LEOMINSTER OR LEMSTER

151

Eve. with the lovely name of Jenny Pipes, was roughly ducked in the river for talking too fast, or out of her turn, or some other of the common sins of women. There was a monastery as long ago as the days of the Saxons. It struggled through centuries of fear and molestation from the wild Welsh who were its neighbours, until at last that bloated Welshman King Henry Eighth robbed it thoroughly and hanged the prior at his own gate for daring to object to the goods of the charity being stolen for the enrichment of the vile.

In the Bargate are some of the almshouses, which seem to be a common appanage of the towns in this district. These have been rebuilt as ugly as any churchwarden could admire. The old inscription does remain, and it seems to convey some of the wisdom of this world, founded on experience. It is under the figure of a man whose shirt and clothes are missing, but who otherwise is dressed in a cocked hat and hatchet :

"He who gives away all before he's dead,

Let 'em take this hatchet and knock him on ye head."

A.D. 1902

LUDFORD HALL-RICHARDS CASTLE

-ORLETON COURT

I

N the winter of 1901-2 we had decided that one of our earliest pilgrimages in the coming summer should be to photograph that banqueting hall in Ludlow Castle where Comus first was played, and to visit some more of the old-fashioned homes in the delightful country of the borderland of Wales.

To Ludlow we travelled again by the usual express in wild wet weather, but as we left the train at noon the clouds cleared away with brilliant light. Leaving our bicycles in the ruins of the spacious outer court of the castle, we entered the noble arched inner gateway, on which was a notice saying "admission was not free." I asked the janitor, "How much for two amateurs and one camera? He replied, "Eightpence," and giving him a shilling, he began to tell us what we might not photcgraph, carefully forgetting the change. As he never mentioned the Banqueting Hall, which we wanted, or the celebrated round church, which is said to be one of the best and earliest of the five round churches in England, we took those first, and then I went for another dark slide to our bicycles, telling the man at the door what I wanted. He sharply told me that if I went through the door I should have to pay another fourpence, so we argued the matter, as our bicycles were in the courtyard of the castle. He stuck to his text, whereupon I asked him for the change out of the shilling given when we had entered. He said that was given to him; he should keep it. My reply was, "No one ever said they gave it to you," and as he went on chattering

I asked him if his name was Pugh or Taffy, or what was it? For I remembered the chairman of one of our banks who had bought an estate near here telling me that those half-breeds on the border would do him while he watched them, so there would be small chance for me, and it was evident that this man would sooner part with his teeth than money, and also objected to giving

his name. After further discussion he prudently thought it better to let me through.

X was quietly enjoying himself focussing for something this custodian had chattered about without authcrity, but we had got what we wanted, and after taking two more photographs, which also turned out well, we left to prowl around this quaint and picturesque town of Ludlow, whose history is the early and mediæval history of England. As we have visited the place and mentioned it before, it will suffice now to say we found the ancient grammar school, which is figured in Green's History of the English People" as being built in the