Shropshire 20 - Lilleshall/a memorial to the Duke of Sutherland/St Georges and the wreath/a carvery dinner and an extremely quiet abbey

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We stood at the gate . We had parked Ziggy up on the tiniest of plots of grass where parking was allowed . We were alone apart from a lone cyclist who had propped his bicycle up against the fence. He was waiting for us to come through the gate before he saddled up and rode away. We were entirely alone at that point . In the distance we could see Lilleshall church which felt a million miles away from bustling nearby Telford. On top of the highest point above the villlage was an obelisk . We had seen it from miles back . A memorial to the Duke of Sutherland and the Earl of Stafford or something like that when it came to titles . He owned land around Lilleshall and also the massive Trentham Estate . Memorials to him appeared here there and everywhere . We could walk up the hill but it was on the radar today . Instead we had pencilled in Lilleshall Abbey which we could see at the end of a long and muddy lane . A small stream straddled the lane , Sometimes overground to our right before diving under the lane to emerge to our left before disappearing underground again . The surface water on the fields was running like streams along the lane and we had to pick our way through it gingerly. But after that walk we found ourselves in the peace and tranquillity of the abbey . The great West front loomed ahead of us and the doorway beckoned us in .

But that was for later . Our day started much earlier that morning . We wake early and the dawn had not broken . It was pitch black outside . What should we do today ? We thought this one out over a lazy and slow breakfast . We ought to do something . But we had lunch out the other day . And we went to the Victorian market . We need wreaths . We have three to buy and deliver to graves in Wrexham and St Georges . We looked at the diary . Cannot do it over the weekend . We have football . And a little voice piped out - you cannot do it Monday I am meeting my best friend Woolly at Chirk Castle . We had not forgotten such an important thing and of course Sion would not stop reminding us as he constantly clock watched . Counting out the days before he could chat over coffee with his best friend .

So that was it - decided we needed the wreaths . We set off for Holt and Bellis Strawberry farm and shop. It was packed when we arrived and I headed for the christmas trees and wreaths . A large number were available . Too much choice at times . Holly wreaths with plastic red berries . Holly wreaths with real berries . Some from Turkey made of very fine fir with purple and red berries and a yellow fruit which had seen better days . I found three of the Turkish wreaths with berries of green and purple and that was it . They would do . If I dithered I would still have been there .

We headed for St Georges . A route we take every year but each time depending where we travel from we end up lost around the many roundabouts of Telford . Each one looking like the last one . Even Silly Sat Nag would not take us to Church Street St Georges but wanted Church Street Oakengates . Not a million miles away but not the right place . In the end we picked up the signs , drove past the Telford wall. A wall of multicoloured bricks that were laid in the shapes of a rock strata convulting all along its length. It looked as if the moving earth had shifted the bricks from straight lines to a contortion of agony. On to Snedshill . We were on home ground now . Turn right past the church , along the main road to the roundabout , turn right and here we were parking on the cricket club car park . The Ball and Bails still looked closed . So no lunch there today. The scaffolding was up on the church. The workers were high up repairing the roof . We found our grave , laid our wreath , looked at the lilac and silver plastic flowers which were dirty from being in the pot outside for a long time . Someone else other than us cared but they had not been for at least a year .

Lunchtime was just around the corner . We normally would search out somewhere I could get a vegetarian meal but since arriving in Wales I had rediscovered the delights of home cured bacon and bacon sandwiches . We chose the Toby Carvery. Always cheap and cheerful . You can almost guarentee a good roast dinner and the one at Telford was no exception . For £7.95 we had a choice of roast beef, roast turkey or roast gammon. The plate was then filled with duchesse potatoes with leek, red cabbage, roast potatoes , huge Yorkshire puddings, brussel sprouts and carrots . The parsnips were rushed off just before I got to them . All covered in gravy . Not quite Italian culture or style but it was a good carvery at a good price .

So this was how we came to be standing by the gate to the abbey and walking the muddy path . The abbey was an Augustinian house with a french mother abbey. Founded in 1145 and built between 1145 and 1148 it housed a community of lay men and monks serving the local community . What a treasure to find we both thought. We had it to ourselves and it was such a peaceful setting . The ruins remained picturesque and I could imagine if I were a painter I would love to paint it in the same way that the artists did when they dropped upon the place . It felt a place the Romantics of the Victorian era would visit and wax lyrical with their poems . It escaped the dissolution of the minor monasteries in 1536 only to agree to dissolve the order and abandon the abbey two years later in 1538. Robbed of its incomes and of its wealth it would slowly decline becoming a house before finally being left to decay .

The west doorway was impressive with the remains to one side of what was an equally impressive west tower . Long gone . That had fallen during a siege possibly during the English Civil War. The west windo w had also been robbed of its glass and stone tracery. Through the door it opened out in an impressive space of 60 metres length. We felt small looking at the largely intact east window in the distance . In between would have been a rood screen , altars, small side chapels and carved benches with wonderful miserachords . The roof once stone vaulted seemed to soar above us . Roofless now with richly decorated stone arcades and columns. In the north wall was a well preserved lavabo and slimy steps leading into the darkness of the arcade above . Scratched into the soft red sandstone was graffiti . The most modern dated from the early 1900's . The oldest 1772. It was not hard to imagine young visitors sitting on those steps with a knife or blade carving out their names in copperplate perfection .

We walked through the wonderfully preserved processional door . More highly decorated than the west door it formed a route into the church from the cloisters . A slype , a refectory and an infirmary lay beyond the cloisters . What tales would have been whispered in those cloisters or in the quiet corners of the slype. As always there was the chapter house and the warming room always present in any well respected abbey. It had been converted to a private house at some point but little or nothing of that remained . Following damage during the Civil war the house was abandoned in the 17th century .

I sometimes ask myself which is the best preserved of abbeys we have visited . Roche, Jumiege, Valle Crucis , Strata Florida - the names were tripping off the tongue . Lillieshall for some reason seemed to surpass all of them for its tranquility and its quiet beauty . Perhaps it was because we had it to ourselves and it was one of those places that surprises you because you dont expect it to be as good as it was .

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