Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/376

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CHAPTER XIV.

VISIT TO A BARONIAL HALL—WILD CATTLE OF CHARTLEY—LICHFIELD; ITS CATHEDRAL AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS—COVENTRY; ITS HISTORY AND INDUSTRIES—KENILWORTH AND ITS ROMANTIC REPUTATION—WARWICK TOWN AND CASTLE—LEAMINGTON

HAVING occupied so much space with walks in the semicircle embracing the Black Country, and based upon a line drawn through Birmingham from Bromsgrove to Walsall, but little room remains for a notice of those interesting towns and sceneries lying eastward of equal radius. These would supply abundant and varied material for an independent volume, but I must condense within a few pages what should occupy five hundred.

In the course of last summer I was, for the first time, one of the invited guests of an English nobleman, residing in North Staffordshire. And it being the first time, I felt myself fortunate in sharing the generous and easy hospitalities of a host who was as good a specimen of "a fine old English gentleman" as England could produce.