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 beingwritten the old 

 house is undergoing conversion into an hotel. 

 Its builder and first owner, Richard Prince, a 

 ' 'proud Salopian" of Elizabethan days, thought 

 little, as he reared his stately dwelling where the 

 Abbey grange had stood, that it would one day 

 harbour the chance guest, who comes and calls 



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