Just a stone’s throw from Soulton Hall lies Wroxeter, once the 4th largest city in Roman Britain. Today, fields blanket the buried city, a testament to the passage of time. A.E. Housman captured this feeling in his poem A Shropshire Lad pondering the Roman legacy now reduced to “ashes under Uricon” (Wroxeter’s Roman name):
On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.‘Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
..Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.…
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
Interestingly, a link to Soulton exists here too. Sir Thomas Bromley, a close friend of Soulton’s builder Old Sir Rowland Hill, rests in Wroxeter’s charming church. This unexpected connection adds another layer to the rich history woven into the Shropshire landscape.
This is nearby #Wroxeter.
The church contains a monument to the Tudor Lord Chief Justice Sir Thomas Bromley. He was a close friend of Sir Rowland Hill, who built Soulton
Wroxeter was the fourth largest city in Roman Britain, but now it is fields, off the old Roman Roman.
— Soulton Hall (@SoultonHall) June 28, 2022
