At the distance of a mile from Meole are the Sharpstones Hill and Bomere Pool, noted for their lovely scenery, and as the habitats of many of the rarer species of plants indigenous to the vicinity.
{ 176} At a distance of two miles on the Holyhead road stands Shelton Oak, which, according to tradition, “the irregular and wild Glendower” ascended to reconnoitre the state of the contending armies on the Battlefield; but finding that the king was making a powerful head, and had “beat down young Harry Hotspur and his troops,” he precipitately retreated with his army into Wales. This majestic veteran of the forest,
“Whose boughes are moss’d with age, And high top bald with dry antiquity,”
is completely hollow; many of the greater arms are dead, and the whole is fast falling to decay. Whatever be the degree of credit due to the tradition, certain it is there is positive evidence in a paper dated 1543, preserved among the title deeds of the Waring family, that this tree was esteemed a great one within 140 years of the Battle of Shrewsbury, and an object of remark to old people long before. The following are the dimensions:—girt at bottom, close to the ground, forty-four feet three inches; ditto, five feet from the ground, twenty-five feet one inch; ditto, eight feet from the ground, twenty-seven feet four inches; height to the top of the main trunk, or principal bough, forty-one feet six inches.
A little beyond this, on the Welsh Pool road, is Christ Church, Oxon, consecrated October 3rd, 1854, for a district comprising several outlying portions of the Parishes of St. Chad and St. Julian.
Immediately opposite is the Lunatic Asylum for the Counties of Salop and Montgomery, erected after a design by Messrs. Scott.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GUIDE, DESCRIPTIVE AND HISTORICAL, THROUGH THE TOWN OF SHREWSBURY
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