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Daniel Defoe

An extract from Daniel Defoe's A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724 (edited and introduced by Pat Rodgers, Penguin Books, 1978)

Letter 6 - The West and Wales

"From Ludlow we took our course due south to Lemster or Leominster, a large and good trading town on the River Lug. This river is lately made navigable by Act of Parliament to the very great profit of the trading part of this county, who have now a very great trade for their corn, wool and other products of this place, into the river Wye, and from the Wye, into the Severn, and so to Bristol.

"Leominster has nothing very remarkable in it, but that it is a well-built, well inhabited town. The church, which is very large, has been in a manner rebuilt, and is now, especially in the inside, a very beautiful church. This town, besides the fine wool, is noted for the best wheat, and consequently the finest bread; whence Leominster bread and Weobley ale, is become a proverbial saying.

"We are now on the borders of Wales, properly so called for from the windows of Brampton-Castle, you have a fair prospect into the county of Radnor, which as it were, under its walls; nay, even this whole county of Hereford, was, if we may believe antiquity, a part of Wales, and was so esteemed for many ages. The people of this county too, boast that they were a part of the ancient Silures, who for so many ages withstood the Roman arms, and who could never be entirely conquered. But that's an affair quite beyond my enquiry. I observed they are a diligent and laborious people, chiefly addicted to husbandry, and they boast, perhaps not without reason, that they have the finest wool, and the best hops and richest cider in all Britain.

"Indeed the wool about Leominster, and in the Hundred of Wigmore observed above and the Golden Vale, as 'tis called, for its richness on the banks of the river Dore, (all in this county) is the finest without exception, of any in England, the South Downs wool not excepted.

"As for hops, they plant abundance indeed all over this county, and they are very good. And as for cider, here it was that several times for 20 miles together, we could get no beer or ale in their public houses, only cider; and that so very good, so fine and so cheap, that we never found fault with the exchange; great quantities of this cider are sent to London, even by land carriage, though so very remote, which is an evidence for the goodness of it, beyond contradiction.

"From Lemster it is ten miles to Hereford, the chief city, not of this county only, but of all the counties west of Severn. 'Tis a large and populous city, and in the time of the later Rebellion, was very strong, and being well fortified, and as well defended, supported a tedious and very severe siege.

"Coming to Hereford, we could not but enquire into the truth of the story; of the removing of two great stones near Sutton, which the people confirmed to us. The story is thus, between Sutton and Hereford, is a common meadow called the Wergins, where were placed two large stones for a water-mark; one erected upright, and the other laid a-thwart. In the late Civil Wars, about the year 1652, they were removed to about twelve score paces distance, and no body knew how; which gave occasion to the common opinion, that they were carried thither by the Devil. When they were set in their places again, one of them required nine yoke of oxen to draw it.

"It is truly an old, mean built, and very dirty city, lying low, and on the bank of the Wye, which sometimes incommodes them very much, by the violent freshes that come down from the mountains of Wales.

"The great church is a magnificent building, however ancients, the spire is not high, but handsome, and there is a fine tower at the west end, over the great door or entrance. The choir is very fine, though plain, and there is a very good organ.

"From Hereford keeping the back of the Wye as near as we could, we came to Ross, a good old town, famous for good cider, a great manufacture of iron ware, and a good trade on the River Wye, and nothing else as I remember, except it was a monstrous fat woman, who they would have had me gone to see. But I had enough of the relation, and I suppose will the reader for they told me she was more than three yards about her waist; that when she sat down, she was obliged to have a small stool placed before her, to rest her belly on and the like."