Bloudie Jacke! To gain it one's forced for to creep;The Portcullis is strong, and the Drawbridge is long,
And the water runs all round the Keep;
At a peep You can see that the moat's very deep!
So rhymed the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, when in his "Legend of Shropshire" he described the red stone fortress that towers over the loop of the Severn enclosing the picturesque old town of Shrewsbury. The castle, or rather its keep, for the outworks have disappeared, has been modernized past antiquarian value now. Memories of its importance as the key of the Northern Marches, and of the ancient custom of girding the knights of the shire with their swords by the sheriffs on the grass plot of its inner court, still remain. The town now stands on a peninsula girt by the Severn. On the high ground between the narrow neck stood the castle, and under its shelter most of the houses of the inhabitants. Around this was erected the first wall. The latest historian of Shrewsbury8 tells us that it started from the gate of the castle, passed along the ridge at the back of Pride Hill, at the bottom of which it turned along the line of High Street, past St. Julian's Church which overhung it, to the top of Wyle Cop, when it followed the ridge back to the castle. Of the part extending from Pride Hill to Wyle Cop only scant traces exist at the back of more modern buildings.
The town continued to grow and more extensive defences were needed, and in the time of Henry III, Mr. Auden states that this followed the old line at the back of Pride Hill, but as the ground began to slope downwards, another wall branched from it in the direction of Roushill and extended to the Welsh Bridge. This became the main defence, leaving the old wall as an inner rampart. From the Welsh Bridge the new wall turned up Claremont Bank to where St. Chad's Church now stands, and where one of the original towers stood. Then it passed along Murivance, where the only existing tower is to be seen, and so along the still remaining portion of the wall to English Bridge, where it turned up the hill at the back of what is now Dogpole, and passing the Watergate, again joined the fortifications of the castle.9 The castle itself was reconstructed by Prince Edward, the son of Henry III, at the end of the thirteenth century, and is of the Edwardian type of concentric castle. The Norman keep was incorporated within a larger circle of tower and wall, forming an inner bailey; besides this there was formerly an outer bailey, in which were various buildings, including the chapel of St. Nicholas. Only part of the buildings on one side of the inner bailey remains in its original form, but the massive character of the whole may be judged from the fragments now visible.
These walls guarded a noble town full of churches and monasteries, merchants' houses, guild halls, and much else. We will glance at the beauties that remain: St. Mary's, containing specimens of every style of architecture from Norman downward, with its curious foreign glass; St. Julian's, mainly rebuilt in 1748, though the old tower remains; St. Alkmund's; the Church of St. Chad; St. Giles's Church; and the nave and refectory pulpit of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. It is distressing to see this interesting gem of fourteenth-century architecture amid the incongruous surroundings of a coalyard. You can find considerable remains of the domestic buildings of the Grey Friars' Monastery near the footbridge across the Severn, and also of the home of the Austin Friars in a builder's yard at the end of Baker Street.
In many towns we find here and there an old half-timbered dwelling, but in Shrewsbury there is a surprising wealth of them—streets full of them, bearing such strange medieval names as "Mardel" or "Wyle Cop." Shrewsbury is second to no other town in England in the interest of its ancient domestic buildings. There is the gatehouse of the old Council House, bearing the date 1620, with its high gable and carved barge-boards, its panelled front, the square spaces between the upright and horizontal timbers being ornamented with cut timber. The old buildings of the famous Shrewsbury School are now used as a Free Library and Museum and abound in interest. The house remains in which Prince Rupert stayed during his sojourn in 1644, then owned by "Master Jones the lawyer," at the west end of St. Mary's Church, with its fine old staircase. Whitehall, a fine mansion of red sandstone, was built by Richard Prince, a lawyer, in 1578–82, "to his great chardge with fame to hym and hys posterite for ever." The Old Market Hall in the Renaissance style, with its mixture of debased Gothic and classic details, is worthy of study. Even in Shrewsbury we have to record the work of the demon of destruction. The erection of the New Market Hall entailed the disappearance of several old picturesque houses. Bellstone House, erected in 1582, is incorporated in the National Provincial Bank. The old mansion known as Vaughan's Place is swallowed up by the music-hall, though part of the ancient dwelling-place remains. St. Peter's Abbey Church in the commencement of the nineteenth century had an extraordinary annexe of timber and plaster, probably used at one time as parsonage house, which, with several buttressed remains of the adjacent conventual buildings, have long ago been squared up and "improved" out of existence. Rowley's mansion, in Hill's Lane, built of brick in 1618 by William Rowley, is now a warehouse. Butcher Row has some old houses with projecting storeys, including a fine specimen of a medieval shop. Some of the houses in Grope Lane lean together from opposite sides of the road, so that people in the highest storey can almost shake hands with their neighbours across the way. You can see the "Olde House" in which Mary Tudor is said to have stayed, and the mansion of the Owens, built in 1592 as an inscription tells us, and that of the Irelands, with its range of bow-windows, four storeys high, and terminating in gables, erected about 1579. The half-timbered hall of the Drapers' Guild, some old houses in Frankwell, including the inn with the quaint sign—the String of Horses, the ancient hostels—the Lion, famous in the coaching age, the Ship, and the Raven—Bennett's Hall, which was the mint when Shrewsbury played its part in the Civil War, and last, but not least, the house in Wyle Cop, one of the finest in the town, where Henry Earl of Richmond stayed on his way to Bosworth field to win the English Crown. Such are some of the beauties of old Shrewsbury which happily have not yet vanished.
Not far removed from Shrewsbury is Coventry, which at one time could boast of a city wall and a castle. In the reign of Richard II this wall was built, strengthened by towers. Leland, writing in the time of Henry VIII, states that the city was begun to be walled in when Edward II reigned, and that it had six gates, many fair towers, and streets well built with timber. Other writers speak of thirty-two towers and twelve gates. But few traces of these remain. The citizens of Coventry took an active part in the Civil War in favour of the Parliamentary army, and when Charles II came to the throne he ordered these defences to be demolished. The gates were left, but most of them have since been destroyed. Coventry is a city of fine old timber-framed fifteenth-century houses with gables and carved barge-boards and projecting storeys, though many of them are decayed and may not last many years. The city has had a fortunate immunity from serious fires. We give an illustration of one of the old Coventry streets called Spon Street, with its picturesque houses. These old streets are numerous, tortuous and irregular. One of the richest and most interesting examples of domestic architecture in England is St. Mary's Hall, erected in the time of Henry VI. Its origin is connected with ancient guilds of the city, and in it were stored their books and archives. The grotesquely carved roof, minstrels' gallery, armoury, state-chair, great painted window, and a fine specimen of fifteenth-century tapestry are interesting features of this famous hall, which furnishes a vivid idea of the manners and civic customs of the age when Coventry was the favourite resort of kings and princes. It has several fine churches, though the cathedral was levelled with the ground by that arch-destroyer Henry VIII. Coventry remains one of the most interesting towns in England.
One other walled town we will single out for especial notice in this chapter—the quaint, picturesque, peaceful, placid town of Rye on the Sussex coast. It was once wooed by the sea, which surrounded the rocky island on which it stands, but the fickle sea has retired and left it lonely
