Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/41

 10 s. VIIL JULY is, 190?.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

read. Printed in the Transactions, with Orlando Jewitt's beautiful woodcuts, it forms a suitable memorial of the ancient edifice, which, as Mr. Hugo observed, "well deserves our reverence and regard, whose venerable walls, solemn chambers, and diversified history can reveal beauties, suggest associations, and elicit remembrances, at once so fair, so national, and so grandly great."

It is scarcely credible that such a building, bound up as it is with a stirring episode in English history within whose walls, moreover, it can scarcely be doubted that Shakespeare trod can be allowed to perish at the hands of the housebreaker.

W. F. PBIDEAUX.

The pamphlet on Crosby Hall by Mr. E. I. Carlos, referred to by MB. ALECK ABBAHAMS, was noticed and largely quoted from in The Mirror of 5 Jan., 1833. Refer- ence is also there made to an engraving of Crosby Hall ; see Mirror, vol. ix. p. 329. I do not possess this volume.

In The Literary World of 15 June, 1839, a short report, signed " T. J.," was given of a lecture delivered in Crosby Hall on the old mansions and baronial halls of England by John Britton, F.S.A. The lecturer evidently devoted a considerable portion of his time to a description of Crosby Hall.

An engraving of the interior of Crosby Hall, accompanied by three or four columns of letterpress, appeared in The Penny Magazine of 30 Nov. to 31 Dec., 1832.

A. letter by the present writer, drawing attention to the unique associations of Crosby Hall with several notable Northamptonshire families, was published in The Northampton Herald of 14 June last. JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

HALESOWEN, WOBCESTEBSHIRE (10 S. vii. 470). In Lewis's ' County Atlas,' 1842 (the only reference I have at hand), Hales- owen is represented as a detached part of Shropshire. Though that county appears to have no other, the Birmingham district is rich in examples of " discreteness " in counties : bits of Staffordshire and War- wickshire lying in Worcestershire, and the latter county and Gloucestershire being wonderfully intermixed about Chipping Camden. Similar cases occur in many parts of England : I live myself in a part of Hertfordshire surrounded by Bucks. Most, if not all, of these detached parts have for administrative purposes been united to their enveloping county by orders of the Local Government Board in the course of the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The origin of detached parts is briefly discussed in Pollock and Maitland's ' History of British Law,' 2nd ed., pp. 533, 556 ; but I know of no thorough investigation of the subject. When the invaluable analyses of Domesday Book in the ' Victoria County Histories ' are complete, an exhaustive study of detached parts will be a simpler matter than it has yet been. The commonly accepted explanation, that they are detached parts of great estates, may sometimes be true ; but I very much doubt if it is at all a general explanation. I have shown in the case of Caversfield, a detached part of Bucks, that this explanation does not apply (Records Biicks Arch. Soc., ix. 104-19, and Home Counties Magazine, vi. 134-44) : and I suspect that in many cases discreteness is more ancient than great estates. It is certainly more ancient than the Norman Conquest. A. MOBLEY DAVIES.

Winchmore Hill, Amersham.

Hales-Owen together with Oldbury was at one time a part of Shropshire, in the same manner that Farlow, near Stottesden, Salop, was a part of Herefordshire. I think the exchanges were made about 1848, but application to the Clerk to the County Council of Worcestershire will no doubt receive a reply. See 6 S. iii. 293, 455.

Pigott's county maps of the early nine- teenth century, show the extent of this place and district, which formed part of Shropshire. In 1824, according to Gregory (' Shropshire Gazetteer '), there were 1,472 houses and 8,187 inhabitants in the Shrop- shire part of Hales-Owen (the entire parish had 10,946 inhabitants) ; so that it was considerably more than an outlying portion of a Shropshire estate.

HEBBEBT SOUTHAM.

Hales-Owen (St. Mary and St. John the Evangelist) is a parish comprising the market town of Hales-Owen, in the Hales- Owen Division of the hundred of Brimstree, a detached portion of the county of Salop. It stood within a part of Shropshire, in- sulated between Worcester and Stafford ; but by the operation of a statute passed in 1844 it now forms part of Worcestershire. The poet Shenstone was buried here. For a more detailed account see Lewis's ' Topo- graphical Dictionary of England,' vol. ii., and ' Murray's Handbook to Worcester,' p. 34. ALFBED SYDNEY LEWIS.

Library, Constitutional Club, W.C.

10 S. vii. 509). It is quite easy to find this word in ' N.E.D., ' when it is once understood that in all such