BOOK OF DOVECOTES 



for cheer, and pays his bill and goes his way with 

 little further thought for house or host. And 

 indeed the visitor whose luck may bring him 

 to Whitehall, though he may give but little 

 thought to either Richard Prince or present 

 host, is hardly likely altogether to neglect the 

 house. Forhewill take his ease amid ideal sur- 

 roundings; theperfection of Elizabethan archl- 

 tecture.fiUed internally with furniture and tap- 

 estries and pictures, all in keeping with the set- 

 ting they adorn. In the old garden stands the 

 dovecote, one of the most interesting that 

 Shropshire owns. 



Within the last century it has indeed been 

 shorn of the full charm of its former surround- 

 ings; for a fine group of larches that stood near 

 it, said to have been the earliest planted in the 

 county, has now disappeared. Gone, too, the 

 grand old walnut-tree,with trunk that measured ■ 

 sixteen feet in girth, and boughs that spread 

 their shade for twenty yards around. We will 

 not grudge them; for the dovecote still adorns 

 the junction of two tile-topped garden walls. 

 And where, indeed, could it be better placed.? 

 Has not Trigg included dovecotes, and most 

 68 



