*

assize of this circuit. He built a good house on the part of the site of the castle. Of this House Plot,† and Mr. Grose have both given engraved views. It was after this place had passed out of the hands of the Cradocks, that it became the property of William Viscount Vane, of Ireland, who possessed it in right of his mother, the daughter and coheir of Sir William Jolliffe, knt. who married Mary, daughter of Ferdinando, the sixth earl of Huntingdon. It is now the property of the Hon. Booth Grey, brother of the earl of Stamford. Leland § calls it "the castel or prati pile of Cauerwell."

In Careswell Church is a monument, erected to the memory of William de Careswell, the builder of the castle. It bears the following inscription:

"Willielmus de Careswellis:"

This is at the head. Surrounding it is this distich:

"Castri structor eram, domibus, fossisq; cemento.
"Vivis dans operam, nunc claudor in hoc monumento."

Anglice :

"I built this Castle, with its rampiers round,

"For the use of th' living, who am under ground."

According to Erdeswicke, the following lines were subse quently written on this monument :

"William of Careswell, her lye I,

"That built this castle, and pooles hereby.
"William of Careswell here thou mayest 'ye;

"But thy castle is down, and thy pooles are dry.""

It has been thought, that this latter portion of the stanza was written to excite the attention of the owner of the castle

το

• Holland's Camden. Degge MS. N. on Plot, p. 448. Erdeswicke, p. 86. apud Gough's Camd. II. 507.

+ Nat. Hist. Staff. Pl. XXXVII.

Sir E. Brydges's Collins's Peerage, Vol. VI. p. 660. § It. VII. 36.

Mag. Brit. V. p. 99.

to its ruinous state, and to induce him to notice the rapacious conduct of his tenant Brown. The former portion, it will be observed, is an imperfect translation of the original Latin epitaph.

To the east, a little beyond Cheadle, about three miles, is the parish of

ALVETON,

Sometimes called Alton. It contains about 160 houses, and 800 inhabitants.

The church is a vicarage, whose patron is R. Williamson, Esq. The village is a pleasant and agreeable place; but its chief ornament consists of the ruins of a Castle, which in the reign of Henry II. belonged to Bertram de Verdon; from whom it devolved, with other estates,* to the Furnivalls, afterwards to the Nevills, and from them to the Talbots. It now belongs to the earl of Shrewsbury. It was destroyed by that religious Vandal, Oliver Cromwell. The present remains consist of fragments of the outer wall, of considerable thickness, round a small court. These fragments stand on the natural perpendicular rock,† towards the small river Churnet. The ground to the water's edge descends with a very steep declivity. Below is a small mill to draw iron wire, and a little further down the river there is a cotton mill. The land opposite the castle is equal in height with the Castle Hill; and not more than 100 yards distant. The valley here has every appearance, like many others in this neighbourhood, and various parts of Derbyshire, of being made by some violent convulsion of the earth: probably by the great deluge of the Scripture. The true date of the foundation of Alveton Castle cannot now be ascertained; Rrr3

but

• The manor belonging to this family contained no less than ten, some say fifteen, villages.

MS. penes me.

+ MS. Ubi supra.

but it is supposed to have been built soon after the Conquest. Dr. Plot says, that "quickly after the beginning of Edward II. Alveton Castle seems to have been built, by Theobald de Verdun, as may pretty plainly be collected from the Annals of Croxden." The prodigious thickness of the walls shew it to have been a most magnificent and stately edifice. There is a view of these ruins, as they appeared in 1769, in the Description of England and Wales.t

Bradley is a parish, a little to the north-west of Cheadle. There is a chapel here, which is a curacy. There are not more than twenty houses, nor than eighty or ninety inhabi

tants.

Draycott is a parish in the same neighbourhood, containing about ninety houses, and 500 inhabitants. The church living is a rectory, valued, in the king's books, at 91. 6s. 8d. In the church-yard there is one of those pyramidal stones which the Danes are said to have set up as funeral monuments of their most remarkable men. This method of erecting some memento of those who in their lives have been dear to us is very pleasing; and might, if carried to a greater extent, and not confined to warriors and heroes, have a good moral effect.

Hales Hall, a little to the north-east of Cheadle, is the seat of N. Kirkman, Esq. It was built by the grand-daughter of Sir Matthew Hale, and was so named in honour of his memory.

Rocester parish, four miles from Uttoxeter, contains about 170 houses, and 900 inhabitants. At this place there was formerly an Abbey, for black canons, founded and endowed by Richard Bacoun, in 1146; and at the dissolution was valued at 100%

See Mr. Godwin's last singular, but withal pleasing, little work, An Essay on Sepulchres. A book though many times less, is one hundred times better, than his Political Justice, now happily forgotten, with the system it was intended to have introduced.

*

1001. per annum. This monastery of regular canons was of the order of St Augustine, and was dedicated to the blessed Virgin. Bacoun was nephew to Ranulph, earl of Chester. He granted the Abbey to R. Trentham; and these possessions were confirmed by Henry III. in the thirteenth year of his reign. At the suppression it had nine religious houses attached to it.t

There are now no remains whatever of this monastery.

The church is a small modern structure, standing in the middle of a field, in which there is a tall slender shaft of a cross, having the edges rounded, yet not itself perfectly cylindrical. Fret-work runs up each side of it. In an out-house, nearly adjoining, there is a tapering stone ornamented with something like a cross, with tri-foliated ends. It is about three feet in length. To what these remains belonged cannot now be exactly ascertained; and having no inscriptions, nor peculiarity of sculpture, do not give any information of their age or former appropriation.

In the church there are several monuments of the Stafford family. There is a very extensive cotton manufactury here,

belonging to Mr. Arkwright.

At no great distance from this place, yet not in this hundred, is a small place, called Fald, or Fauld, which we notice only for

Rrr 4

Bp. Tanner Not. p. 496. Dugdale says 1001. 2s. 10d. and Speed up. wards of 1118.

+ Speed mentions only eight " Houses of Religion," in the whole county (viz.) "Leichfield, Stafford, De la Crosse, Cruxden, Trentham, Burton, Tamworth, and Wouler-hampton. These votaries," he adds, "abusing their founders true pieties, and heaping vp riches with disdaine of the Laietiee, laid themselves open as markes to be shot at; whom the hand of the skilfull soon hit and quite pierced,vnder the aime of king Heury the eighth, who with such Revenewes in most places releeved the poore and the orphane, with schooles and maintenance for the training vp of youth: a work, no doubt more acceptable to God, and of more charitable vse to the land." Theatre of Great Britain. Book I. chap. 36, fol. 69.

+ MS. penes me.

Mag. Brit. p. 108. Gough's Card. II. p. 517.

for the sake of mentioning the celebrated author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, who, according to Dr. Plot,* was born here. That writer's words are: "Robert Burton+ is generally believed, by the inhabitants thereabout, to be born at Fald in this county, where I was shewn the very house, (as they say) of his nativity. And William Burton, in the selvedge of his picture, before his description of Leicestershire, owns himself of Fald in this county, though Anthony à Wood says, they were born at Lindley in the county of Leicester." Fald, is a pleasant village, but very small; it is very near Tutbury, already described, and ought to have been mentioned sooner in this work.

Bramshall is a small parish near Uttoxeter, containing between thirty and forty houses and 200 inhabitants. It is a rectory, under the patronage of lord Willoughby de Broke, value 41. 3s. 9d. §

Proceeding from hence, in a northern direction, along the borders of Derbyshire, we again pass Rocester, just mentioned, and reach Denston, a small hamlet, in the parish of Alveton, containing about 200 inhabitants; having also passed Creighton, another hamlet, about the same size. From Denston we proceed to Prestwood, a small hamlet; and from thence to Ellaston, six miles from Uttoxeter, containing seventy houses, and 300 inhabitants. The living here is a vicarage, whose pa trons are W. D. Bromley, and D. Davenport, Esqrs.

Crossing the country, in a south-west direction, passing Alveton, Bradley, Croxden, Cheadle, and Checkley, we arrive at the parish of Leigh, containing nearly 200 houses, and 850 inhabitants. It is a rectory under the patronage of lord Bagot. Mr. Palmer, the rector of this place, planted an apple-tree here, from

• P. 276.

+ Mr. Gough, Additions to Camden, Vol. II. p. 305, calls him Thomas Burton.

+ Vide "BEAUTIES," Vol. IX. in Leicestershire,

Carlisle's Topographical Dictionary.