castelle of Dinas Brane,” says Leland, “was never a bigge thing, but sette al for strenght as in a place half inaccessible for enemyes.” Even in his day it was “al in ruine,” and now there is only a fragment left of it to remind us of those princes of ancient Powys who built it in days so old as to be unchronicled, and defied the power of the Saxon from within its walls; and of its owner in later days, Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor, who built the Abbey of Valle Crucis; and of the fair Myfanwy, “all smiles and light,” who was loved by a poor bard of the fourteenth century, and celebrated by him in a poem that still exists.

At the foot of the crag on which Dinas Bran is perched lies Llangollen—a little town that owes its charm entirely to its position. Only a few miles away, in Shropshire, an ugly house is an exception: in Wales it is unfortunately the rule. A town or village that is really pretty in itself, apart from its surroundings, is almost unknown. But so lovely is the position of Llangollen that in spite of its rather squalid streets it is an entrancing place; so entrancing that Robert Browning lived for some time at the Hand Hotel, and the two famous “Ladies of Llangollen,” Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, chose it out of all the world for their life-long home. Llangollen is still dominated by “the Ladies,” almost as much as by Dinas Bran itself. They adorn the windows of all its photograph shops; they shine in crude colours from all its china mugs; and in its churchyard we learn from an extremely ugly tombstone that one of them, in the opinion of the other, had “manners worthy of her Illustrious Birth.” It must be admitted that such is not the impression given by the impartial. It became the fashion for travellers of mark to visit this quaint couple in their house up there on the hill, and they themselves insisted on its being also the fashion to give them presents—carvings, miniatures, curiosities of all kinds. If we care to climb a steep hill we may see the outside of Plas Newydd now, a black-and-white house, which must have been really pretty in its original simplicity, but is now overladen with a mass of carving. From the road we can see the porch in which “the Ladies” once stood “fussing and tottering about in an agony of expectation,” waiting for Sir Walter Scott, and looking, says Lockhart, “like a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors.” “Who could paint,” he goes on, “the prints, the dogs, the cats, the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass-cases, books, bijouterie, dragon-china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the whole house outside and in covered with carved oak ... and the illustrated copies of Sir W.’s poems, and the joking, simpering compliments about Waverley.” But whether their manners were worthy of their Illustrious Birth or not, they were true friends to each other, and the guardian angels, as Lockhart admits, of Llangollen. It is an interesting fact (which should not be forgotten) that the church under whose shadow they lie is dedicated to St. Collen ap Gwynnawg ap Clydawg ap Cowrda ap Caradog Freichfras ap Llyr Merimap Eini Yrth ap Cunedda Wledig.

Far more important than Plas Newydd or its memories of vanished mandarins and whirligigs is the work of that prince of Powys, whose name I mentioned in connection with Dinas Bran—Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor. In Pant-y-Groes, or the Valley of the Cross, stands Madoc’s ruined abbey, the most perfect retreat, surely, that ever brought comfort to the sad or sinful. It was of the Vale of Llangollen that Ruskin characteristically wrote: “The whole valley, when once I got up past the Works (whatever the accursed business of them) seemed to me entirely lovely in its gentle wildness.” And it is this very quality of gentle wildness that gives such charm to the little Glen of the Cross, which joins the larger valley of the Dee just above Llangollen, and is reached by way of the old stone bridge that was the first of its kind in Wales.

When, in a few minutes, we see the gable of Valle Crucis Abbey below us on the right, we leave our car by the roadside. We leave, indeed, the whole world behind us as we pass through the heavy door by which there was once no returning. The narrow wooded valley hems us in, the trees are close round us, the waters of the fishpond, in their absolute stillness, add to the sense of aloofness and peace. And under our very feet, perhaps, is the dust of Iolo Goch, the famous bard who sang of “Owain Glyndwr, the great, the good”; for Iolo’s unmarked grave is here; and here, too, lies Madoc, who built this abbey in the last year of the twelfth century; and Myfanwy, the beautiful princess, “fairer than the cherry’s bloom”; and others who died long, long before them. To antiquarians the tombs of Valle Crucis are full of interest, for there are some that seem to prove, says the custodian—himself an antiquarian—that this Cistercian house rose on the site of an older Benedictine building. The Cistercians never used warlike symbols, but always the sign of the Cross; yet here on two stones of very early date—the sixth or seventh century—are carved the sword, the spear, and the battleaxe. Fragments of stained glass, too, have been unearthed, and coloured tiles, though the Cistercian Rule forbade the use of colour in any form. This austere Order, however, while avoiding the use of the sword as a symbol, was apparently not averse to using it as a weapon on occasion, for it was by fighting the Benedictines in a neighbouring field, according to the custodian’s theory, that they became possessed of the site of their abbey. Truth to tell, the extreme austerity of the Cistercians seems to have relaxed in later days, for we hear after a time of four courses of meat in silver dishes at Valle Crucis, and of an abbot with three of his fingers covered with rings. But these are disturbing thoughts. Let us rather take away with us a picture of the quiet fishpond, with its water-weeds and clumps of yellow flags, and the gable of the church reflected in it line for line, and on the bank a hooded figure, dressed in white, with a placid face and a busy fishing-rod.

Quite near the abbey in a field is a far older relic, Eliseg’s Pillar, the rough stone monument that gave its name to the Valley of the Cross, though as a matter of fact it was probably never a cross. It was once much higher than it is now, but in the days of the Civil War the name of the valley was enough to make it suspect, and the pillar was thrown down by the Puritans on the chance of its once having been a cross. It has been much discussed and disagreed about, but at all events its very great antiquity is a certainty, and the inscription that is now illegible was luckily copied several centuries ago. “Concenn,” it tells us, “the great grandson of Eliseg, erected this stone to the memory of his great-grandfather, Eliseg. This is that Eliseg who recovered his inheritance of Powis by his sword from the power of the Angles.”

Returning to Llangollen we cross the Dee again and go on our way upon the road to Holyhead, up the ridge of Rhysgog, past Berwyn Station, and so out of the Vale of Llangollen into that of Edeyrnion. The Dee is still below us on the right, with thickly wooded hills beyond it; and on the left are rocky heights, sometimes bare and sometimes softened by trees. We have a lovely run before us down the valley, but if we are prudent we will drive slowly in the neighbourhood of Corwen.

But here, at the head of the valley, we are eight miles away from Corwen, and have other things to think of—great things, indeed: the last struggle for Welsh freedom, and the man who was the heart and the head of it, that strange mixture of ruthless vengeance and lovableness, Owen Glyndwr, who as a pattern squire, rather scholarly and very hospitable, spent many quiet years, living sometimes here at Glyndyfrdwy beside the Dee and sometimes at his other house at Sycharth, and then suddenly, at the touch of injustice, unfurled the red dragon of Uther and became the implacable devastator whose name meets us in every ruin in Wales. Nothing remains now of his house, for Prince Hal descended upon it one day, and, having left it level with the ground, wrote to his “very dear and entirely beloved” Wardens of the Marches to tell them all about it. After describing the burning of Sycharth and of many houses round it he goes on: “Then we went straight away to his other place of Glyndourdy, to seek for him there. There we burnt a fine lodge in his park, and all the country round; and we remained there all that night.” Above the spot where the fine lodge stood is a curious tumulus crowned with firs, quite close to the road. It is known as Owen’s Mount, not because he made it, for it is far older than he, but because there is a story that he used it as a kind of watch-tower. It was at Corwen, some say, that he first raised his standard; but the other memories of him here are legendary and trivial.

From Corwen to wild Cerrig-y-Druidion—the Rock of the Druids—the road rises steadily, and leads to nothing of note but the lovely little Pass of Glyndyffws, a deep and narrow defile of sudden unexpected beauty that connects two tracts of rather dull country. Here, where the Ceirw flings itself into the ravine from a great height and foams among the rocks far below us, Telford has thoughtfully supplied us with several little recesses in the wall from which to enjoy the view. I have heard that he cut his name in the stone of one of them, but I have never been able to find it. Perhaps it was to his name that George Borrow objected when he came here and laughed at “Mr. T.” for being eager for immortality. There was no need for Telford to be over-anxious about his immortality; nor yet, indeed, was there any for Borrow to flout him because he was not a Welsh bard!

Tyn-y-nant, where “little Dick Vickers,” late of Shrewsbury Mail, hanged himself rather exclusively, is a place of a dreary sort; and so is Cerrig-y-Druidion; and so, most of all, is the straight road from Cerrig to Cernioge, a piece of road that catches all the winds of heaven, and always seems longer than it was last time. Open the throttle here, and be thankful—if the weather be cold—that your good engine is humming before you, and is making a better pace than the eleven miles an hour of which the shivering travellers on this road used to boast. Cernioge is to us merely an unkempt farmhouse, but to them it meant a fire and hot drinks, for it was once a posting-house of considerable renown.

At Cernioge begins the descent into the valley of the Conway; and it is here that we first see, stretched out before us like the Promised Land, the distant grandeur of Snowdonia, the wild, impenetrable fortress of the Welsh and the trap of the invading English. When Pentre Voelas is passed the beauty grows and grows, mile by mile, and we are gently gliding down into the very heart of it; wild crags to the right of us, and before and below us a sea of woodland, valley beyond valley and hill beyond hill. There is one turn of the road where nearly every car draws up. The valley of the Conway lies at our feet, with here and there the river shining through the trees; the Lledr Valley stretches away and merges into the distant moors; Moel Siabod’s peak rises at the end of it; and over Siabod’s shoulder appears, on a clear day, a wedge-shaped corner of Snowdon, faintly blue. I have seen this view at many times of the year, and the best time of all is May.

For the woods that are at our feet, the woods that gave its name to Bettws-y-Coed, the Chapel in the Wood, are at their best in May, when every tree has its own individual shade of colour, the larch its tender green, and the budding oak its pink and gold. But, indeed, Bettws is always lovely. Nothing can spoil its innate simplicity; not even the smart hats and parasols that look so incongruous in its little street in July and August. It exists only for tourists; there are several good hotels, and, roughly speaking, all the other houses are lodgings; yet in spite of all, Bettws is a village still. Those who like to settle down comfortably and motor round a centre, instead of touring from place to place, will find this much the most central and convenient spot from which to explore North Wales. And in any case, I think we must stay here for a night or two. We must drive to Rhuddlan and Conway and Dolwyddelan; we must stand on the Pont-y-Pair and watch the tempestuous Llugwy; we must inspect David Cox’s famous signboard at the Royal Oak; and in the evening, when the dusky yews are all in shadow, we must sit in the churchyard beside the Conway, where the great artist loved to paint. The church—the “Chapel in the Wood”—is uncouth and bare, and not improved by modern windows; but it has stood here for many centuries, and among its ugly pews we realise with a thrill that the tomb at our feet holds the dust of a prince of Llewelyn’s house.

THE OLD CHAPEL, BETTWS-Y-COED.

THE LLUGWY AT BETTWS-Y-COED.

This is the country of Llewelyn the Great. On one side of us is the valley that tradition names as his birthplace; on the other the valley where he was buried. His grave we cannot see, for his burial-place at Aberconwy was desecrated when Edward I. built his great castle; but on the way from Bettws to Rhuddlan we may pause at the church of Llanrwst and see there, on the floor of Inigo Jones’s chapel of the Wynnes, the coffin of stone that once held the bones of the greatest of the Welsh princes. There are a good many interesting things here—things much older than the church itself; but not the least pleasing, I think, is the Latin epitaph that the former rector composed, with a pretty wit, for his own tomb. It has been thus translated:—

“Once the undeserving schoolmaster,

Then the more undeserving lecturer,

Last of all the most undeserving rector of this parish.

Do not think, speak, or write anything evil of the dead.”

If we are going to Rhuddlan it will not be necessary for us to cross the shaking bridge, designed—perhaps—by Inigo Jones. I see no object in a bridge shaking, myself, but there are always those at hand who for a consideration will shake you the bridge if it gives you pleasure. Our way, however, lies to the right, up a winding hill three miles in length, with an average gradient of 1 in 12. It is a serious climb; but the backward view of the mountain range beyond the Conway is magnificent—a view of rather a rare quality, and not often seen by those who depend upon horses’ legs or their own. The road that crosses the top of the hills runs through scenery of rather a commonplace type; then, as we drop down into Abergele the Morfa Rhuddlan lies before us like a map—a dull map—with fashionable Rhyl in the distance; and from Abergele to Rhuddlan the road is surely the straightest and flattest that ever was seen.

The ivy-smothered towers of Rhuddlan Castle stand on the banks of the Clwyd. That great statesman and soldier, Edward I., being weary of the “Welsh Question,” determined to get the affair finished once for all; so he rebuilt this castle, settled down here with his Court and family, conquered the country, made its laws, and saw that they were carried out. There is a remnant still standing of the house where he held his parliament and “secured its independence to the Principality of Wales.” These words, though not Edward’s, are quite in the spirit of his little jokes. It was here that he played his historical practical joke upon the Welsh nation, when he promised them a prince who was a native of Wales and could not speak a word of English—and then showed them the baby. There is nothing for us to see inside this castle, for Cromwell altogether dismantled it, and its heavy green towers, though impressive enough as being the grave of Welsh independence, are not nearly so typical of the “ruthless king” as his great fortresses of Carnarvon and Harlech and Conway.

Conway is only seventeen miles away, and we may see it on our return journey to Bettws, by driving back to Abergele, where there is a nice old posting-house, and thence passing on above Colwyn Bay. Five hundred years ago another traveller came by this way from Conway: a poor, duped, heart-sick king riding helplessly to imprisonment and mysterious death. It was at Conway that Bolingbroke’s messenger Northumberland, a man of a most treacherous heart, met Richard II. with solemn vows of friendship; and along this coast that they rode together, still smiling, the knave and the fool, to Rhuddlan and Flint, where Bolingbroke’s army lay waiting on the sands o’ Dee. Those splendid walls and towers of Conway that we see beyond the estuary, piled high above the water-side, were Richard II.’s last refuge. From that day forward every roof that sheltered him was a prison.

All through the history of Wales this estuary has played an important part. Long, long before Edward’s magnificent towers rose over the desecrated burial-place of the great Llewelyn there was a castle guarding the river-mouth at Deganwy. We can see its fragments still if we choose to drive round that way before crossing to Conway; but there is only a remnant left, a few stones on a hillside facing the sea—stones that tell of Maelgwyn of the sixth century, and of Norman Robert, lord of Rhuddlan, who rebuilt Maelgwyn’s fortress and met his death there, and of King John of England, who was starved out by the Welsh. Robert of Rhuddlan’s death was picturesque, and, I imagine, well deserved. This was the manner of it. He was still employed in rebuilding the Welsh castle of Deganwy for the harrying of the people to whom it really belonged, when one day he fell asleep—a rash thing to do in those days and in that place. Then came Griffith, Prince of Gwynedd, with his ships, and stole all Robert’s cattle, and was just setting sail again when Robert awoke and saw what was going forward. Down this steep bank below the castle he dashed to the shore, and fought desperately, with only one follower to support him; but soon died, of course, by the spears of the Welsh. Griffith nailed his head to the mast and sailed away; then, when the Normans chased him, flung it into the sea before their eyes.

As for King John, when he in his turn tried to strengthen the fortress of Deganwy, he was glad enough to escape with his wicked head on his shoulders. He had come into Wales “minded to destroy all that had life within the country”; but he departed, we are told, in a great fury, leaving a large proportion of his army behind him for Llewelyn to bury. For the Welsh had cut off all the supplies of the English, “so that in time they were glad to take up with horseflesh or anything, were it never so mean, which might fill up their greedy and empty stomachs.” So says Caradoc of Llancarvan. Other historians give us a letter written on the spot by a certain knight, a man of parts, of whose life and letters one would like to know more. He describes the royal army as “watching, fasting, praying, and freezing. We watch,” he continues, “for fear of the Welsh.... We fast for want of provisions.... We pray that we may speedily return safe and scot-free home; and we freeze for want of winter garments, having but a thin linen shirt to keep us from the wind.” This vivid letter-writer goes on to tell us of the spoiling of Aberconwy Abbey and the burning of all the valuable old Welsh records there, and he shows a good deal of nice feeling in the matter.

It was on the ruins of Aberconwy that Edward’s glorious castle rose later on to overawe the Welsh. This Castle of Conway is the most beautiful of all Henry de Elfreton’s works, I think; more beautiful in itself even than Harlech; and we can well believe, as we drive across the bridge and under the great machicolated town gate, that in early days it could only be taken by the help of guile or famine. Glyndwr’s men won their way in by disguising one of their number as a carpenter, and to dislodge them Hotspur, finding his engines useless, was obliged to starve them out. During the Civil War the castle was held for the King by the Archbishop of York, an extremely “muscular Christian,” who on being superseded in his command felt the slight so deeply that he joined Mytton the Roundhead, and himself led the assault! And these great walls, fifteen feet in thickness, yielded at last. As one climbs the long flight of steps to the entrance with all these things in one’s mind there is something almost overwhelming in the grandeur of these strong towers.

“A very neat castle,” says Camden.

When we have had our luncheon at the Castle Hotel we must cross the road to Plas Mawr, the town house of the Wynnes of Gwydir, who entertained Queen Elizabeth there more than once, and even decorated her rooms with appropriate symbols, royal arms, and monograms. The plaster mouldings in this house are its special feature: fireplaces, ceilings, walls, all are ornamented with them, and in each room the design is different. One cannot, however, enjoy the mouldings and the oak furniture and the priests’ hiding-hole and the lantern window with an undivided mind, for the Plas Mawr ghost—unconventional soul!—walks by daylight.

CONWAY CASTLE.

THE PASS OF NANT FFRANCON.

We leave Conway by the road that follows the western bank of the river, for by so doing we secure an impressive backward view of the old town walls, which is ample compensation for the steep ascent that soon carries us out of sight. Moreover this road, after a few more hills and a few more miles of level going, with a view up the valley that grows lovelier every moment, will lead us to Trefriew, a dear little watering-place with a good hotel. The tiny church here has no outward attractions; it has not even any appearance of age. Yet it has its own romance; for it is said that when the English wife of Llewelyn the Great—Joan, the daughter of King John—found the severe climb to the old church of Llanrhychwyn too much for her, her thoughtful husband built this one for her at the foot of the hill. Those who do not share her feelings may still see, on the heights above the village, the yet older church where Llewelyn worshipped before his wife objected to the walk. And beyond it again, on the wild hill-top, is Llyn Geirionydd, on whose shores lived Taliesin, the Bard of the Radiant Brow, the most famous of all the Welsh bards.

Between Trefriew and Bettws there are but a few miles of level road and very lovely scenery. Gwydir Castle, the old house of the Wynnes, stands between us and the river, and may be seen when Lord Carrington is away. It is full, I believe, of carvings and tapestry and relics of history. Queen Elizabeth stayed here, and Leicester, and Charles I.

But here among these wild Welsh hills Elizabeth’s starched ruff and Charles’s curls strike one as a little out of place. We may find memories of Elizabeth—who seems to have slept in as many different places as a motorist—in half the towns and big houses of England. This is the country of the Kings of Gwynedd.

We saw the Lledr Valley stretched out before us as we came down the hill from Pentre Voelas to Bettws. But that bird’s-eye view of it gives one no idea at all of its extreme beauty; of the towering height of its steep slopes, now bare and rocky, now richly wooded: of its brilliant colouring and deep purple shadows. At the head of it, where its beauty is partly spoiled by quarries and all their works, is Dolwyddelan village; and beyond that again, standing alone among the desolate hills, is the stern tower where Llewelyn the Great, the “eagle of men,” is believed to have been born. It is only a square tower now, and though it once had two towers it was never a place of any size; for Dolwyddelan and Dolbadarn, the two mountain strongholds of the princes of Gwynedd, did not rely upon their own strength, but on the great bewildering hills that defended them on every side. Thus it was that this small fortress was the last to yield to Edward I. And while remembering Llewelyn here do not let us forget to dedicate one sigh to his poor father, Iorwerth Drwyndwn—of the broken nose—who, when that unfortunate feature kept him from his princedom, was given this country and its tower by way of compensation.

It is the custom to return to Bettws from this point, for reasons that a glance at the Contour Book may perhaps explain. But the fashion has been set, I think, by bicyclists, whom one really cannot blame for shirking the hill that rises between Dolwyddelan and Maentwrog. Here let me assure motorists that there is little reason why they should miss the wild beauty of the moors above this point; the rolling expanse of brown and purple bogland, the endless succession of hills, the grand outline of Moel Siabod. For though the road is certainly steep the surface is excellent, except for a mile or so above Blaenau Festiniog, that strange town on the mountain ledge that entirely owes its existence to the neighbouring quarries, and yet is more than a mile long and has three railway stations. There is no need to brave the hill again to return to Bettws, for the road by Maentwrog, Penrhyndeudraeth, and the Pass of Aberglaslyn is one of the loveliest in Wales, and though we shall come down the Pass by and by there is no hardship in going over the ground twice. It is worth remembering, too, that at Maentwrog it is possible, if time allows, to cross the valley and approach the famous toy railway-line at its prettiest point, Tan-y-Bwlch, where a lake lies hidden among the woods, and where we may have tea on the grass close beside the water, facing a scene of rich colouring and deep, cool shadows.

All this, however, is a digression. It is highly probable that the great majority of motorists will look at the Contour Book and return to Bettws from Dolwyddelan. They will have the advantage of seeing the Lledr Valley from a new point of view.

Now in the Snowdon country there are three great passes through the mountains to the sea: the Passes of Nant Ffrancon, Llanberis, and Nant Gwynant combined with Aberglaslyn. It is hard to say which is the most beautiful of the three; and it is quite imperative, and also quite easy, to see them all by pursuing rather a zigzag course. Nant Ffrancon is the route of the Holyhead Road and the nearest to Bettws: so we will go down by Nant Ffrancon, and come up again by Llanberis on the same day; and on the next start off again by way of Nant Gwynant and Aberglaslyn, passing through Bedd Gelert.

The road climbs out of Bettws through a thick wood beside the rushing Llugwy, and soon draws near the Swallow Falls.[7] This triple fall is only a stone’s-throw from the road, and it is worth while to follow the slippery path across the pine-needles, and stand for a moment in the pricking spray watching the commotion. In the thick of the hubbub they say the spirit of Sir John Wynne, which left this mortal coil early in the seventeenth century, is being “purged, punished, and spouted upon”; though I have never heard anything definite against him except that he was “shrewd and successful.” He was a member of that Court of the Marches of which we heard so much at Ludlow, and he left a very valuable record of his family behind him.

This bit of country between Bettws and Capel Curig is one of the gems of North Wales. Moel Siabod towers above us; and beyond it soon appears that cloud-capped peak whose name quickens every Welsh heart—the rallying-point of heroes, the symbol and stronghold of the liberties of Wales. The finest view of Snowdon is from Capel Curig, where the double peak is reflected in the double lake.

Our road, still climbing, turns to the right in Capel Curig and takes us up into the heart of the hills, through a scene of splendid desolation—bare heights, huge boulders tossed and heaped upon the ground, jagged outlines, and dark sullen colours—a land that was vastly disconcerting to those travellers of an earlier day whose idea of beauty was “a smiling landscape.” As we reach the summit and see the waters of Llyn Ogwen below us, sapphire-blue or lead-grey according to circumstances, the great sides of Tryfaen and the Glydyrs tower on the left. Beyond the lake Alla Wen rises steeply. “A horrid spot of hills,” says a seventeenth-century writer. “The most dreadful horse-path in Wales,” says Pennant; and that indeed it may well have been before Telford came here to perform his miracles of engineering. “The district through which the surveys were carried is mountainous,” he says quietly; “and I found the existing roads very imperfect.” When we have passed Llyn Ogwen, and the cottage where food is to be had if necessary, and the sudden turning over the bridge, and are swinging down the gentle slope of Nant Ffrancon high up on the mountain-side, we must surely give nearly as much admiration to this road which descends for ten miles with no steeper gradient than 1 in 15 as we give to the wide Valley of the Beavers below us. Above us the mountain is a mass of grey boulders, of scars and landslips; below us it sweeps down precipitously to where the little Ogwen dances like a streak of quicksilver. Presently we pass under the hideous excrescence of the Penrhyn slate quarries, grey terraces of rubbish contrasting cruelly with the glowing gorse of the opposite slopes; and then through the equally hideous town of slate, Bethesda, the miners’ town, whose slate walls, slate steps, and slate porches are enough, as Dr. Johnson, would say, “to make a man hang himself.” Let us hurry on into the Cochwillan Woods.

Very soon after passing the modern towers of Penrhyn Castle we reach the town of Bangor, “which for the beauty of its situation, was called Ban-cor, the high or conspicuous choir.” It is not a very inviting place, nevertheless, and there is no need to pause here, for even the cathedral is not beautiful. It has had a great deal to bear; for it was burnt by Harold the Saxon, and again by King John, and again by Owen Glyndwr; and no doubt the castle built by Hugh, Earl of Chester, suffered on one or all of these occasions, for Camden says, “though he made diligent inquiry he could not discover the least footsteps” of it. The original cathedral was founded by St. Deiniol in the sixth century, and beneath it is buried the great Welsh prince Owen Gwynedd, hero of many battles, who fought here on the heights above the straits a fight so desperate that “the Menai could not ebb on account of the torrent of blood which flowed into it.” Before we go on to Carnarvon we must cross those straits, for the sake of the bridge, and of the view, and of Beaumaris.

It was in the year 1826 that the mail-coach, swaying under its burden of excited officials, rolled slowly for the first time over the Menai Bridge. It was a brave scene. Telford, in his modest way, had pleaded against a formal procession, but he could not check personal enthusiasm nor prevent the mustering of that long, long line of carriages and horsemen and thousands on foot, which followed the Royal London and Holyhead Mail, amid the fluttering of flags and the firing of guns, and the roaring of a gale. Nor yet could he control the shouts that rose above the wind when he himself passed by in an inconspicuous carriage.

As soon as we reach the sacred shore of Mona, the last home of the Druids, we turn sharply to the right; unless, indeed, we have a mind to pursue the Holyhead road for a couple of miles, for the pleasure of telling our friends that we have seen Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwryndrobwllantysiliogogogoch. I once heard a rumour that this place was to be connected by rail with Pontrhydfendigaedmynachlogfawr, but as the scheme may come to nothing perhaps it would be wiser not to mention it.

From the shore road to Beaumaris we see the whole grand panorama of the Gwynedd mountains, height beyond height and range beyond range, from the pale distant peak of Snowdon to the dark shadows of steep Penmaenmawr. It is a scene that has a quality of strangeness in it. One looks at it from the outside, as it were; for Anglesey, which once was green with the sacred groves of the Druids, is now, as it was in the days of Giraldus Cambrensis, “an arid and stony land, rough and unpleasant in its appearance.” One feels, on this flat shore, worlds away from that beautiful country beyond the strait. On a day of sunshine and cloud, when the mountains are glowing with every imaginable colour and seem every moment to be changing their shapes under the moving shadows, it is worth driving many a mile to sit on the beach of Beaumaris.

Behind us, close at hand, is Beaumaris Castle; opposite to us, across the water, is “Aber of the white shells,” where Llewelyn the Great held his Court, and where his English wife died; and a little further along the Anglesey shore to our left is Llanfaes, where he buried her “with dire lamentation and no little honour,” and built over her grave a monastery that was altogether destroyed by Henry IV. Poor Joan’s coffin must have been through many changes before the sad day when it occurred to some thrifty farmer that the queer old stone trough would do finely for his cattle to drink out of. It was fortunately discovered early in the last century, and another watering-trough having been found for the cows, it was placed in safety in the garden at Baron Hill.

Beaumaris Castle does not make so brave a show as most of Edward’s fortresses; but its ten low towers and its double line of defence were no doubt formidable enough before their thick drapery of ivy gave them so soft an air. The rusty iron rings that hang on the outer wall give one of those little touches of the commonplace that bring the past so near. Edward I. cut a canal and filled the moat of Beaumaris Castle from the sea, and so the ships that brought supplies to the garrison were moored and unladed at the very walls.

The shores of the Menai have seen a vast amount of fighting of a very desperate kind, from the days when the Druids stood at bay here to the time when Edward I. bridged the strait with boats and was badly beaten by the last Llewelyn. And as we re-cross the bridge and look down at the ancient little church of Llandysilio so far below us, we may remember another scene—peaceful in itself but not unconnected with bloodshed—when on a hill near here, Archbishop Baldwin and that delightful chronicler Giraldus induced many persons, by persuasive discourses, to “take the cross.”

THE MENAI BRIDGE, FROM ANGLESEY.

CARNARVON CASTLE.

From the other side of the Menai, on the Carnarvon road, the view is, of course, comparatively tame; but we have only eight miles to travel before reaching Carnarvon, and on a level road they are soon disposed of.

It is difficult to realise at the first moment that the well-preserved, clean walls upon which one comes so suddenly in the middle of Carnarvon were raised by Edward I.; though that king himself stands above the gateway, with his hand on the sword that worked so hard. This is the greatest of his castles; he chose it for the birthplace of his son, and chose it too, apparently, to be the monument and symbol of himself. Nothing could be a more fitting emblem of the unyielding strength of the king who built castles in Wales almost as profusely as other men build them in Spain. On this, the town side of it, one is more struck with its strength than with its beauty. To see it at its best one must cross the bridge, and from the other side of the river-mouth look at the huge bulk of it; the long line of the curtain-wall reflected in the water; the great octagonal towers, with their clusters of slender turrets; the unutterable repellent air of it. There are no windows in these cold walls; no ivy or very little, to soften their austerity. Even from this side, though the water and the shipping give it picturesque surroundings, I think Carnarvon Castle is not beautiful so much as impressive. When Queen Eleanor entered it through the gate still called the Queen’s she did not see it as it stands now, for it was finished by her son, who was born in the castle soon after her arrival. A little room in the Eagle Tower is shown as his birthplace; but those who have read the local records declare it to be proved beyond doubt that the tower was without a roof till the baby in question, Edward II., put a roof on it himself.

It is surprisingly well preserved. This, no doubt, is partly because it has never been overcome by any more destructive agent than the starvation of its garrison. Glyndwr besieged it on its landward side, and his French allies attacked it from the sea; but they made little impression upon it, and finally, since time was precious, they thought it wiser to employ their engines elsewhere more profitably, though the garrison within numbered only twenty-eight men, in sore want of provisions.

Between Carnarvon and the Pass of Llanberis lie ten miles of undulating country. But the mountains are towering before us like an impassable wall, growing ever higher and more formidable as we pass Llyn Padarn and Llanberis town, whence the mountain-railway starts for the summit of Snowdon. No doubt the northern shores of Llyn Padarn and of Llyn Peris, which lies beyond it, were once beautiful; but they are now merely a mass of unsightly débris, mountains of broken slate, terrace above terrace of melancholy grey. The southern shore of Llyn Peris, however, at the very foot of the Pass, has kept its own wild beauty, and on a craggy little hill that rises at the lower end “there is yet a pece of a toure,” as Leland says. A very notable piece of a tower it is too; for Dolbadarn was the very centre and heart and ultimate citadel of Welsh freedom from the earliest days. Here Llewelyn, the third and last, kept his brother a prisoner for twenty-three years, and here Owen Glyndwr hid himself whenever it suited him to elude the English, who invariably lost their way among these mountains. It was here, too, that Owen hid his chief enemy, Lord Grey of Ruthin, who had embroiled him with the King of England and caused all the trouble. But this little square grey “pece of a toure” is far older, they say, than Owen or Llewelyn. It is supposed to have been built by Maelgwyn, the same prince who built that first castle at Deganwy which was rebuilt by Robert of Rhuddlan and King John at such large cost to themselves. Maelgwyn, King of Gwynedd in the sixth century, is one of the forceful characters who stand out here and there conspicuously in the rather bewildering host of Cymric princes; a personable man, according to all accounts, and one of great courage and success in battle, yet not without leanings towards the monastic life. He actually became a monk for a time; but no one can have been greatly surprised when he tired of the constraint and took to soldiering again. On the whole I fear he was a truculent creature, for Taliesin, “chief of the bards of the West,” proclaimed, with the ambiguity common to prophets, that—

“A most strange creature should come from the sea-marsh of Rhianedd

As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gywnedd,

His hair, his teeth, and his eyes being as gold.”

And Maelgwyn died of the yellow plague.

DOLBADARN CASTLE.

SNOWDON, FROM CAPEL CURIG.

It is only a little way beyond this point that the actual Pass of Llanberis begins to rise, cleaving its straight course between the mountains to the very foot of Snowdon—“to the Welsh always the hill of hills,” as Borrow says. The highest peak, Y Wyddfa, is not visible from the Pass, but one sharp-edged shoulder in certain lights seems to be within a stone’s-throw of the road. This is the steepest of the three passes near Snowdon, and the one whose name is best known to the world in general. As for beauty—the most beautiful of the three is the one on whose royal blues and imperial purples one’s eyes are actually feasting at the moment. But I would say this: to understand even the elements of the beauty of these hills it is imperative to travel up each of the three passes, for as one climbs up into the heart of the mountains the effect is in every case more beautiful than on the downward journey. On a continuous tour this is of course impossible; and that is one reason why the best way of seeing Snowdonia is to stay for a few days at a centre, such as Bettws, or Capel Curig, or Pen-y-Gwryd.

At one or other of the two latter places it will probably be necessary to spend a night after this run from Bettws to Bangor and Carnarvon. Capel Curig has the finer view, and a hotel that has overlooked Llyn Mymbyr and faced the peaks of Snowdon for many a year. I do not know if it is the same that Sir Walter Scott stayed in and Lockhart described as “a pretty little inn in a most picturesque situation certainly, and as to the matter of toasted cheese, quite exquisite”; but it is without doubt the same that seemed to George Borrow “a very magnificent edifice.” He dined here, he tells us, “in a grand saloon amidst a great deal of fashionable company,” who “surveyed him with looks of the most supercilious disdain.” I strongly suspect that both the fashion and the disdain existed only in a sensitive imagination.

Pen-y-Gwryd is exactly at the junction of the Pass of Llanberis with Nant Gwynant, the valley down which our future course lies; and here too there is a comfortable inn, with memories of Charles Kingsley and the author of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays.” From this point we can start off in the morning without retracing a step.

As one glides down the perfect gradient of this entrancing valley of the Glaslyn, with the very blue waters of Llyn Gwynant glittering below and the sides of Snowdon rising precipitously from the shore on the right, and on the left the wild green slopes climbing up and up from the roadside to the sky, one comes after all to a decision as to the comparative beauty of these passes. Nant Gwynant is the best. The hill is three miles and a half long, and in some places just steep enough to force us to slacken speed and so make the most of our surroundings; then a few miles of undulating road lead past Llyn Dinas and, still by the side of the stony Glaslyn, into the village of Bedd Gelert, which has won fame on false grounds as the burial-place of Llewelyn’s hound. The rough, pathetic tomb, that stands in a meadow and is reached by a path made by the feet of thousands of pilgrims, has a most plausible appearance; but it was, I believe, raised by the forethought of a hotel-keeper—a man who apparently knew his world. No bones of a faithful dog lie here; but if we may not weep over the dust of Gelert we may at all events mourn the loss of a beautiful, but dead, legend. We drive through the village and enter, almost at once, the Pass of Aberglaslyn. The steep part of the road is quite short; but this strange cleft in the rock, this narrow ravine that holds only the river and the road between its cliffs, forms an imposing southern gate to the Snowdon mountains. We pass out of it almost suddenly into the wide, level meadowland of the Traeth Mawr—and may the gorse be in its full glory at the time!

This plain that we are swinging across so happily, this plain of green and gold, was a barren marsh, useless to man or beast, till it was reclaimed in the early part of last century by a certain Mr. Maddox, who gave his name to the two towns that own their existence to him—Portmadoc and Tremadoc. At Tremadoc lived Percy and Harriet Shelley for a little time, while they were still happy. The poet, with characteristic enthusiasm, was fascinated by the great draining-scheme; and in his leisure moments grounded poor Harriet in Latin.

It is here or at Portmadoc that we turn to the right, if we are minded, to explore the little-known peninsula of Lleyn. For some mysterious reason the greater part of this promontory is seldom visited, though it is not by any means without attractions. It cannot, of course, compare in any respect with the dramatic grandeur of the Snowdon country; there are large tracts that might even be called uninteresting; but from the southern uplands the panorama of the mountains of Gwynedd is really magnificent, and on the northern coast the fine outline of Yr Eifl—ridiculously corrupted into the Rivals—rises very grandly from the sea. And when the gorse is in blossom the whole country is veined with gold, for here they make their hedges of gorse, and the air is heavy with its poignant sweetness.

As for the roads, they are mostly good. The roads from Pwllheli to Nevin, to Yr Eifl and Clynnogfawr, and to Aberdaron are all excellent; so also is the one that connects Nevin with Aberdaron; but the “Saints’ Road to Bardsey” from Nevin to Llanaellraiarn should be avoided, since the saints, apparently, employed indifferent engineers.

To reach Pwllheli from Portmadoc we must past through Criccieth, one of the most popular places on this coast, and one that must have been really beautiful before its popularity spoilt it. It has a nice hotel, and is, in any case, a far more attractive stopping-place than the ambitious Pwllheli. The castle, not without dignity, stands aloof upon its abrupt round promontory, facing the rows of modern lodging-house as though they were some new kind of enemy drawn up against it. For that Edwardian gateway has faced many enemies, and the castle still more. Of its original founding I believe nothing is certainly known, but it is older than its gateway, for Llewelyn the Great chose it for the prison of his unruly son, Gryffydd, of whom it was said that “peace was not to be looked for in his neighbourhood.” But, indeed, in those times a strong prison seems to have been the only way of securing peace in any one’s neighbourhood.

Much the most picturesque person who has ever been connected with Criccieth was Sir Howel y Fwyall, or of the Axe. So doughty were his deeds at Poictiers that the Black Prince not only did him honour in the usual ways, with money and knighthood, but gave orders that the pole-axe with which he had done so valiantly should be set up in this castle of Criccieth—of which Howel was Constable—and should be served with a mess of meat daily. Eight yeoman were entrusted with this service, and after the ceremony the meat was given to the poor. The custom was kept up till the reign of Elizabeth.

The name of Pwllheli is well known, if ill-pronounced, in the world of tourists. It aspires to be a fashionable watering-place, and one feels that success may possibly crown its endeavours, when one considers the natural disadvantages of Rhyl and Borth and many another prosperous spot.

A few years ago we should have been obliged, having once passed Criccieth, to spend the night at Pwllheli; but now we shall do well if we rather choose Nevin for our stopping-place. A nice new hotel has been built there—a hotel with no foolish pretensions, but evidently with every intention of gradually becoming a thoroughly comfortable abiding-place for golfers who like quietness. The little town lies close under the shelter of the hills, and between it and the sea is the flat land of the Morfa Nevin, where Edward I. gathered all the chivalry of England and many a foreign noble to celebrate his conquest of Wales in a great tournament.

Nevin is threatened with the railway, which, if it actually approaches the place, will certainly spoil it; but it will be long, I imagine, before any intrusion of that kind disturbs the peace or injures the beauty of little Aberdaron. It is an elect spot, this End of the World in Wales; more remote, less visited than St. David’s, and infinitely less famous; yet once trodden, like St. David’s, by the weary feet of countless pilgrims. For just beyond that low headland on our right is sacred Bardsey, the Island of the Saints, where lies the dust of twenty thousand holy men. St. Mary’s Abbey, of which some fragments still are left, was founded in such early days that Dubritius, who crowned King Arthur and then resigned the See of Caerleon to St. David, came to end his day in this remote monastery; and so holy was the soil at last that every monk in Wales crossed this dangerous channel to kneel upon it. It was here, from these wide, white sands of Aberdaron, that they embarked, half trembling, half inspired—white-robed Cistercians and sombre Benedictines—and here, in this little church between the hills and the sea, that they spent the night on their knees before braving dangers that were not by any means imaginary. The building has been re-roofed and much restored, but these are the very walls within which the pilgrims prayed, the very walls that once gave sanctuary to any man, innocent or guilty, who sought their shelter. The blind wall on the north bears witness to the early British origin of the church.

And we must not forget, as we stand thinking of the pilgrim monks on the shore, that this sheltered, isolated corner, hidden closely by the hills on the one side and protected by the long headlands on the other, was once visited by secular history. Into this bay sailed Hotspur’s father, the base Northumberland, from France, and from Harlech came Owen Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer; and here in the house of the lord of Aberdaron they swore to be thenceforward “bound by the bond of a true league and true friendship and sure and good union,” and to act in all ways as became “good true and faithful friends to good true and faithful friends.”

The fascinations of the Bay of Aberdaron, however, must not blind us to the fact that the finest scenery in the Peninsula, of Lleyn, is in the north. From Pwllheli we should drive across to Llanaellraiarn under the great brow of Yr Eifl, and then, turning to the right, follow the road between the wild, craggy hills and the sea to Clynnogfawr. Here lived and died the great St. Beuno, and the church that bears his name is of a size and importance quite unusual in so tiny a place: “almost as bigge as St. Davides,” says Leland. This large church only dates from the fifteenth century, but the little chapel where St. Beuno is buried is connected with it by a covered way, and was founded by the saint himself in the seventh century. His tomb was still to be seen in Pennant’s day, and had the gift of working miracles, but now both monument and miracles are no more. In the larger church is carefully preserved a strange old chest that is said to have belonged to St. Beuno.

To reach the Traeth Mawr from Clynnog our best way is to go on to Pont-y-Croes, then strike across to Pen-y-Groes, and thence descend to Tremadoc. There is not much to be said in favour of this road’s surface, but the beauty of it increases every moment, and for the last few miles, as we drop gently down on to that plain of gorse that lies like a sheet of flame between two ranges of purple mountains, we have as fine a sight above, below, and before us as any we shall find in Wales. A few minutes later we are in Portmadoc, and from the long embankment there look up the valley of the Glaslyn across the Traeth Mawr to that gate of Gwynedd through which we came a little while ago.

Presently we cross the estuary of the river Dwryd by a toll-bridge. I think this river-bank must be the scene of a touching incident described by Giraldus. He and his Archbishop, recruiting for the Crusades, were met “at the passage of a bridge” between the Traeth Mawr and Llanbedr near Harlech by Meredyth ap Conan, a prince of this country. He brought with him a large suite, and then and there by the river-side the Archbishop preached to them, and “many persons were signed with the Cross.” Among these ardent souls was a personal friend of the young prince. Meredyth, seated higher on the bank than his suite, looked on while the symbolic cross was sewn upon the cloaks of the new crusaders, till it came to the turn of his own friend. Then Meredyth, says Giraldus, “observing that the cloak on which the cross was to be sewn was of too thin and too common a texture, with a flood of tears threw him down his own.”

From the banks of the Dwryd a very level road soon brings us within sight of Harlech. It is a very distant glimpse of it that we have first; an irregular outline, a grey mass of towers standing out against the sky, raised grandly upon a rock above a plain that is nearly as flat as the sea beyond it. Then trees hide it, and we climb through the woods to the level of the great gate before which so many armies have stood before us—armies of Owen and of Henry, of Edward IV., and of Oliver.

NEAR BEDD GELERT.

GATEWAY OF HARLECH CASTLE.

Long, long before Henry de Elfreton, king of architects, built this grand fortress at Edward’s command, a royal castle stood upon this rock. So, at least, says one of the “Mabinogion,” and here, under the spell of the land that created those old romances, I would fain believe that Branwen, the daughter of Llyr, lived at Harlech with her royal brother Bendigeid Vran, and that Matholwch, King of Ireland, came across the sea to woo her, with thirteen ships flying beautiful flags of satin. At the wedding, unfortunately, there was trouble between the two kings; but after a certain amount of friction the banquet was “carried on with joyousness,” and the happy pair journeyed towards Ireland with their thirteen ships. In Ireland Branwen “passed her time pleasantly, enjoying honour and friendship,” which she owed to the fact—we are given to understand—that she presented each of her visitors with a clasp, or a ring, or a royal jewel, “such as it was honourable to be seen departing with.”[8] By and by mischief was made between Matholwch and his wife, and she was sent to the kitchen to cook for the Court, which seems a drastic way of treating a Queen Consort. Then came Bendigeid Vran, her brother, to avenge her, with the hosts of seven score countries and four, and there was war between the two islands because of her. And only seven men of the Welsh escaped, and in Ireland none were left alive except five women. And Branwen went with the seven men of Wales to Mona, and she “looked towards Ireland and towards the Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘woe is me that I was ever born; two islands have been destroyed because of me!’ Then she uttered a loud groan and there broke her heart. And they made her a four-sided grave, and buried her upon the banks of the Alaw.” And her name still lives upon this rock of Harlech in Branwen’s Tower.

Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, was not the last Welsh prince who held his Court here within sight of Snowdon. For Glyndwr made his way in between those great towers after a long siege, during which Henry’s garrison, who were at last reduced to sixteen, locked up their governor because they did not trust his constancy. Glyndwr brought his family here, and held a parliament, and gathered a little Court round him; but after another long siege he lost more than the castle, for his son-in-law Mortimer was killed, and his wife and grandchildren were taken prisoners to London. But it was that later siege by Edward IV.’s army that was the most fierce of all. It was then that the March of the Men of Harlech first stirred the sea-breeze and the hearts of men; and it was then that the blood of six thousand men flowed here where we are standing before the gates. Still later on Harlech held very obstinately for Charles I.

At Harlech we look our last on Snowdon, for the road, high above the sea, soon turns a corner, then dips to the shore at Llanbedr. At this pretty village those who are prepared to face a road that finally becomes little more than a track, and are, moreover, tolerably good walkers, may leave the high-road and drive up into a very wild and beautiful bit of country to Cwm Bychan. I freely admit that the enterprise is more suitable for bicycles than for motors, and I further confess that I have never undertaken it in a car myself; but I should be extremely happy to make the attempt on the first fine day. For Llyn Cwm Bychan is a lovely lake lying among moors and steep, rocky hills; it has the wildness of a loch in Galloway. And the only way out of this hollow in the hills, except the track by which we enter it, is a mighty staircase of stone slabs set regularly in the hillside—a staircase a mile in length, which has withstood time and weather since the feet of the Romans passed this way.

Even the best-advertised car could hardly climb the Roman Steps; so we must rejoin the coast road at Llanbedr and go on our way to Barmouth. There was once a time very long ago, it is said, when all the bay that lies upon our right was a fertile plain, the Plain of Gwaelod, with cities and fortresses thick upon the ground, and a great and busy population, and a king called Gwyddno Longshanks. And because the land lay so low and the sea so close at hand a mighty embankment of stone was built along the shore, and all went well for many a year. But there came a time when the chief overseer of this great dyke was Seithenyn ap Seithyn Saidi, and he, unfortunately, has been known ever since as one of the “three immortal drunkards of the Isle of Britain.” It is easy to imagine the result: the decay of the dyke, and the terrible night when the waters swept all before them and drowned the whole Cantref of Gwaelod. The point of Mochras near Llanbedr was at one extremity of the drowned cantref; and still, when the tide is low, you may sometimes see the long line of the broken dyke. As late as the year 1824 there was a stone in existence which had been found below the sea a hundred yards beyond the shore, and bore an inscription meaning, “Here lies the boatman to King Gwynddo.”[9] I do not know if the stone still exists, but as it was used as a footbridge it probably does not. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this seems, in Wales, to have been considered the best way of using up old monuments. It was certainly the quickest.

Eight miles from Llanbedr is Barmouth. The town itself is becoming every year more entirely a prey to the family group. Every year there are more hotels, more bathing-boxes, more wooden spades. But I doubt if anywhere in England or Wales a town is built in a more beautiful spot. You cannot drive across the long bridge that spans the estuary at its mouth, but you will be a thousandfold repaid if you leave your car and cross the bridge on foot, for the best view—I think I am not too rash in saying the best view in Wales—is from about the middle of the bridge. The Mawddach winds away between two ranges of mountains, on whose grand slopes the brilliant greens and purples, the rich browns and far-away faint blues change every moment under the varying sky. Cader Idris rises on the right in gloomy dignity from the soft drapery of foliage that is flung about his feet. And in the foreground, when the tide is low—and that, I maintain, is the loveliest time—the blue sea is riven with the rosy gold of wet sands, dotted with countless sea-gulls.

A great deal of this we can see as we drive up the estuary on its northern bank to Dolgelley, by an excellent road that clings close under the hills. Every moment the scene changes, and all the changes are good; whether we look across at Cader’s grand shoulder against the sky, or up the valley at the winding water and the distant hills, or overhead on our left at the mountain-sides that rise so steeply from the very road, or even when, the trees hemming us in for a moment, we see only glimpses through them of purple rock or shining river. At Llanelltyd the Mawddach meets the Wnion, and our way lies to the right over the bridge. As we cross the bridge the ruins of Cymmer Abbey lie upon our left on the river-bank—a Cistercian abbey, as we may easily guess, since we know the pretty taste in scenery possessed by that sagacious Order. If the truth were known, I fear we might find that their motive in choosing, as they always did, the loneliest and loveliest spots in the country, was one of self-denial, for the mountainous solitude that we love was in their day regarded with little less than terror. This particular abbey was founded in the last years of the twelfth century, and it was patronised by Llewelyn the Great. Behind it, about two miles away, are the slopes of Nannau, where Owen Glyndwr once went for a walk with his cousin and came back without him.

Owen, as I have already said, was a man of swift and extremely complete vengeance, and treachery made his gorge rise. His cousin, Howel Sele, the lord of Nannau, lived on that hill at the foot of Moel Offrwm, and had little sympathy—so far and so safe was he from the Marcher Lords—with Owen’s overbearing ways. Their relations had been strained, therefore; but when Howel asked his kinsman to visit him at Nannau Owen consented without hesitation—yet not without a coat of mail beneath his outer garment. As they walked in the park with a few retainers they saw a buck at some distance among the trees, and Owen, anxious to please, suggested that Howel should show his well-known prowess with the bow. Howel raised his bow, took aim, paused a moment; then suddenly turned upon his traitor’s heel and shot the arrow straight at the heart of his kinsman. One can picture Owen’s smile as the arrow rang upon the coat of mail that he wore unseen.

Howel went home no more. What dreadful fate befel him no one knows for certain; for probably all his own retainers were killed and Owen’s were too busy to talk. But long afterwards a skeleton was found in a hollow tree quite near the spot where the famous bowman had drawn his bow for the last time. The house of Nannau was burnt to ashes.

Before we cross the bridge to Dolgelley I should like to call attention to a very beautiful drive over the hills between this spot and Maentwrog. Beautiful as it is, it must on no account be substituted for the route by Harlech and the Barmouth Estuary, by those who are travelling in this neighbourhood for the first time; but those who know the estuary well, or those who are staying at Dolgelley and wish for a circular drive, could not do better than go up the Vale of Ganllwyd and over the hills to Trawsfynydd and Maentwrog, lunch at the Tan-y-Bwlch hotel, and return by Harlech.

For the first few miles the road rises through lovely woods; the tempestuous Mawddach shines behind the trees, and beyond it, bounding the narrow valley, are steep and craggy slopes. At Tyn-y-Groes is a charming little hotel, much frequented by fishermen, with a fine view of the Mawddach and the peak of Moel Offrwm; a delightful place to spend a week in summer, since it is within a drive of many of the loveliest parts of Wales, and has itself an outlook of very striking beauty.

Beyond Tyn-y-Groes the scenery grows wilder and the hills more bare; the road rises rather steeply and the surface is not all that could be wished. Presently we pass a turning on the left that would lead us, if we followed it, to the top of that strange colossal flight of steps whose lower end we saw at Cwm Bychan, the way by which the Romans climbed this mountain-side; and soon, as we reach the summit of the hill, the many peaks of the Snowdon range come into sight. After this, as is only to be expected, the view is continuously fine till we drop into Maentwrog on a precipitous gradient, and find ourselves in a valley famed for its beauty.

But we must return to Dolgelley.

“Dolgethle,” says Leland, who favoured phonetic spelling, “is the best village in this commote.” There is not much, if any, of Leland’s Dolgelley left, I imagine; but within the memory of this generation there was still standing a battered little cottage, built half of irregular stone-work and half of timber and plaster, that Leland may well have seen, though very likely it did not interest him nearly as much as it would interest us. It has been replaced by an ironmonger’s shop, and we now supply ourselves with petrol on the spot where “Owen, by the Grace of God Prince of Wales,” held his council, and drew up the instrument that allied him formally with the French. It was now some little time since Henry IV.’s council had written to him scornfully that the power of the rebels was not so great as it was heretofore reported, and that the people of Wales were but of little reputation; for which reason it seemed good to Henry, he said, “not to go thither in person, but by one of our Lords to do punishment on our said rebels.” Henry had said that just three years ago, yet the rebels were still unpunished. The chief rebel, indeed, was now become “our illustrious and most dread Lord, Owen, Prince of Wales,” signing alliances with his royal hand and seal, and receiving a gilded helmet as a gift from the King of France.

At Dolgelley we turn eastwards and make our way back to the English border. As a matter of fact we have not actually reached the limits of North Wales, which is divided from South Wales by the river Dyfi, or Dovey. But for our present purpose it will be more convenient to consider a strip of the North—overlapping our present route—together with a strip of the South, as Mid-Wales, and to return to the border by the laborious but beautiful pass that rises between Dolgelley and Dinas Mawddy.

We have six miles of climbing before us, close under the heights of Cader Idris, through one of the wildest tracts of country in wild Wales, where the road at last rises steeply between rough stone walls across a desolate moor, and a mountain stream dashes below us on the right, and in all probability a flock of little Welsh sheep makes excitedly for the nearest gap. For the Welsh sheep, unlike the sheep of England, has somewhere in its round, woolly head a glimmer of intelligence, and instead of rushing madly past every turning and every gap, knows where it wants to go and goes there with all possible despatch.

At a point six miles above Dolgelley we reach the summit of this precipitous pass, the Bwlch Oerdrws, and the valley lies below us like a gulf. It is a fine scene and a very wild one—wild even when the sun is shining, but still wilder when the great bare hills are looming through driving clouds of rain, and wildest and most beautiful of all when the April snow is glistening upon the April gorse.

The steepest part of the descent, the average gradient of which is between 1 in 7 and 1 in 8, is about two miles long. For the rest of the journey, through Dinas Mawddy and Mallwyd, and up the long climb to Cann Office, and so by Llanfair Caereinion to Welshpool, there is nothing to pause for, except tea at Cann Office. This mysterious name, oddly enough, does not appear on Bartholomew’s map where the place it denotes is called Llangadfan. The little inn there is very popular with fishermen, who seem to have a wonderful knack of securing homely comfort.

Between Cann Office and Welshpool the scenery gradually becomes more English in character, for Welshpool, though not actually on the border, is very near it. “The grounde about the bankes and valley of Severn there is most pleasunt,” says Leland; and “most pleasant,” I think, describes this country perfectly. I cannot do better than end in his words. “And wille I passid this way within a iii miles of Walsch Pole I saw a veri notable hille beyound the valley on the lift hond having iii toppes as iii heddes rising owt of one body.... Communely thei be caullid Brethin Hilles. Not far from thes hilles enterith Shropshir.”

THE MAWDDACH, FROM TYN-Y-GROES HOTEL.

LLANIDLOES.

[THROUGH THE HEART OF WALES]

One may enter Mid-Wales by the Severn Valley, or by Knighton and the Teme. The probability is that one’s action in this matter is entirely regulated by circumstances, but if haply it were possible to be guided simply by charm the road across the wild hills would be the road to choose. For wide moorlands, whatever the season, whatever the weather, never fail to be attractive; whereas the valley of the Upper Severn is extremely variable in its appearance. Indeed, I have seen it look almost uninteresting: though in the spring, when on every hill the fruit blossom is mingled with the piercing green of the budding larches, I know no place where the youth of the year has a more engaging air.

In any case, we must pass through Newtown. Despite its name, despite its modern appearance, the newness of this town is only comparative; for its prosperity waxed, I believe, as that of Caersws waned; and Caersws, a little higher up the valley, was at its zenith in the days of the Romans. We pass it by and by on our right: a mere village now, of no particular attractions on the surface, though no doubt a sufficiently interesting past is buried beneath its soil, for hypocausts have been found here and tesselated pavement, and coins bearing the magic name of Marcus Aurelius and other names less honoured. Less authentic, but more moving, are the associations of the broad meadow on our left, the traditional scene of Sabrina’s flight from—

“the mad pursuit

Of her enragéd stepdame Guendolen,”

and therefore connected for ever with Milton’s exquisite lyric, “Sabrina fair.” This is the “glassy, cool, translucent wave” beneath which the goddess sits; this is “the rushy-fringéd bank” from which—they say—she still sometimes rises at twilight; and here are the cowslips on which she sets “her printless feet” so lightly that they “bend not as she treads.”

Between Llandinam and Llanidloes the scene begins to grow wilder; abrupt hills bare, or patched with gorse, rise from the roadside on our left; we are drawing nearer to the slopes of Plynlimmon. At Llanidloes there is a picturesque old market-place, and the church, founded in the seventh century, has some interesting and beautiful fragments from the Abbey of Cwm Hir; a row of fine Early English arches and some quaint figures on the beams that support the roof.

At Llanidloes we leave the banks of the Severn, and, climbing all the way, pass through a prettily wooded gorge into the valley of another famous river—the river that is more renowned for beauty than any other in England—the Wye. But here at Llangurig the Wye has few charms, for we are at the foot of bleak Plynlimmon, and the river flows through a somewhat dull country that is neither fertile nor wild. Llangurig itself is a desolate, chilly little place, but it has a nice inn; and I believe the fishing is good. About eight miles beyond it we leave the Wye, now a mere mountain stream, at a point that is only four miles from its source, and after this the scenery grows more and more austere, as we skirt the bare sides of Plynlimmon.

Upon those wind-swept slopes the red dragon of Wales was once unfurled; for here Owen Glyndwr, with only five hundred men, was surprised and surrounded by fifteen hundred of the Flemings of Pembrokeshire. He cut his way through them, and left two hundred of them behind him, and left behind him, too, an unshakable belief that he was a wizard indeed.

These heights are not without grandeur. At one point, indeed, there is a very striking and unusual view, where the road is high upon the hillside, and the river, very far below, twists and curls away into the distance through a narrow but extremely level plain. The surface of this main road to Aberystwith is above reproach, but after we turn off to the left on the road to the Devil’s Bridge it is not so good and there are some rather steep hills.

“If pleasant recollections,” says George Borrow, “do not haunt you through life of the noble falls, and the beautiful wooded dingles to the west of the Bridge of the Evil One, and awful and mysterious ones of the monks’ boiling cauldron, the long, savage, shadowy cleft, and the grey, crumbling, spectral bridge, I say boldly that you must be a very unpoetical person indeed.”

The falls, and the wooded dingles, and the monks’ boiling cauldron are still beautiful enough to rouse any poetical feelings that we may possess; but the bridge, alas! is neither crumbling, nor spectral, nor in the least poetical. Three bridges now span the rushing waters of the Mynach, built closely one above the other. The lowest of all, dapper and shining with the cement of the restorer, is the original bridge built by the monks of Strata Florida in the eleventh century and ascribed to the Devil, not from any uncomplimentary feeling towards the monks, but merely because the bridging of the Mynach was no easy matter and demanded a simple explanation. The bridge above this is the one that Borrow calls modern, though it was built in 1735, and now looks older than the first; the topmost and newest of all is quite a recent achievement, and might well appropriate the name of the original structure, since it entirely destroys all the picturesqueness of the scene. No doubt, however, its existence is necessary, for this is the only way across the gorge: and these beautiful wooded hills and deep valleys, with the two tempestuous streams, the Rheiddol and the Mynach, are by no means dependent for their charm on the famous bridge.

The road from this spot to Aberystwith is of a most striking and uncommon character. It is raised high on one side of the bare hill, and overlooks a deep valley, through which the Rheiddol twists and curves. The great hills beyond the valley are richly green in summer, but in the spring are chiefly reddish brown, with streaks of the vivid larch, and here and there a shining patch of gorse. A run of twelve miles, mostly downhill, brings us to Aberystwith.

At the first glance, seen from a distance, it is not unpicturesque. It lies at the end of a valley, with the sea beyond it, and in the heart of it the castle tower stands up conspicuously to remind one that Aberystwith was once something more interesting than a popular watering-place. For once all the resources of England were combined in an attack upon this castle. Guns came from Yorkshire, and timber from the Forest of Dean; huge supplies of arms and various murderous concoctions were sent from Hereford, and a shipload of carpenters landed in the bay to turn the timber into machines of war. There was not a young spark in the country, apparently, but thought it incumbent on him as a man of fashion to join Prince Hal outside the walls of Aberystwith.

Yet the end of all this effort and display was merely comic. Glyndwr’s garrison at last, half starving, agreed to yield the castle upon a certain day unless Owen meanwhile relieved it. The Prince, too hasty, as he sometimes was, went off to London joyfully and received the thanks of Parliament for having secured Aberystwith—at the very moment, had he but known it, when Owen and a relieving force were quietly entering the besieged castle!

This was but one of many sieges suffered by Aberystwith, which was always regarded as a place of much importance; so much so, indeed, that Strongbow’s castle on this spot had been battered into uselessness before the days of Edward I., who had to build another. Prince Henry and Oliver have left little enough of that. What there is of it—some round towers and a piece of the curtain-wall—is more tidy than romantic. To tell the truth, Aberystwith is not a romantic place.

It has been my happy fortune to read some manuscript letters written by a lady from Mid-Wales towards the end of the eighteenth century. This is what she says of Aberystwith—

“I have inquired about Aberystwith, where the Sea is very rough, and no Apothecary near, and most ignorant people in regard to illness, which they are so happy to know nothing of, as the Sea is their ownly Physition.”

This might be useful as a house-agent’s advertisement, if the next sentence were suppressed.

“I think the Sea fogs very unwholesom, but dare not say so, as they are for ever talking about the purity of their air.”

The sea is no longer the only physician at Aberystwith; but the purity of the air is still a topic of conversation.

One of its advantages is that it is only fifteen miles from Ystradfflur or Strata Florida; and though this does not lie upon our route, so short a run is but a slight tribute to pay to a place of such great memories. The drive, moreover, will itself repay us. The road follows the Ystwith most of the way, and crosses it at Trawscoed, where splendid beeches overhang the river and masses of rhododendrons line the banks. There is one formidable hill, with a gradient of 1 in 8, from the top of which there is a fine view of winding river and wooded hills. Soon after leaving the Ystwith we join the Teify near its source.

In the Abbey itself there is little to see, but very much to remember. It was founded in the twelfth century by some Cistercian monks on land given by a Norman; but its foundation is often ascribed to that great prince of South Wales, the Lord Rhys, who was one of its chief benefactors. Once it was the grandest house of worship in all Wales, the burial-place of her southern princes, the depository of her archives; but there is little left to show its past greatness but the unique west doorway and the remains of six side chapels—roofed now with corrugated iron! Behind the south transept is a wedge-shaped strip of ground that was the monks’ cemetery, where, under a stone carved plainly with a cross, lies Cadell, the brother of the Lord Rhys. The large cemetery that holds the dust of eleven Welsh princes is between the Abbey and the river. “The cœmiteri wherin the cunteri about doth buri is veri large,” says Leland, “and meanely waullid with stoone. In it be xxxix great hue trees.” There were originally forty of these yew-trees, and now there are but two or three, so it is hardly likely that one of the survivors should be the tree underneath which Dafydd ap Gwilym, the greatest of Welsh poets, was buried; the tree of which Gruffydd Gryg, his rival, wrote—

“May lightnings never lay thee low

Nor archer cut from thee his bow.”

Mr. Baring-Gould tells us how these two bards were constantly in a state of feud and bitter rivalry, till an ingenious friend put an end to their quarrels by simply telling each of them that the other was dead, and was to be buried at Strata Florida on such-and-such a day—mentioning the same day in both cases. Each of the poets, in the glow of generosity consequent on the death of a hated rival, composed a beautiful ode in praise of his enemy, and proceeded to the churchyard to read it beside the grave. There, of course, they met; and each, determined to read his ode at any cost, forthwith read it to the hero of it, and buried his enmity instead of his enemy.

It was somewhere within that “meanely waullid” cemetery that this quaint scene took place; and it was somewhere within these precincts that a thousand frightened children crowded together long ago, waiting to be carried away from their parents and homes in Cardiganshire to the exile in England to which Henry IV. had doomed them. That is an ill-omened name in Ystradfflur—the name of Henry Bolingbroke—for in his fury at the rebellion of Glyndwr he fell upon this sacred place and ruined it, and drove out its monks, and stabled his horses at its High Altar.

To reach Machynlleth, which is our object, we must return to Aberystwith—but we may do this by a slightly different road, diverging at Trawscoed. The surface is better than that of the other, and the road is wider, but there is one bad hill, with a nominal gradient of 1 in 7. As we approach Aberystwith we see, beyond the river, a little place called Llanbadarn Fawr. Here, in very early times, long before the great days of Ystradfflur, there was a famous monastery, founded by St. Padarn, a contemporary of St. David. Like St. David’s own monastery, it was laid waste by the Danes.

ARCHWAY AT STRATA FLORIDA.

NEAR GLANDOVEY.

Passing through Aberystwith we climb out of it on the further side by a long hill. Except the wide view from this hill there is nothing of special attraction in any way till we have passed Tal-y-bont. Then suddenly there comes into sight the headland beyond the Dyfi (Dovey). Far away on the left is the sea, and between us and it lies a wide and absolutely level plain, with Borth showing darkly on the shore. Soon we pass Tre-Taliesin, named from the great bard of Arthur’s day, whose grave is said by some to lie on this hillside to the right, and by others to be beside the waters of Geirionydd. Beyond this village we climb through lovely woods of birch and larch, and then we run down, leaving the trees behind us, into the beautiful estuary of the Dyfi. A wide sea of gorse is at out feet; the river winds through the shallows beyond; and, bounding the valley and the view, rises the mighty wall of North Wales.