Excerpt from Shropshire Houses: Past Present, Illustrated From Drawings N this illustrated record of the Houses of Shropshire, the remnants of I old habitations will appear side by side with residences which have only just left the builders' hands. There is no definite point of separation between ancient and modern, and so gradual has been the process of decay and renewal, that there is no incongruity in their association. Changes, similar to those of to-day, were taking place nine hundred years ago. The Normans ousted the anglo-saxons, but they did not make a clean sweep, nor was the new order of things effected by force only. Marriage had a great deal to do with the harmonious relations which grew up between the Norman, the Saxon and the Celt. The passing away of Feudal Society is indicated by the ruins of the Feudal Castles. The displacement of old names by new, marks a course of natural development which nothing can resist, and which has always pre vailed. Of the fifty houses represented in this first volume, eight only can claim a date earlier than 1500, and of these, four are uninhabited; five are of the sixteenth century; six of the seventeenth; fifteen of the eighteenth; and sixteen of the nineteenth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.