CHAPTER FIVE 

 SHROPSHIRE 



Even our cousins from America, flying travel- 

 lers though they be, intent on seeing the cream 

 of Europe in a month and England in a week, 

 may yet take back with them across the sea the 

 picture of a Shropshire pigeon-house. Let 

 them, upon their way to Chester, call at Shrews- 

 bury for anhour or two; and, having admired to 

 the full that fine old Border town, where you may 

 listen to Welsh sermons on a Sunday, hear 

 Welsh spoken freely in the streets on market- 

 days, — then let them ask to be directed to 

 Whitehall, a sixteenth-century mansion of the 

 suburbs, lying a little way across the English 

 Bridge and close beside the Abbey Church. 

 Here they will find as fair a dovecote as the 

 county has to show, — and that is saying much. 

 Just as these words are being written the old 

 house is undergoing conversion into an hotel. 

 Its builder and first owner, Richard Prince, a 

 *'proud Salopian"ofElizabethandays, thought 

 little, as herearedhisstately dwelling where the 

 Abbey grange had stood, that it would one day 

 harbour the chance guest, who comes and calls 



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