ries preached, that
it stood in the centre of the village, and that upon its decay it was
supplanted by a market cross, which cross itself has disappeared. Our
engraving represents another of these venerable trees standing a quarter
of a mile from the village, known as the Lady Oak.

[The Nddel's Eye: 37.jpg]

Before the railway caused a deviation in the road, it stood by the
wayside, where it was regarded with veneration by the inhabitants, who
cramped it with iron, and propped it with blocks of wood to preserve it;
they also planted an acorn within its hollow trunk, from which, as will
be seen by our engraving, a young tree mingles its foliage with that of
the parent oak. About a mile from Cressage is Belswardine, the seat of
Sir George Harnage, an old border estate, in possession of the same
family which received it from the Conqueror. Cressage station is the
nearest and most convenient on the Severn Valley line from which to reach
the Wrekin. The distance is three miles. The road crosses the river by
an ancient wooden bridge, and at Eaton Constantine passes the house in
which Richard Baxter lived when a boy; and which the great Puritan divine
describes as "a mile from the Wrekin Hill." The visitor, in his ascent
of the hill, passes a conical knoll of deep red syenite, clothed with
verdure, and known as Primrose Hill. The summit is 1,320 feet above the
level of the sea, and commands a prospect embracing a radius of seventy
miles. Our engraving represents a severed cliff of greenstone at the
top, called the Needle's Eye, and which tradition alleges to have been
riven at the Crucifixion. Near it is a culminating boss of pinkish
felspar known as the Bladder Stone, a name derived, it is supposed, from
Scandinavian mythology; whilst at a short distance is the Ravens' Bowl, a
basin in the hard rock, always containing water. On its sides are
stratified rocks which the trap has pierced in its ascent; and which, by
the action of heat, have been changed into a white crystalline substance.
At the northern termination is an entrenched fortification called Heaven
Gate, supposed to be of British origin; and near it is another, called
Hell Gate, with what is supposed to be a tumulus. In the valley at the
foot of the hill, on the eastern side, tumuli have been opened, in which
hundreds of spear heads and other broken weapons have been found. Here
formerly,

"Unknown to public view,
From youth to age a reverend h