[Picture: “Pest-Basin,” in St. Giles’s Churchyard]
Our town has been many times visited with those severe scourges of Heaven, the dreadful pestilential diseases of the sweating sickness and the plague. The former desolated the town in the reign of Edward III. in 1349, and again in that of Henry VII., in the years 1485 and 1551; and the latter raged here with frightful fury in the years 1537, 1575, 1630, 1632, and 1634. In the years 1832 and 1849, also, many of the inhabitants fell victims to the cholera.
For the support of the Hospital of Lepers, Henry II. granted thirty shillings yearly out of the rent of the County of Salop, and a handful of two hands of every sack of corn, and a handful of one hand of every sack of flour, exposed for sale in Shrewsbury market. Henry III. also in 1232 gave them a horse-load of wood, daily, from his wood of Lythwood.
The appointment of the Master was vested in the Abbot and Convent of Shrewsbury, who, a short time previous to the Dissolution, granted a long lease of it to Richard Lee, Esq. of Langley, who assigning his interest to the family of Prince, of the White Hall, it passed with their other estates into the Tankerville family. The Earl of Tankerville still annually receives from the Sheriff the thirty shillings granted by Henry II. and nominates the four hospitallers, who now live in the adjoining comfortable cottages, and to each of whom his Lordship pays 1s. 6d. per week, 3s. at Midsummer for coal, and 12s. 6d. at Christmas for a garment. { 153}
Near St. Giles’s is a handsome edifice of brick, built by government in 1806, at an expense of £10,000, after a design by Wyatt, and intended as
for containing the arms of the volunteer corps in this and the adjoining counties.
The principal building is 135 feet by 39 feet, divided into an upper and lower story, and is surrounded by an oblong enclosure, within which are 13 small neat houses. Little use having for many years been made of this structure, it has, by purchase, become the property of the present Lord Berwick. Recently it has been adapted as the Military Depôt of the Shropshire Militia. { 154}
We now return along the suburb of the Abbey Foregate,
“A long great streate, well builded large and faire, In as good ayre, as may be wisht with wit.”