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that were well built nearly two hundred years ago, and the bills for the building our host said he had lately found, but the charges were so ridiculously low he could hardly believe them. On a bank behind is a large circular dovecot, also of stone, with no window or access for cat or rat. On the top is a lantern or opening for the pigeons, which is now inhabited by owls, and the roof is a mass of luxuriant polypody fern. Inside are hundreds of nesting

holes, with an immense revolving ladder which fits the interior. Broody hens are now the only

inmates.

There is an avenue of walnut trees and an enormous specimen of the edible chestnut tree, whose twisted trunk we tried to photograph with the house beyond, but one being in dense shade, and the other in light, the picture is not a

success.

SPANISH CHESTNUT

Inside the house is as beautiful as it is out. There is a spacious hall, oaken staircase, later library with some of the old books, carved mantels, good wainscotting, big rack that once held the great store of crested pewter, and the tower. Up aloft we go to try and find the ghost. Among the great roof timbers we climb on hands and knees unto the leads, and what a grand view is there! The old man follows to take care of us, and tells of a large secret chamber, to which there is no access but through a hole in the ceiling of the kitchen. This is

not a little hiding-hole, but a big one, big enough for a ballroom or a great muster.

It is thought this house was built by the Myttons about three hundred years ago. It was noted as a treasury for all old-fashioned homely things, but most unfortunately everything was sold by auction not many years since. Then the place was empty, and our host, who had left the village some seventy years before as a poor lad to make his own way in the world, returned again and bought it. We hope he may live long to enjoy it.

little church, which is There was a quarrel To me its chief pecu

We paid a hurried visit to the said to have many peculiarities. about it as far back as A.D. IIIO. liarity seemed that the grass is so even and smooth, being evidently very seldom disturbed, as if folk hereabout seldom died. Records tell that land was cultivated in champerty nearly six hundred years since. Hugh Lovekyn, of Schipton, finds half the seeds, pays two shillings rent, and does customs and service to the lord. William le Kyng does the plowing, gives Hugh the tenth garb (wheatsheaf), and has half the meadow land. It looks as if the latter had the best bargain, for the service to the lord is an unknown quantity.

Here is another interesting glimpse into the lives and manners of our forefathers. In Morf Forest, which was not far from Shipton Hall, there was a wrestling match, A.D. 1292, and men from Brug (Bridgnorth) came armed with bows and arrows. One of them, named Robert de Turbervill, also brought a greyhound, which was against the stringent forest laws. A quarrel arose, and the foresters were beaten. They complained to their Seneschal, Corbet of Caus. Corbet already had a grudge against the men of Brug, who, he said, had promised him a cask of wine, and he imprisoned or indicted fortyfour burgesses as malefactors of the forest. But the jury found that he was "a malevolent and a procurer of evil,'

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so he would not get his cask of wine, and perhaps the dog went again to the forest when he was in bed, or ought to have been in bed, if ever he went there.

There is a railway station about two miles from Shipton Hall, but the way thither was through thickets and tangles of briers, up and down hills in Mogg Forest, where we should probably get lost, therefore we were advised to take the good road to Craven Arms, which was ten or twelve miles away, but all straight going. We had a good hour to do it in to catch the express. Refreshed and exhilarated we did it, hands down, including two stoppages, for storms came on. At first we sheltered a little under a thick holly hedge, and then rushed for "The Court House" at Munslow, where I had rested the day of finding the forester's lodge, Upper Millichope, which some claim to be one of the very oldest houses in England.

Though our little pilgrimages are so much more commonplace and painfully modern than those of the romantic days and tales of Chaucer, yet even in railway carriages we meet strange folk at times-politicians and men of the world as conservative in their denseness as if the art of reading and writing were still one of the doubtful black arts of magic. Here is an instance. Into a second-class non-smoking compartment enter two horse dealers just as the train is leaving Crewe. One of them, in the intervals of striking matches to light a cigar, continually shouts loudly to the company: "What's all this 'ere rot about eddycation? Look at me. I wur ne'er eddycated, but I con buy the beggars up. Look at me.

I tells yer I wur ne'er eddy cated, but I lends money to them as 'as 'ad a grammy schule eddycation. Yes, yo' may look at me. I left schule, I did, when I wur eleven. Think o' that; an' I con buy t'other beggars up. I con What's the good o' sanguinary eddycation to them as 'as got nowt? Why, I've just wrote a cheque for fifty

SO.

quid for one 'oss.

No; I got a sovereign agen. I tells

truth, I do. I'll show you my bank-book. We should mak' some money o' that 'oss, Joe." Here Joe interposed, Aye, if it dunner dee." This momentarily took the breath of our naturally educated companion. "Dee! aye, that wu'd be a job." A pause. “But what's that got to do wi' eddycation? I tells yo' I con buy t'other beggars up wi' aw their eddycation-grammy schule or any other schule. Blow 'em."

NORBURY IN DERBYSHIRE

A

FTER our former journey into Derbyshire (page 44) we hoped to miss that county in the future, preferring the better country to the south on the beautiful borderland of Wales, but being one of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society I went with them to Norbury, which is on the Staffordshire border, found it well worth seeing, and reported to X, who was pleased to find more ancestors to photograph.

We went by train to Tissington, and then cycled up and down greasy hills towards Fenny Bentley, where there is an old house with the remains of a square tower, a keep or peel, which has evidently seen better days. It was for long years the home of a branch of the Beresford family of Beresford, or Beversford, a ruined hall a few miles off over the bleak hills. The name commemorates the industrious little beaver who once dwelt in the valley and the brook. The descendants of the family are aristocratic and numerous, for the head of the Fenny Bentley branch in the fifteenth century had sixteen sons and five daughters by one wife. He is said to have saddled sixteen horses for the war

with sixteen sons to ride them. We may think that some of them might have found something better to do, and not left the plowing to be done by women and oxen while they all went gallivanting.

It was with difficulty that we kept our machines and ourselves upright on the slippery limestone roads. X's tyre soon exploded with a loud bang, and we walked or went slowly for three miles to Ashbourne to get it mended. The shops were being closed when we got

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