70 BROMSGROVE.

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, *formed the high road for at least a score of coaches per diem, A sorry substitute for this liveliness and bustle, gossiping and tippling, money-spending and travelling accommodation, was afforded by the railway being laid at a distance of a mile or two from the town; and then such a road connecting the town with the station! Such gradients and turnings ! Well, but the old Birmingham and Gloucester Company flourished in the infancy of railways, when it was not thought desirable to take the rail to the people, but to leave the latter to find their way as best they might to the rail. It was also an early canon in railroad construction to perform as straight a line as possible between the termini, and to avoid the neighbourhood of towns in order to procure land the cheaper. Tewkesbury, Worcester, Droitwich, and Bromsgrove, were the sufferers from this arrangement, and the latter town still remains with the evil unremedied, although urgent efforts have been made to induce the Midland Company to take compassion upon the poor isolated inhabitants of Bromsgrove. All that has been done in this direction is the making of a new road to the station, whereby the horrors of the "middle passage" are abated.

Bromsgrove is a good old town - important and populous, and by no means deserving of such neglect; the parish has a population of nearly 11,000, and an acreage of 11,302; it has a nailing trade which employs in the town and surrounding districts some 7,000 persons; a cloth-button manufactory, an indigo-dye manufactory, and about 180 persons engaged at the railway station in making waggons, &c.; it has a fine old Grammar School, a Public Office, Town Hall, Corn Exchange, Post Office, Union Workhouse, and Gas Works; it boasts of a noble Church and spire, set on a hill as a beacon for all the country round; and within

* The finest specimen of these buildings, dated 1572, was unfortunately removed on the new road to the station being made, but it has been re-erected near its former site, and is occupied as a branch of the Worcester City and County Bank.