Stretton by Henry Kingsley

Pulverbatch, one would think, was (at least in the old coaching days) as far, intellectually speaking, from anywhere, as any place could be. It was even out of the then road from Shrewsbury to Ludlow--one would have thought a very quiet road--and was intensely sleepy.

The Grange, Miss Eleanor Evans' inalienable property, was a heavy old Grange, with an actual moat, in which Miss Eleanor lived as a Mariana, though with a difference. There were eight hundred acres of fat meadow and corn-land around it, washed down from Caradoc, Lawley, and Longmynd; every acre of which this strenuous lady held in her own hands.