A gazetteer of the many fine Shropshire country houses, which covers the architecture, the owners' family history, and the social and economic circumstances that affected them.

It is the aim of the following pages to give the degree and kind of popular information believed to be wanted by the numerous visitors to the excavations at Wroxeter, who have no guidebook to explain what they see, and are not possessed of that amount of minute antiquarian knowledge which would enable them to understand everything without such explanation. It is the first instance in which there has been, in this country, the chance of penetrating into a city of more than fourteen centuries ago, on so large a scale, and with such extensive remains of its former condition; and when the visitor has walked over the floors which had been trodden last, before they were thus uncovered, by the Roman inhabitants of this island, he will appreciate more justly, and with greater interest, the objects which have been discovered, and are deposited in the Museum, at Shrewsbury; and he will learn to look forward with hope to the light which a continuance of these excavations must throw upon the condition and history of this country at so remote a period.