m3 
CATTON AND CROXALL, JULY 111TH. 
Leader—T. G1BBs. 
A small party drove to Croxall, via Drakelowe, Walton, and 
Catton. At the last named place they were met by the 
Right Rev. Bishop Staley, Vicar of Croxall, and, under his guid- 
ance, they inspected the chapel and grounds, seeing in the latter 
some remains of the old chapel pulled down in the last century. 
A further short drive took the party to Croxall, and here, under 
the same experienced guidance, the interesting and picturesque 
little church and the other antiquities of the place were visited, 
and a short time was spent in the gardens and grounds of the fine 
Elizabethan Hall. From the Conquest until the seventeenth cen- 
tury, Croxall belonged to a branch of the Curzon family, being one 
of the Lordships given by the Conqueror to the Norman ancestor 
of that family. In the seventeenth century it passed, by marriage, 
to the Earls of Dorset, and in the last century it was sold by the 
then Earl of Dorset to the ancestor of the present owner, Mr. T. 
Levett-Prinsep, J.P. The hall was the residence for some years 
of the poet Dryden, being lent to him by his friend and patron 
The Earl of Dorset, then Lord Chamberlain, on the poet’s dismissal 
from the laureateship for refusing to take the oaths after the 
accession of King William III. The path along the hill top 
between Croxall and Catton was a favourite walk of the poet, and 
is still called ‘“‘Dryden’s Walk.’ This path was visited by the 
party, and from it a fine view of the surrounding country obtained. 
Other points of historical interest are a burgh or mound, situate 
near the church on the banks of the Mease, and probably made 
for the defence of the country against the inroads of the Danes; 
and the site of the old hamlet of Croxall, also near the church, 
close to which Queen Henrietta Maria encamped with the Royalist 
army in the Civil War. 
