Rides on Railways Part 16

The experience of water companies, gas companies, ca.n.a.l companies, and railway companies, has distinctly been, that, between great monied corporations with large capitals sunk in plant, compet.i.tion is impossible and must end in a compromise.

But these contests are profitable to lawyers, who must always win, whether their clients do or not. It is no exaggeration to say that, as surely as Spain and Portugal are priest-ridden, so surely is Great Britain lawyer- ridden. No sooner does the science, the industry, and the enterprise of the country carve out some new road to commercial prosperity, than the attorney sets up a turnpike upon it and takes toll; and, if dispute arises as to the right of road, however the contest be decided, it ends in two attornies taking toll. In chancery, in the laws affecting patents of inventions, in the law affecting ca.n.a.ls, in railways, a standing army of lawyers are constantly engaged in fighting battles, which end in our bearing the wounds and their sharing the spoil. So it was in these battles of the gauges.

But to return to Wolverhampton, the name of which recalled battles wherein so much useful money has been wasted, the town, although of rising importance in a commercial point, offers no other attraction to the curious traveller than its numerous manufactories of hardware, and machinery of various kinds, including firearms, tinned ware, locks and keys, of extraordinary cheapness, gun locks, files, screws, and j.a.panned ware.

The tea trays, and other j.a.panned ware of Wolverhampton, are equal in taste and execution to anything produced in Birmingham; indeed, it was at the manufactory of the Messrs. Walton that the plan of skilfully copying the landscapes of our best artists on j.a.pan were originated. The first tea-tray of the kind was copied from one of Turner's Rivers of France, by a gentleman who has since taken up a very important position in applying the true principles of art to British manufactures.

Wolverhampton, and all the towns and villages in the coal and iron district, are only so many branch-Birminghams; in that hardware metropolis the greater part of the goods made are ordered and sold.

The town is of great antiquity, although with as few remains as most flouris.h.i.+ng towns built of brick, where manufactures have chased away mansions. The name is derived from Walfrana, a sister of King Edgar, who founded a monastery there in A.D. 996, and collected a village round it named Walfrana Hampton, which was eventually corrupted into Wolverhampton. In the oldest Church, St. Peter's, there is a pulpit formed of a single stone, elaborately sculptured, and a font, with curious bas-relief figures of saints. The Church is collegiate, and the College consists of a dean, who holds the prebend of Wolverhampton, which was annexed by Edward IV. to his free chapel of St. George, within the Castle of Windsor.

A Free Grammar School, supported by endowments, affords a head master 400 pounds a-year; the second master 200 pounds; and a third master 120 pounds.

Some years ago these gentlemen had only seventy scholars to teach, but we trust this is, or will be, amended.

Wolverhampton was made a Parliamentary borough by the Reform Act, returning two members from boundaries which include the towns.h.i.+ps of Bilston, Willenhall, Wednesfield, and the parish of Sedgeley. The population has increased more than five fold in the last forty years.

Bird, the artist, Congreve, inventor of the rockets which bear his name, and Abernethy, the eminent surgeon, were natives of Wolverhampton; Huskisson, who began the commercial reforms which Peel finished, was born at Oxley Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood.

Close to the town is a good racecourse, well frequented once a year, formerly one of the most fas.h.i.+onable meetings in the country. The ladies' division of the Grand Stand used to be a complete parterre of the gayest flowers; but railroads, which have added to the quant.i.ty, have very much deteriorated the quality of the frequenters of races, and unless a change takes place, a Grand Stand will soon be as dark, as busy, and as dull as the Stock Exchange.

From Wolverhampton a line nineteen miles in length, through Albrighton (where Staffords.h.i.+re ends and Shrops.h.i.+re begins) and s.h.i.+fnal to Wellington, shortens the route to Shrewsbury by cutting off an angle; but as there is nothing to be said about this route except that at Albrighton are the kennels of the hunt of that name, (a hunt in which the greater or less luxury in horseflesh of the young ironmasters affords a thermometer of the state of the iron trade,) we shall on this occasion take the Stafford line.

Within an easy distance of Wolverhampton are a very large number of the n.o.blemen's and gentlemen's seats, in which Staffords.h.i.+re is so rich; more than one ancient and dilapidated family has been restored by the progress of smoke-creating manufactures, which have added to the wealth even more than they destroyed the picturesqueness of the country.

If we were conducting a foreigner over England with the view of showing him the wealth, the power, and the beauties of our country, we should follow exactly the course we have hitherto pursued, and after an exhausting inspection of the manufactories of the coal country, should turn off the rail, after leaving Wolverhampton on our road to Stafford, and visit some of the beautiful mansions surrounded by that rich combination of nature and art which so eminently distinguishes the "stately homes of England."

For instance, before reaching Penkridge we pa.s.s--on the right hand, Moseley Court, where the ancestors of the proprietors, the Whitgreaves, concealed Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester,--on the left, Wrottesley Hall, the seat of the scientific n.o.bleman of that name, and Ch.e.l.lington Park, the residence of the ancient Roman Catholic family of the Giffords, where an avenue of oaks, the growth of centuries, with a magnificent domain stocked with deer and game, afford the admirers of English scenery delicious vistas of wood, water, and rich undulating pasture.

The contrast between the murky atmosphere and continued roar of the ironmaking country, and the silence of the deer-haunted green glades is most striking, and most grateful to eye and ear.

As we rush along the valley of the Penk, too rapidly to drink in its full beauties; on the right, Teddesley Hall, the mansion of Lord Hatherton, rising above the tops of the trees, reminds us that the n.o.ble lord's farms are well worth a visit from any one taking an interest in agriculture. Poor land has been rendered comparatively fertile, and by a complete system of drainage, mere marshy rush-growing meadows have been made capable of carrying capital root and wheat crops, while the waste water has been carried to a head, and then by a large overshot water wheel, working below the surface of the ground, made useful for thras.h.i.+ng, chaff and root cutting, and other operations of the farm.

At Penkridge, a rural village of considerable antiquity, ten miles from Wolverhampton, adorned by a Gothic Church, and several picturesque houses of the Elizabethan style of domestic architecture, it will be convenient to descend, if an expedition is intended, over Cannock Chase to Beaudesert, the seat of the Marquis of Anglesey.

[THE RAILWAY NEAR PENKRIDGE: ill17.jpg]

This Cannock Chase completes the singular variations of soil and occupation to be found in Staffords.h.i.+re. From the densely-populated iron districts, and the model agriculture of disciples of the same school as Lord Hatherton, we can turn our faces to a vast moorland, forty miles square, stretching from where it is first seen on the banks of the railway to the banks of the Trent, as wild as any part of Wales or Scotland, intersected by steep hills, by deep valleys, covered with gorse and broom, dotted with peat marshes, tenanted by wild deer and feathered game, and fed over by the famous "Kenk" sheep, nearly as wild as deer, and in flavour rivalling the best mountain mutton. This great waste was once covered with dense forests, in which the wolf, the bear, the wild boar, and the wild bull were hunted by our Saxon Kings. It is not among the least wonders effected by the locomotive that a short hour can transport us from the midst of the busiest centres of manufactures to a solitude as complete as is to be found in the prairies of America or Australia, unless we by chance stumble upon a prying gamekeeper or an idle rustic seeking whortle-berries or snaring hares.

On this chase, begged by his ancestors from an easy king as a kitchen garden, the hero of the Light Cavalry at Waterloo annually takes his sport, mounted on a perfect shooting cob, and with eighty years upon his shoulders, can still manage to bring down his birds right and left.

Long may such blanks of solitude and wild nature remain amid the busy hum of commerce to remind us of what all England once was, to afford, at a few holidays in the year, a free breathing place to the hardworking mult.i.tude, and to the poet and student that calm delight which the golden fragrance of a gorse-covered moor can bestow.

Before we reach Stafford we leave on the right, although not in sight, Shugborough, the deserted mansion of the Earl of Lichfield, a descendant of the Lord Anson who "sailed round the world but was never in it."

STAFFORD.

STAFFORD CASTLE, on the summit of a high hill, whose slopes are clothed with forest trees, gives in the romantic a.s.sociations it awakens a very false idea of the town to be found below. The towers of the Castle built by the son of Robert de Tonei, the Standard Bearer of William the Conqueror, have survived the Wars of the Roses and the contests of the Great Rebellion, while the remainder has been restored in an appropriate style by the family of the present possessors, representatives of the ancient barony of Stafford--no relation of the Staffords who in another part of the county enjoy the Dukedom of Sutherland. But the town, prosperous in spite of many changes of fas.h.i.+on, has completely lost any antique air it may ever have enjoyed, and now, in all the smugness of brick, quite realises the idea of a borough which at every election is for sale to the highest bidder.

[STAFFORD: ill18.jpg]

The princ.i.p.al manufacture is that of shoes for exportation. Many remarkable men have represented Stafford, some as remarkable for their talent as for their folly. Sheridan's most brilliant speeches, and Urquhart's most undeniable failures in the House of Commons, were both due to the borough of Stafford. It is, in fact, a stepping-stone to the House of Commons, always ready for the highest bidder and promiser, but whoever would sit for Stafford for a series of Parliaments, would need the use of the Philosopher's Stone.

The independent electors would exhaust California if they had the chance.

As the Stafford shoemakers, to the deep disappointment of its agricultural neighbours, have not yet been ruined by the influx of foreign boots and shoes, its chief interest at present is derived from its being the point from which several important railways radiate.

STAFFORD TO MANCHESTER.--Beside the old Grand Junction line to Crewe, the Trent Valley line, about which we intend to say a few words on our return journey, ends, strictly speaking, at Stafford, after pa.s.sing by Atherston, Tamworth, and Lichfield; but, since the construction of the North Staffords.h.i.+re, which joins the Trent Valley at Colewich, the most direct way to Manchester is through the pottery district and Macclesfield, instead of by Stafford and Crewe. Direct lines have generally proved a great mistake, except so far as they have accommodated the local traffic through which they pa.s.sed. To the shareholders they have been most unprofitable wherever the original shareholders were not lucky enough to bully the main lines into a lease, and, to the average of travellers very inconvenient, by dividing accommodation. But shareholders should look at the local traffic of a proposed direct line, on which alone good dividends can be earned.

These direct projects were partly the result of the imperfect manner in which, in consequence of opposition and from want of experience, the original main branch lines were executed, and partly in that plethora of money, which, in this thriving country, must be relieved from time to time by the bleeding of ingenious schemers. We are enjoying, in this year of 1851, the advantages derived from money spent, and lost to the spenders, in our own country instead of being sunk in Greek or Spanish bonds, South American mines, or the banks and public works of the United States.

At one period, in the height of the ten per cent. mania, a school of railway economists sprang up which advocated placing the construction and the profits of railways in the hands of government, and they supported their theories by ex post facto criticism on the blunders of railway companies,--on the astonis.h.i.+ng dividends of Mr. George Hudson's lines,--and on the hard terms on which capitalists had agreed to execute French railways for the French government.

These ingenious reasons did not prevail. People were reminded that the steam boats, the public works, the "Woods and Forests" under government charge, were not managed with remarkable success or economy. The tempting dividends melted away, and projects for French railways, on the principle of the State taking profits and the speculators the risk, which had excited the admiration of Cato Morrisson, first hung fire and then exploded, so that rich districts of France which, on the system of "profits to private enterprise," would have enjoyed railway conveyance ten years ago, are still left to the mercy of the slow diligences and slower waggons to this hour.

To a commercial country like England, the waste of a few millions on railways badly planned, are of little importance compared with the national saving effected by the cheap conveyance of produce. The great importance of the direct line between Rugby, Macclesfield, and Manchester, is not that it saves an hour in the transit of an impatient traveller, but that it places in easy communication purely agricultural and thoroughly manufacturing communities, so as to render an interchange of produce easy. Shareholders sometimes suffer, but the public always gains. On the other hand, Parliament should take care that railway extension to blank districts is not prevented by conceding parallel lines to directors hunting for a dividend, by dividing instead of increasing the existing traffic.

When an alteration of the law settlement has released from parish bondage and vegetation those adscripti glebae agricultural labourers, the advantage of our network of railways will be still more felt.

STAFFORD TO SHREWSBURY.--The third line diverging from Stafford, counting the continuation of the London as a fourth, is the railway to Shrewsbury, pa.s.sing through NEWPORT and WELLINGTON, where it joins the direct line from Wolverhampton, and affording, by a continuation which pa.s.ses near Oswestry, Chirk, and Llangollen, {138} to Wrexham, Chester, and Birkenhead, another route to Liverpool, and, through Chester, the nearest way to Holyhead and Ireland.

NEWPORT.--The first station after leaving Stafford for Shrewsbury, and immediately after crossing into Shrops.h.i.+re, is a small market town and borough, with a corporation, which can be traced back to Henry III. The church, of the fifteenth century, with an interior of great beauty, has been frightfully disfigured by aisles built of bricks in a common builders' style of architecture.

This corporation offers an example which might be with advantage followed by greater men holding the same office; they have but a small income, and they apply it to keeping in order cisterns and conduits which supply the town with water.

There is a free grammar school founded by one William Adams in 1756, which has a library attached to the school and five scholars.h.i.+ps. The best, of 80 pounds a year, to Christchurch, Oxford.

WELLINGTON stands at the base of the Wrekin, is the centre of the Shrops.h.i.+reman's toast and the chief town of the coal and iron district, and is the point where the line from Wolverhampton makes a junction, affording the nearest road from Birmingham to Shrewsbury. It was here that Charles I., on his march from Wellington to Shrewsbury, a.s.sembled his troops, and, in order to allay the growing disaffection among them, declared that he would "support the reformed religion, govern by law, uphold the privileges of parliament, and preserve the liberty of the subject."

From Wellington you may proceed by omnibus to Coalbrookdale, where the first iron bridge was built over the Severn, where the Darbys and d.i.c.kensons have carried on iron works for more than a century, where coal was first applied profitably to smelting iron, and where the fine iron castings of Berlin have been rivalled, and successful attempts have been made to introduce the principles of the fine arts into domestic manufactures. The firm are members of the Society of Friends. Fortunately their tenets do not prevent them from selling us coal-scuttles of beautiful design, although their wives and daughters are bound, according to the conservative principles of their sect, to wear bonnets of an unvarying and hideous coal-scuttle shape.

SHREWSBURY, 10 miles from Wellington, is, in more respects than one, an interesting town, situated partly on a precipitous peninsula formed by the swift clear waters of the Severn, united to the opposite side by bridges, in one of which the huge undershot waterwheels of a corn mill are for ever turning. A stranger without letters of introduction, condemned to spend a few hours here with nothing to do, may easily pa.s.s the time pleasantly in hunting out picturesque bits of river scenery, or even in chucking pebbles into the stream, instead of drinking sherry negus he does not want, or poking about the dull streets of a modern town, while all the respectable inhabitants are lost in wonder "who that strange man in the white hat is."

The manufactures of Shrewsbury are not very important; thread, linen, and canvas, and iron-works in the neighbouring suburb of Coleham; a considerable and ancient trade is carried on in Welsh flannel and cloths from the neighbouring counties of Denbigh, Montgomery, and Merioneth, and markets and fairs are held for the benefit of the rich agricultural district around, in which, besides fine b.u.t.ter, cheese, poultry, and live stock, a large a.s.semblage of the blooming, rosy, broad-built Shrops.h.i.+re la.s.ses show the advantage of a mixture of Welsh and English blood.

But Shrewsbury is most famous for its school, its cakes, its ale, and the clock mentioned by Falstaff, for which on our last visit we found an ingenuous Frenchman industriously searching.