Meriden, the next item upon the way, is heralded by a steeply descending hill; the village below, the church solitary upon the hill-top. Meriden church is quite a little museum of antiquities, and a well-kept one, with everything carefully labelled for the information of the chance visitor—and the door unlocked. Here one finds the effigies of two worthy Warwickshire knights of the fifteenth century, a chained Prayer Book, and the processional staves of a bygone village club, together with a curious old oak alms-chest, dated 1627 and inscribed:
This chest is God’s exchequer, paye in then Your almes accepted both of God and men.
“Mireden,” as it was invariably called by old-time travellers, is situated on an “uncommonly deep” bed of clay in the hole at the foot of this hill. Pennant, the antiquary, is responsible for the statement that the village was named Alspath until the time of Henry VI., “about which time, becoming a great thoroughfare, it got the name of Myreden—‘den’ signifying a bottom, and ‘myre’ dirt; and I can well vouch for the propriety of the appellation before the institution of turnpikes.”
In his time, between 1739 and 1782, the road at Meriden had been so far improved that travellers no longer stuck in the clay. It had become a turnpike, and, on the testimony of Pennant, “excellent.” But the crest of the hill had still to be climbed, and the depth of the valley to be descended into, before the advent of Telford, some forty years later, when the cutting on the hill-top and the embankment in the hollow were made. The old road—a steep and narrow track—is seen down below, on the right hand, in descending Meriden Hill, and beside it the old “Queen’s Head,” with frontage rebuilt in recent years. Meriden village lies in the succeeding level, with rural cottages on one side of the road, and the ponds and lilied watercourses of Meriden Park on the other; a village green beyond. The houses are still, as in Pennant’s day “pretty”; but in the course of a hundred and twenty years the “magnificent inn, famed from time immemorial for its excellent malt liquor,” has retired into private occupation, and the “various embellishments made by the old innkeeper, Reynolds—little ponds, statues, and other whims,” that used to enliven the spot, have been swept away by Time, like old Reynolds himself.