Gadabout: SHREWSBURY
Shrewsbury is a historic market town in Shropshire, about 10 miles short of the Welsh border. It's on the upper River Severn and was founded on high ground inside a pronounced meander. It retains a medieval street pattern and a lot of Tudor buildings, the Luftwaffe and civil engineers having left it mostly alone. It's much bigger than every local town bar Telford so a significant retail centre. It has centuries of history, a very famous son and a Wikipedia page that tops 12,000 words. And it's absolutely lovely, as I suspected when I passed through in 2010 and have now been back to confirm. Add it to your must-go list. [Visit Shrewsbury] [40 photos]
12 things to see in Shrewsbury
1) Shrewsbury station
This is first not because it's the finest spot in town but because you'll likely arrive here. The station occupies a commanding position on the neck of Shrewsbury's Severn meander so was built in imitation Tudor style to blend in with adjacent buildings. It once had an eighth platform used for transferring prisoners to Shrewsbury Prison nextdoor (this now a visitor attraction but I didn't have the necessary 90 minutes to spare). The longest platforms span the river and if you walk to the far end you get a great view of Severn Bridge Junction and the world's largest operational mechanical signal box. Tim Dunn's favourite three storey wonder has been controlling the local semaphore signals since 1902, and is scheduled to continue past 2050 because replacing everything with electronic systems would be too complex and too expensive.
2) Shrewsbury Castle
William the Conqueror grabbed the highest point by the river for his Welsh-facing castle which was rebuilt in the 12th century in the local sandstone. It looks much younger, at least when viewed from the flatter inward side. Wandering around the gardens is free, a chance to enjoy some intricate flowerbeds and wonder why one contains an eagle taken from an imperial German barracks. These days the castle's interior is occupied by the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum (£8), and this might be right up your street but I can't think of anything duller. Instead the thing to do is climb the curving steps at the back of the garden to the foot of Laura's Tower from which there are the most marvellous views across the river, the railway and the Wrekin. Do not miss this one, it puts the whole town in perspective.
3) Charles Darwin Trail
Shrewsbury is inordinately proud of the naturalist and evolutionary pioneer Charles Darwin who was born here in 1809. The family home still stands, a large villa in Frankwell called The Mount where a comfy start was granted to the son of a doctor. It's possible to download a 12-stop trail which ends there and kicks off at his statue outside the town's library (which looks every inch like an Oxbridge college). But all you really need do is wander the town and you'll find something that honours him, for example the Darwin Shopping Centre with its illustrated porch or the intriguingly-ribbed concrete arch called Quantum Leap which was added on the riverside for his bicentenary. Meanwhile in the heart of the town are three axe-shaped sculptures called Darwin's Gate, which if you stand downhill in the right spot coalesce to form a Saxon helmet and/or a stained glass window.
4) St Mary's
Darwin worshipped at St Mary's, largest of the town's many churches and whose spire is said to be one of the tallest in England. Alas there are so many old churches that this one's been deconsecrated, but in good news it's been taken over by the Churches Conservation Trust and is freely accessible six days a week. The interior sparkle is brought by one of the country's finest collections of stained glass, much of it imported from continental Europe but the best of all originating in a local friary. The 8m-high Jesse Window depicts the lineage of Jesus, each vibrant slot representing either an ancestor or one of 21 prophets looking on, all dazzling down in a medieval grid of golds, reds and blues. Don't worry, there's a key underneath to help you distinguish Solomon from Samuel and Zephaniah from Jehoshaphat.
5) Shrewsbury's streets
A ridiculously high number of Tudor buildings remain in central Shrewsbury, so you can buy a Costa coffee inside a top-heavy black and white Elizabethan inn or burritos from behind a glorious monochrome shopfront. You get quite blasé about it eventually as you follow yet another alleyway or set of medieval steps and stumble into yet another corner of the 1500s, all densely packed. My favourite sequence runs down the steepish hill of Wyle Cop, topped off by the actual pub where Henry Tudor is said to have stayed the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field. A particularly chunky merchant's house owned by William Rowley survived slum clearance in the 1930s and ought to be impressive but is now unceremoniously surrounded by car parks. A lot of Shrewsbury's streets have one word names assigned in medieval times, the weirdest of which are Mardol, Shoplatch, Bellstone and Dogpole. Yes there is still a Grope Lane, and I'm uncomfortable that it led to Fish Street.
6) Shrewsbury Market Hall
The Old Market Hall sits atop a pillared undercroft in the centre of The Square and would have been the trading focus for miles and miles around. The redeveloped interior may now be England's only Tudor cinema (today screening Hamnet and Mother's Pride). A new Market Hall opened nearby in 1965 with a startling modern design featuring a tall brick clocktower and a (now-peeling) ribbed exterior. Inside is a large central atrium packed with green-and-white topped stalls surrounded by a balcony plied by quirkier traders, none too tacky and none too pretentious, which'll be how this market regularly wins awards as Britain's best. What lets it down slightly is being on the first floor accessed only by stairwells and a lift, also don't bother climbing right to the top because the intended roof garden never materialised.
7) Shrewsbury Museum (not pictured)
The town's museum and art gallery (SMAG) lurks at the back of The Square inside a former Victorian Music Hall. If you dodge the cafe you should find the entrance to the Roman gallery, there being much to display from in and around the former town of Wroxeter. Then it's upstairs for a much longer historical circuit, as befits an ancient settlement with a lengthy tale to tell. Yes kings dropped in, yes the Civil War intruded, and with Ironbridge just down the road there's much to explain plus a lot of Coalport china on display. Entrance is free, supported by donations and an optimistic gift shop. And if that fold of red cloth in a perspex box really is half the blood-stained cloak Charles I wore to his execution, that is quite a trophy.
8) St Chad's
This extraordinary neoclassical church with three tiered-steeple was built in the 1790s after the original medieval church collapsed. It's thus a refreshing Georgian contrast to all the Tudor buildings elsewhere, not least the fact that the main body of the church is entirely circular. On stepping inside it feels like something Sir Christopher Wren might have delivered in the City of London, whereas the architect here was a less well-known Scot called George Steuart. With its balcony seating and fine acoustics St Chad's is popular for concerts, including short bursts every Friday lunchtime. Charles Darwin was baptised here soon after the church was built but not in the current fossil-flecked font, he was dunked in a silver bowl that's now under lock and key.
9) The Quarry and the Dingle
Just below St Chad's, as a 300-year old solution to the Severn sometimes flooding, is a large green horseshoe that forms Shrewsbury's premier recreational space. It's called The Quarry because part of it once was, a central dip now known as the Dingle. This contains a small lake and a gorgeous sunken garden which was designed by none other than Blue Peter and Gardeners World stalwart Percy Thrower. He was Parks Superintendent for Shrewsbury from 1946 to 1974 which entitled him to live in Quarry Lodge by the park gates, and is celebrated with a surprisingly realistic bust amid the Dingle's shrubbery. The display of bulbs and spring flowers should still make him proud. Elsewhere the park is mostly grass for lounging and kickabouts, but with a separate small rose garden and a long riverside promenade shaded by lime trees.
10) River Severn
You're never far from the Severn in central Shrewsbury, given it wraps round on almost all sides. Only two main road bridges cross the river, that heading east called the English Bridge and that heading west the Welsh Bridge. Driving between them is not straightforward. A third private bridge heads south, and last year not only did they increase the toll from 20p to 30p but the barriers also went cashless so you can no longer throw your coins in. Three footbridges complete the complement of crossings, the eldest a century-old suspension bridge and the youngest a recent connection to a large west bank car park. The river looked placid on my visit but overtops regularly in wet winters, though hopefully less so since flood defences were built following the town's notorious 2000 inundation.
11) Shrewsbury Abbey
A Benedictine monastery was founded outside the town in 1083, located just beyond where the English Bridge now lands. After Henry VIII's dissolution tantrum only the nave survived, repurposed as a parish church, and quite a lot of the former foundations were lost when Thomas Telford drove his Holyhead Road through the abbey grounds. These days you're welcome to drop in daily to admire the lofty stonework, to spot the tomb of a Norman knight who was on the winning side at Hastings and to try to work out precisely which monument on the north wall houses the relics of Saint Winefride. The Abbey is also one of dozens of places where you can pick up a free town map, annually updated, also a free town guide, because Shrewsbury knows it's touristworthy and is keen to promote itself.
12) Shrewsbury's shops
You may be wondering where the 'proper' shops are in this throwback labyrinth, and the answer is that Shrewsbury confines modern development mostly to a northern quarter once occupied by car parks, garages and an abattoir. A substantial shopping centre weaves back off the main street, somehow stacked across three levels on the flank of an embankment with access to the bus station one floor below. Here are the obligatory H&M, M&S and JD Sports, their potential catchments spreading deep into mid-Wales. But you don't want to come here for the shops, you want to come for the buildings, the heritage, the riverside aspect and the opportunity to revel in the kind of English town you may have thought no longer exists. As one resident once said, it's all about the survival of the fittest. » 40 photos of Shrewsbury on Flickr (far more loveliness than I've been able to show you here)
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