A Town Surrounded by a River
The Basics
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| Shropshire |
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| Shrewsbury |
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| Shropshire in England and Shrewsbury in Shropshire |
It was founded by Saxons on a low hill almost completely surrounded by a meander of the River Severn. The town grew within this easily defended space – a rough circle of radius 400 to 500m – and by the 15th century had largely filled it.
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| The Centre of Shrewsbury (my thanks to the copyright holder) |
There was little significant development beyond the river until the arrival of the railway in 1848. The town has since spread in all directions, but it is still the area within the meander that attracts visitors. Over 660 listed buildings are crammed into this small space and much of the medieval street plan remains intact. Timber framed buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries rub shoulders with grand Georgian town-houses, amid a sprinkling of Victorian classical exuberance, and modern geometrical design.
Sun 26-July-2026
Breakfast in the Old Market Square, Shrewsbury?
Our 51st wedding anniversary threatened to be another fine day in a summer of fine days.
Uncertain if we had booked breakfast we asked at Reception. ‘We don’t do breakfast anymore,” was the reply, so clearly, we hadn’t. The receptionist suggested we try the Market Square.
We took a short stroll in the Sunday morning quiet and found two possibilities. Eschewing a branch of a ubiquitous American owned chain, we selected an adjacent independent business. Neither had many customers but Daily Brews offered a wide choice of English favourites and some Eastern Mediterranean offerings (shawarma, sucuk sausage etc).
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| Breakfast in the Old Market Square, Shrewsbury |
I photographed part of the Square’s collection of buildings…
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| Old Market Square, Shrewsbury, empty at 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning The stone Old Market Hall with the clock dates from 1595 (grade I listed), the timbered dwelling (Grade II listed) was built in the 1570s as a merchant's house, to its right is a 4-storey Georgian town house built some 200 years later |
… and two statues, arranged one behind the other.
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| Unusual arrangement of statues, Shrewsbury Old Market Square |
The front statue (photographed at dusk yesterday) is The Knife Angel (The National Monument Against Violence & Aggression). Built by Alfie Bradley at the British Ironworks Centre in Oswestry it was completed in
2018. It consists of 100,000 knives, some collected in amnesties, some confiscated
by the Police, and has been on tour since 2022.
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| The Knife Angel, Shrewsbury Old Market Square |
Behind is Robert Clive, aka Clive of India (1725-1774). A hero when, long ago, I learned about him in school, he has since been ‘re-evaluated’. Born in nearby Market Drayton, he was an unruly youth,
twice being expelled from schools for the sons of gentlemen. In 1744 his desperate father sent him to India as a
clerk in the East India Company. Spending most of the next 23 years in India he
took on ever more important roles eventually becoming Governor of Bengal. Being
an able military commander, fighting the French, who were seeking to expand
their influence in India, made him a hero, but there is ample evidence that his
main occupation was enriching himself, mainly at the expense of the Bengalis. His
rapacious greed brought great wealth, but tarnished his reputation.
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| Clive of India, Shrewsbury Old Market Square |
His statue, like that of Edward Colston in Bristol, is perhaps a problem – but he is currently hiding safely behind an Angel.
Shrewsbury Prison
After breakfast we strolled north to the ridge where
the meander starts and finishes, and visited Shrewsbury Prison.
The first prison on this site was built by Thomas Telford in 1793, and the present building dates from 1877. There was a wing for female convicts until 1922 when it became a medium security prison for men only. Decommissioned in March 2013, Shrewsbury Prison is now a tourist attraction.
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| In a town of interesting buildings, Shrewsbury Prison stands out by being somewhat dull |
On a Sunday, Shrewsbury is mostly closed, but not
the Prison and we had booked tickets a week before. I was surprised how many
people want to visit a prison on a Sunday morning, but we had a warm welcome from
the staff, much warmer, I imagine, than if we had just arrived in handcuffs
from the court.
There were, of course, still some formalities, a mug shot…
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| A casually dressed new inmate at Shrewsbury Prison.. |
…followed by a visit to the governor.
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| ... looking remarkably similar to the Prison Governor |
Then we went to inspect the cells.
The Cells
The main cell block has four storeys with open landings and nets to catch inmates or anything else tumbling or being thrown onto those below.
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| On the 1st floor of the cell block (2nd floor to American readers) |
The cells were laid out to show how prison life had changed
over the years.
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| Victorian cell, Shrewsbury Prison |
We spent some time moving from one to another, commenting on the major changes and pointing out the more subtle alterations.
This was an entertaining game, but it makes dull reading, so I will jump from
the Victorian cell above, to a modern cell below.
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| Modern cell, Shrewsbury Prison |
The most recent occupant of this cell was this chap…
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| Sean Bean in Time |
… but not for doing anything wrong. Sean Bean and Stephen Graham starred in Jimmy McGovern and Helen Black's award-winning miniseries Time and much of it was shot here.
The modern cell looks cluttered and crowded, particularly as it was built as a single cell, but has two occupants. It makes
the sparsely furnished Victorian cell look almost spacious. The prison was often
overcrowded, in August 2012 it was housing 326 inmates in accommodation designed
for 178, the 183% occupancy rate being the country’s second highest.
Not all cells had sanitation before 1995, when the
unpleasant Victorian necessity for ‘slopping out’ finally came to an end.
The Death Penalty
After a visit to the café, we went through to an
exhibition on the death penalty. The exhibits were largely letters between the
governor, justice officials and executioners, discussing in chillingly banal
language the arrangements for killing human beings.
Between 1902 and 1961 seven people were executed by
hanging in Shrewsbury Prison.
All seven were men, and all had killed women - two girlfriends,
an estranged wife (and her lover, the only male victim), a mother, a neighbour
and two unspecified. They were brutal men (assuming they were all guilty), some
maybe suffering from mental problems not recognised at the time, but I doubt
that killing them made anything better.
Shropshire posts often suggest a poem from AE Housman’s
1896 collection, A Shropshire Lad. Previously we have had been On Wenlock Edge and climbed BredonHill, and here are a couple of verses from On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.
To read the whole poem, click here.
The last execution in Shrewsbury was in 1961, the last
in the United Kingdom were in 1964. The death penalty for murder was abolished the
next year, but it lingered on, unused, in military law and for treason and
piracy until 1998. Humans have become more civilized over time, but the world
today reminds us that civilization takes two steps back for every three forward.
Prison Transport
We made our escape, but as no one was chasing we
paused to look inside one of the vehicles that routinely transfer prisoners.
There must be plenty of criminals bigger than me, but I found this a tight fit.
I would have felt very uncomfortable with the door closed.
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| Prison transport |
Walking by the Severn
Like any jail-breaker, we left the road and burrowed down a narrow path descending steeply to the river. From the railway bridge…
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| Railway Bridge over the Severn, Shrewsbury |
…we walked south. Central Shrewsbury is just to our right, the town stretches on far to the left, but the riverbank feels pleasingly remote. We walked under English Bridge where black-headed gulls showed off
their flying skills while a cormorant dried his wings.
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| English Bridge, Shrewsbury |
Around the southern end of the loop is Quarry Park. Over the river is the spacious campus of Shrewsbury School, a ‘leading Public School’, meaning it is private and expensive. Founded as a boys’ school in 1552, it moved to its current site in 1884 and went fully coeducational in 2023.
Among those educated here are politician Michael Heseltine, disc jockey John Peel, astronomer Martin Rees and the incomparable Michael Palin.
Without warning rain started falling, gently at first but with increasing strength and we scuttled towards the nearest tree. Just as we
reached cover the rain stopped as if a tap had been turned off.
The Dingle
Turning right into Quarry Park we headed for The Dingle.
Percy Thrower was born in Buckinghamshire in 1913. The son of a head gardener, his ambition was to become a head gardener himself. He worked in a variety of gardens around the country, studying horticulture and
gaining experience. In 1946 he was appointed Shrewsbury’s youngest ever Parks Superintendent.
From 1956 he presented Gardening Club on television. Every Sunday evening an old man (Thrower was actually in his 40s) plonked pots onto his workbench and talked interminably about Latin names, the shapes of leaves and some mysterious substance called John Innes Potting Compost number 5. I loathed it. So why watch? Until 1963, the television was in the only heated room in the house, and grown-ups controlled the off-switch. In 1969 Gardener’s World replaced Gardening Club as television gardening burst into colour, but by then I did not care.
Thrower redesigned The Dingle and it is magnificent.
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| The Dingle, Shrewsbury |
Big slabs of colour in neatly organised beds in a
landscaped lawn are simple enough for me to understand, and if I had seen it
in 1960, would my life have been different? Probably not, but I feel I owe
Percy an apology.
St Chad’s to Shrewsbury Castle
St Chad’s Church
St Chad’s is a stroll across the grass from the Dingle.
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| Lynne strolls across the grass to St Chad's, Shrewsbury |
The first St Chad’s was probably founded by King Offa of Mercia (r757-796). It collapsed in 1788 during some over-ambitious enlargements.
Circular churches were in vogue in the late 18th century and when Scottish architect George Steuart was commissioned to build a new St Chad’s three of his four designs were circular. The local planning committee, however, chose the other one.
When Steuart was asked to provide a sketch to aid the committee's search for an appropriate location he gave them a sketch of a round church. Nobody noticed until construction was underway and by then it was too late. The new St Chad’s opened in 1792.
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| Inside St Chad's, Shrewbury |
Charles Darwin was christened here in 1809, Percy Thrower’s funeral service was held here in 1988 and the churchyard contains the gravestone of Ebenezer Scrooge (George C Scott). In the 1984 film of A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge is shown his grave by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come he is in St Chad’s graveyard. They used a genuine headstone weathered to illegibility, and obtained permission to engrave 'EBENEZER SCROOGE' on it. It is still there.
All roads lead to the Old Market Square, and we stopped on the way for a glass of lunch – one ‘Guiness Free’ and one ‘Peroni Zero’, my younger self would be appalled. In the square we read the menu outside Côte and booked a table for tonight.
The Bear Steps
To reach the Bear Steps we walked up Grope Lane.
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| Grope Lane, Shrewsbury |
The businesses to be found in Butcher Row and Fish Street are obvious. Business went on in Grope Lane, too. Many towns and cities had a Grope Lane, or, as Wikipedia will tell you, an much coarser variant. Shrewsbury’s is one of the few left, but if you come across a ‘Grape Lane’ near the centre of old an town or city, it was probably once ‘Grope Lane’.
At the top are the Bear Steps which take their name from the Bear Inn which once stood on the corner of Fish Street and Grope Lane. There is nothing remarkable about them, except their age. Stone steps only look this was after centuries of use.
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| Bear Steps It takes a few years to get knobbly knees like that, too |
St Mary's
Our wandering led us to St Mary’s Church. The much changed and refurbished 12th century church was built over King Edgar’s 10th century version. No longer in use, St Mary’s remains Grade I listed and is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.
It houses a magnificent collection of stained glass, mostly from Belgium and Germany.
This 15th century window from Trier Cathedral has three panels, each showing a different saint kneeling to the Dean of Trier.
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| Glass from Trier Cathedral, Germany |
Below are a few of their 16th/17th century Flemish roundels. Subjects are a religious mixed bag, from the Adoration of the Magi (top left) to St Michael binding Satan (top right).
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| Flemish Roundels, St Mary's, Shrewsbiry |
The Jesse window was made locally. Jesse was the father of King David and (according to an unlikely interpretation of Isaiah 11:1) a direct ancestor of Jesus. Jesse can be seen asleep across columns 3,4 and 5 in the second row up. Above him are his (largely imaginary) descendants with Jesus at the very top.
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| Jesse Window, St Mary's Shrewsbury |
Surrounded by more glass, a plaque commemorates Shrewsbury-born Vice-Admiral John Benbow. Joining the navy in 1678 aged 25, he fought the Barbary Pirates rising to become a Master’s Mate before leaving the Royal Navy to become a Merchant Seaman. He later returned, gained a commission, fought the French, worked his way up to becoming an Admiral and died from wounds in the West Indies. His remarkable career would be largely forgotten had not Robert Louis Stevenson set the opening of Treasure Island an inn bearing his name.
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| Admiral Benbow Memorial, St Mary's Shrewsbury |
Outside there is a plaque to the memory of Robert Cadman, a locally well-known travelling showman, famous for his ‘flying man’ stunts. On this occasion he was attempting to ‘fly’ along a fixed rope from the steeple to Gay Meadow across the river, a descent of 80m while travelling 200m horizontally. This could well have proved fatal
even if his rope had not broken and dropped him in the churchyard. He was a brave, perhaps foolhardy, man struggling to make a living in the unforgiving 17th century. He deserved a better rope, and to be fair, a better versifier.
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| Robert Cadman's plaque, St Mary's, Shrewsbury |
Gay Meadow
Gay Meadow where the unfortunate Cadman intended to land was an open area for public amusement, the word ‘gay’ then meaning ‘cheerful’ and ‘carefree’. In the 18th century the word started to become connected with sexual freedom, of any sort.
In 1910 Shrewsbury Town Football Club built its stadium on Gay Meadow. They were elected to the English League in 1950 and have spent most of the last 76 years in the 3rd and 4th tiers of English football. Gay Meadow’s record crowd was 18,917 against Walsall in 1961 but after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 new safety regulations cut the capacity to 8,000. Stuck between the railway and the river, expansion was impossible, so ‘The New Meadow’ stadium was built well away from Shrewsbury’s ancient centre. Gay Meadow is now a housing estate, one of the streets being named Cadman Place after the unfortunate ‘flyer’.
The Castle Gates Library
Continuing north we reached the Castle Gates Library, the original site of Shrewsbury School.
The school opened in 1551 in Riggs Hall. The stone structure below, which incorporates Riggs Hall, was built in two phases finishing in 1630. The school stayed here until moving to its present campus by the river in 1882. The building now serves as Shrewsbury’s main library.
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| Charles Darwin and the Castle Gates Library |
Charles Darwin, possibly their most illustrious alumnus of that period, (studied 1818-25) looks comfortable in his armchair. The plaque on the wall behind also names Sir Philip Sydney, Elizabethan poet and soldier, and Judge Jeffreys, Lord Chief
Justice under Charles II and James II. The ‘Hanging Judge,’ Jeffreys presided
over the ‘Bloody Assizes’ after the 1862 Monmouth rebellion. Not one to be
proud of, I think.
Having met Shrewsbury’s favourites sons, it is good to see the town acknowledging a favourite daughter (just one!) In 2017 a bust of Mary Webb (1881-27) was unveiled to commemorate the centenary of the publication of her first novel. Though her books, set largely in rural Shropshire, sold well enough during her lifetime, her work became
immensely popular in the 1930s.
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| Mary Webb, Castle Gates Library |
Gone to Earth (1917) and her most famous book Precious Bane (1924) are still in print.
Shrewsbury Castle
The castle contains the
museum of The King's Shropshire Light Infantry and Shropshire Yeomanry. It does
not dominate the town as medieval castles often do, perhaps because it was extensively
remodelled by Thomas Telford in the 1780s. It is also closed on Sundays.
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| Shrewsbury Castle |
Côte
We dined at Côte, a restaurant with a mild French accent. Lynne enjoyed her mussels, my confit pork was alright but reminded me that 1) confit is best enjoyed in France and 2) duck is
the ideal meat for a confit. My fault, my poor choice.
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| Dining at Côte, Shrewbury |
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