A Historical Tour of… Shrewsbury
Join us on a photographic trip around Charles Darwin’s childhood home: the medieval town of Shrewsbury.
Every city, town and village in the UK has a history. It might be a relatively short and uneventful history like that of, say, Milton Keynes, or it could be an ancient and compelling one, as is the case in so many places on these islands.
Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, definitely falls under the latter category. It’s also a rarity in that it’s managed to keep a tonne of it’s old stuff; timber-framed buildings, a castle and a damn confusing medieval street-plan. Consequently, I thought it would be the perfect place to begin a tour of Britain’s most historically interesting and important places.
A little background history to begin…
Shrewsbury is one of these places that’s had a settlement in situ for time immemorial. The Celts were said to have a gaff where the town is now, the Romans pitched up only five miles away during their time in England and the town as we know it has been a work in progress from as early as 600AD.
This shouldn’t be of any surprise as the town ticks all of the strategic boxes; a hill (to defend), an embracing loop of the River Severn (also to defend) and the Welsh border a mere 10 miles away (to attack). It’s prime real estate, simple stuff.
When the Normans took over in the mid to late 11th century, the town really kicked on under Roger de Montgomerie, who founded both the castle and abbey which we’ll get around to seeing later.
Between then and now, Shrewsbury got very rich from a thriving wool trade, was involved in countless wars and gave birth to the world’s greatest naturalist: Charles Darwin.
The modern day town remains a pretty wealthy area. The kind of place with gourmet pubs, smoothie bars and vintage shops by the tonne, along with over 600 listed buildings: an unusual amount in most places. One of these listed buildings is the train station, where I began my trip…
Arrival
I arrived in Shrewsbury late in the morning after a fairly painless journey from Stoke-on-Trent, just the one change, an hour and a half in total. The initial plan was to vlog my time meandering around the town centre using my brand new camera, but the Great British weather continued to be predictably miserable and I wasn’t too keen to have my pristine bit of kit out in the rain for too long. That and the wind-noise made it impossible to distinguish my silky smooth presenter voice. I decided a picture tour would be the best approach… please enjoy my novice attempt at photography.
The train station itself was an intriguing looking building, with a clock tower, windows and chimneys reminiscent of a Tudor or Stuart hall, which it turns out is exactly what the architect was going for when he built it in 1848. Not that old, but still pretty cool.
As soon as you’re out of the station, by the taxi rank, turn to your left and you’ll see the castle itself looming over you from the top of a brick embankment; a sight to behold in battlements and red sandstone.
Being so close I foolishly assumed there was a short way to get up, but there’s a bit of a distance to go up the road before you find the entrance. Not that far mind, but I was a bit miffed nonetheless. Maybe I’m just lazy. (A map of my route can be found near the bottom of the page.)
This led me to the castle’s gateway, which isn’t the grandest of affairs but a gateway nonetheless, surrounded by a nice flower bed and a some disused artillery. Parts of the original medieval wall were meant to be tucked in amongst the 18th century one which stands today, but for the life of me I couldn’t find any sign of them.
Shrewsbury Castle
Entering the grounds you’re faced with the great hall directly ahead, again in striking red sandstone, with more garden in the courtyard. I suppose the gardens are nice if you’re into that sort of thing.
The great hall was originally built around 1300 under the reign of Edward I, along with its two giant towers which you can see from outside the railway station. Of course, nothing 700 years old looks that good and there’s been some significant refurbishment over the years. Shrewsbury castle fell into disrepair after it had served its purpose in Edward’s war with the Welsh and stayed that way until the 1600s and the Civil War, when its defenses once more became of use.
By the time monarchy was reinstated and the royals had seized all the castles they had lost to Parliamentarians, the old battlements on the hill in Shrewsbury had seen plenty of wear and tear, something the new King clearly couldn’t be bothered to deal with as he passed it onto private hands.
A century or so later, in 1780, the architect Thomas Telford ‘substantially altered’ the castle, restoring a lot of the masonry and built ‘Laura’s Tower’, named for the daughter of Sir William Pulteney, the richest man in Britain at the time. The watchtower itself sits high above the courtyard atop the motte: site of the original Norman castle.
Naturally, this means it’s a great place to look at the landscape, across from the abbey to the ‘Welsh Bridge’ in the north. It’d be quite spectacular on a sunny day, with which I was not blessed.
The castle itself has remained relatively unchanged and unused since Telford’s intervention, but the great hall has found some purpose.
The Shropshire Regimental Museum
Inside the great hall feels, remarkably, even bigger than it looks on the outside. It now houses an extensive collection of military artefacts from the county’s various army regiments, dating all the way back to the American Revolution, which seems to fill it up perfectly.
Its previous roles as a council meeting chamber and some lucky bugger’s private residence may not have accommodated it quite as well.
As a student I got into the Regimental Museum for a mere pound, but it’s not much more for the adult ticket at four and I’ve heard that past or present members of the armed forces can even get in for free. If the history of the British Empire is your cup of tea it’ll be worth every penny.
Uniforms, weapons, the spoils of war, this museum has it all from 1755 right up the present day. My personal favourite was a bell captured from a French ship in 1782 during a scrap over the West Indies.
A very small room, at the very end of the exhibition past the gift shop, was devoted to the castle itself, which was a shame. Nevertheless it was packed with interesting facts about the town and its defence over the years and also housed a brilliant miniature of medieval Shrewsbury, showing just how small the settlement was in its early years.
Darwin’s Schoolhouse and Shrewsbury Library
As any resident would be quick to remind you, Shrewsbury was the town which birthed and bred Charles Darwin, the father of evolution. Actually, you don’t even need a resident to remind you, he’s everywhere.
Not only is the shopping centre named after him, you can find a massive statue of the man sat outside of the town library, but with very good reason: it’s where he grew up.
The building itself, only metres away from the castle gates, was home to Shrewsbury school from 1550 until 1882, just enough time to see a young Darwin pass through the doors, a young man who would go on to travel the world and revolutionise the very way we see ourselves as humans… and apes for that matter.
The library is, in itself, just that: a library. There’s not much more to it going through the doors except a painting of Charlie above the welcome desk and allusions to the rooms’ previous purposes, such as ‘The Old School Room’.
At the very top of the building, however, in the aforementioned ‘Old School Room’ you’ll find window sills made from old wooden beams, all with names and dates carved into them. It’s an unexpected trip, seeing a long -dead person’s name etched into the wood, alongside the date ‘1784’.
Around the Town Centre
I still had a good few hours to kill after visiting both the castle and the library, so I decided to venture into town for a look around and maybe a bit of shopping.
The first thing that struck me, which it really shouldn’t have as I read about it when researching the town, was the sheer amount of timber-framed Tudor buildings in one location. There appeared to be so many that the council didn’t really care what people did with them.
In Luton, near enough my hometown, a single one of these things would be revered and treasured, made into a museum perhaps or given to the mayor, but in Shrewsbury that’s definitely not the case.
The picture above this section best illustrates the situation. Fantastically ornate structures, possibly hundreds of years old, sat above a Boots Pharmacy, or a Swinton Insurance office, it really was a shock to the system.
Although, my favourite combination of new and old, by far, was the old church sat in front of the castle gates which had been converted to a café and spa, still called St Nicholas’ to avoid confusion, of course.
But there was still an element of the city untouched by development: the street-plan.
Finding my way around would’ve been damn near impossible had it not been for the constant presence of signposts in the town centre, pointing me exactly where I needed to go.
They certainly helped me find one of the town’s most famous streets: Wyle Cop, its age only matched by its steep incline. Here I found a great deal of independent restaurants, pubs, and shops in which to spend a bit of money. It’s all relatively expensive for the West Midlands in general, but reasonable enough for anywhere else.
St. Mary’s Church
When people come to sample the culture of a particular place, they can often neglect churches, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Their religious value means they usually survive being torn down far longer than any other buildings and, for the same value, are often much more spectacular than other buildings.
Here in Shrewsbury, St. Mary’s Church is no exception. It’s hard to miss with its huge steeple, one of the tallest in England, which has imposed over the town for hundreds of years since its construction.
The interior features a intricate dark wood ceiling and the church’s ancient stained glass, brought from all over Europe to be fitted in these windows. A organist played during the entirety of my visit, really setting the mood and making the whole spectacle just a little more awe-inspiring.
As you might expect of a building as old as this, it has got a fair share of stories attached to it. The best being that of the stuntman Robert Cadman, during the early 1700s.
Between 1732 and 1739, the young man, a steeplejack by trade, slid from the very top of the church tower on a rope to the far side of the River Severn, essentially what we would call ziplining today. To clarify this was from a height of 68m at the top of the spire.
It’s a miracle he kept it up for so long and let’s be honest, after seven years performing these stunts he was pushing his luck.
In February of 1739, Robert’s rope snapped during a performance and he plummeted to the very bottom, dying instantly. He was buried at the church, where a plaque remembering his feat still sits above the front door (pictured).
Shrewsbury Museum
It had slipped my mind that there was in fact another museum to visit on my trip, Shrewsbury’s main one in fact, set in the old Music Hall just beyond the market square.
There were three main exhibitions on show when I came to visit, the first of which, the Roman Gallery, was completely free to enter.
You might expect a museum’s free gallery to be a bit naff compared to the rest of it, so people begrudgingly end up buying a full ticket to have their fill, but this isn’t the case at all here. I was completely blown away by the sheer amount of artefacts in one room.
Just calling it ‘the Roman Gallery’ is completely underselling it, as you get a decent amount of both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon relics chucked in as well; jewellery, weapons of all shapes and sizes and even a replica Celtic hut to spark your interest.
This spurred me on into spending a couple of quid extra to get into the rest of the museum upstairs.
Their collection of medieval, Tudor and Stuart antiquities was next on the agenda.
This exhibit continued where the previous one had left off and was no less impressive in its detail, with hundreds of bits and pieces telling the full story of Shrewsbury between the Norman invasion and the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. A history I honestly didn’t expect to be as fascinating as it was, but maybe that’s just me.
My route led me on to the great Victorian hall, which housed several collections on Shropshire’s geology, animals, period clothing and tonne of ceramics. While it was odd to have so much variety in one big room, it was an unexpected bonus nonetheless.
Lastly I visited the temporary exhibit, ‘Valhalla: Life and Death of the Vikings’, which appeared to be a touring collection courtesy of the Jorvik Viking Centre who, if you don’t know, are based in York.
It seemed fairly minimal compared to the other galleries I had seen, without too many actual artefacts, but there was a really interesting component in the form of two complete skeletons. Each one was laid out in sand, under glass, accompanied by a report detailing every feature on the bones and teeth and explaining what that told us about the individuals’ lives. Their diets, wounds, diseases, it was an extraordinary window into the life of a Viking.
The English Bridge and Shrewsbury Abbey
Running out of daylight, I decided my last stop on the tour would be Shrewsbury Abbey, just over the English Bridge.
There is said to have been a bridge on this site since the Norman era, but the existing English Bridge was built in 1926, a much larger version of one built in 1774, to accommodate modern traffic.
I was hoping there was a compelling tale as to why the bridge is called ‘the English Bridge’, but it just seems that it’s further away from the Welsh border than its ‘sister’ to the north of the town centre, imaginatively called ‘the Welsh Bridge’.
Across the Severn you quickly come across Roger de Montgomerie’s legacy and the castle’s counterpart: the abbey.
Well, it would be anyway, if there was any of it was left to see.
The structure you see today was built in the late 1800s on the site of the previous abbey, which, like many of its kind, wasted into ruin after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540. The old building which had see Shrewsbury grow into a bustling town over hundreds of years was neglected, and parts of it demolished, before it was flattened completely by the A458.
Very little of the original abbey survives today; a small section of wall and, across the road which destroyed any hopes of recovery, the old refectory pulpit sits in a small garden. A relic of Britain’s monastic past.
The End
I tried to see how much I could get out of Shrewsbury in a day and the answer, as it turns out, was not enough.
While I saw and learnt much, I also missed a great deal; the Quarry park, the Welsh Bridge, the Town Walls and I was never going to get round to seeing every one of the centre’s many churches. Not too far to the north of the city you can also visit the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury, fought in 1403 between the King of England and a rebel army led by Sir Henry Hotspur Percy, it was immortalised in Shakespeare’s famous play Henry IV. It was also one of the bloodiest battles every fought on British soil, 6,000 men losing their lives in just a few hours.
Even if none of that’s for you, there’s plenty to do and see in Shrewsbury, so do give it a visit: one of England’s greatest towns for over a thousand years.
(All photography by Tony Costin)
