Part 6

instituted with the object of affording to the young men of the town the means of acquiring general and scientific knowledge, by the formation of a library, delivery of Lectures, and establishment of Classes for French, Germany Drawing, &c., and an opportunity of spending their leisure hours profitably in a Reading Room supplied with the London and local Newspapers, and several of the leading Reviews, Magazines, and periodicals devoted to mechanical and artistical subjects. There is, also, a Debating Society connected with the Institution. The subscription is 15s. per annum, with free admission to the Lectures, Library, and Reading Room, the latter of which is open from 12 at noon to 10 o’clock at night, every day, (Sundays excepted.)

Behind the wainscot of the dining-room of a house situate a little below the Institute in Dogpole, now the property and residence of Dr. Henry Johnson, Senior Physician to the Salop Infirmary, and known in ancient documents by the name of

“THE OLDE HOUSE,”

was recently discovered an ancient painting, on canvas, fixed upon a board forming the mantelpiece over the fire-place of the room. In the centre is a shield of arms, France and England quarterly, surmounted by a royal crown, and on either side a pomegranate and Tudor rose (white and red conjoined), twice repeated. The ground of the whole dark-maroon, ornamented or damasked with white wavy feathery embellishments. Above, on the plaster of the wall, is a rude painting of heavy scroll-work ornaments; and it is thought that the rest of the walls, if the wainscot were removed, would be found covered with similar paintings.

In the absence of all positive evidence, conjectures can only be hazarded as to the cause of these arms, &c. having been placed here.

One thing, however, is certain that they are connected, in some way with Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. and Queen Katherine of Arragon, inasmuch as the pomegranate was first introduced as a royal badge of England, upon Katherine’s marriage with prince Arthur, son of Henry VII. Now if we consider this painting contemporary with an inscription on the wainscot of the adjoining drawing-room, “PETRVS ROBERTS M M SECO 1553,” and interpret it thus, “PETRVS ROBERTS MARIÆ MATERNITATEM SECO, 1553. I Peter Roberts decide (the question of) the maternity or legitimacy of Mary, 1553.” Then we may regard it as a loyal demonstration on Mary’s accession to the English throne by some one of those many friends and adherents who so warmly sympathised in her early adversity, in the unjustifiable degradation of her royal mother and her own consequent exclusion from the succession to the throne.

If, however, the painting is considered to be anterior in time to the inscription on the wainscot, and such really appears to be the case from the style of the wainscot, then it may be connected with the possibility of the Court of the Marches of Wales, over which Mary presided in 1525, with the title of “Princess of Wales,” having been held here, since the Council House, where the Court usually sat afterwards, was not built till 1530; or it may be the memorial of an unrecorded visit of Queen Mary to our town; or the residence of one of her household, or of some member of the Council, amongst both of whom were many Cambrian names, and the following,—Ap Rice, Baldwyn, Basset, Bromley, Burnell, Burton, Cotton, Dod, Egerton, Pigot, Rocke, Sydnour, Salter, more or less connected with Shrewsbury; or it may have been the mansion of one of the many Welsh families of distinction, with whom Mary formed an intimacy during her residence in the Marches; or, as the crest of the Rocke family still remains on the leaden water-piping, and who in later times are remembered to have resided therein, it may have been the mansion of Anthony Rocke, who was a servant of Queen Katherine, and a legatee in her will to the amount of £20; and of whom the Princess Mary thus writes in one of her letters:—“For although he be not my servant, yet because he was my mother’s, and is an honest man, as I think, I do love him well, and would do him good.”

Which of these guesses may be the true solution, we are unable at present to decide.

We now pass down Church Street to

ST. ALKMUND’S CHURCH,

[Picture: St. Alkmund’s Church]

founded in the early part of the 10th century, by Ethelfleda, daughter of the great Alfred, and lady of Mercia, who endowed it with eleven manors. Edgar the Peaceable added other lands and possessions, and placed here a dean and ten prebends. At the time of Domesday the church held in Shrewsbury twenty-one burgesses, twelve houses for the canons, two of the hundred hides, for which the city paid Dane-geld, besides nine of the above manors, (the other two having been unjustly wrested from it, and fallen into lay hands,) in all, about 4020 acres, of which 620 were in demesne, and a rent of £8 8s. 8d. received for the remainder, which, with other rents of the amount of 13s. 8d. produced a revenue rather exceeding £500 of modern currency. Part of these estates, held of the church by Godebold, a Norman priest, and subsequently by his son, Robert, persons in great esteem with our Norman earls, were involved by some means in the confiscation of the property of the last Earl, Robert de Belesme, and fell into the hands of Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London, to whom Henry I. had entrusted the government of Shropshire. On the death of this prelate in 1127, the king granted them to the Bishop’s nephew, Richard de Belmeis, also Bishop of London, and canon of this church. In his possession they did not long continue, for in 1147 he effected the dissolution of the college of St. Alkmund, and with the consent of King Stephen and Pope Eugenius III., transferred his own and all the other prebendal estates, to augment his brother Philip de Belmeis’s recent foundation of Lilleshall Abbey, in this county, by which means the benefice sank from a collegiate establishment into a poor vicarage.

After the dissolution of Lilleshall Abbey, the vicarage continued in the crown until 1628, when Charles I. sold it to Rowland Heylin, Alderman of London, a zealous member of a society for founding lectureships in populous towns, and augmenting small livings. On the suppression of this society in 1663, on the supposition of its being favourable to puritanical principles, St. Alkmund’s, with the other advowsons, purchased by the society, became vested in the crown, in whose patronage it still remains.

The old church was a spacious structure, exhibiting specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, from the Anglo-Norman period to the middle of the sixteenth century. The original form was a cross with nave, side aisles, transept, chancel, and western tower, but from the subsequent erections of chauntry chapels, the external elevation was very irregular. On the sudden fall of St. Chad’s Church, in this town, an unfounded apprehension of the instability of this curious building was excited and cherished in the breasts of the parishioners. Deliberations were speedily set on foot, and with ill-judged haste it was resolved to demolish the venerable structure, and erect a new church of more contracted dimensions on a part of the site. The strength and firmness of the masonry of the ancient but undecayed walls presented almost insurmountable obstacles to the efforts of the workmen employed to rend them asunder, and convinced the parishioners, when too late, of their premature folly. {97}

The present church was opened for divine service on 8th November, 1795, and cost in the erection £4000. It is of freestone, in the style usually denominated Modern-Gothic. The interior, though destitute of the solemn majesty of gothic edifices, is handsomely fitted up, and well arranged for the accommodation of a numerous congregation. In the gallery at the west end, is a small but well-toned organ, by Gray of London, erected by subscription in 1823. The east window contains some modern stained glass, emblematical of Evangelical Faith, painted by the elder Eglinton.

Of the old church the only portion which escaped destruction was the western steeple, erected probably as late as the Dissolution. It consists of a slender, but well-proportioned square tower of three chambers, flanked by light double angular buttresses, gracefully diminishing in their ascent, and finished on the summit by broaches or semi-pyramidal abutments. From this rises a spire of the finest proportions, brought to an exquisitely taper point, and crowned by an open flower. This has recently been repaired and restored by Mr. S. P. Smith. Under the tower, an elegant pointed arch, recessed within a square opening, leads to the interior; on each side are the remains of holy water niches. Above is a handsome pointed window, with delicate mullions, containing in ancient stained glass, preserved from the old church, the arms of France and England quarterly, and those of Richard Sampson, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. The bell-story contains a light peal of eight bells, cast by Bryan of Hertford, in 1812, and is lighted by four semicircular windows.

Of the ancient tombs and monumental brasses which abounded in the old edifice, none are preserved in the present structure, which contains no memorial worthy of note, with the exception of a tablet to Chief Justice Jones, and one to the late Rev. R. Scott, B.D.

The parish comprises only a small part of the town, but contains many insulated portions of the neighbourhood.

Strong foundations of red stone are extensively visible in the houses and walls on the north-west side of the church yard, which may possibly be the remains of the Saxon college.

Immediately adjoining, at the top of the Double Butcher Bow, is a lofty timber house, conjectured to have been

THE GUILD HOUSE OF THE FRATERNITY OF THE HOLY CROSS,

which anciently existed in the church of St. Alkmund.

[Picture: Guild House of the Holy Cross]

This curious tenement, now occupied as several dwellings, forms two sides of a square, and with the exception of its square windows, entirely of Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century.

The projecting stories are supported by elegant springers, enriched like the principal timbers, with carvings of small pointed arches, with trefoil and other ornaments. A cloister of obtusely pointed wooden arches, overspread with rich carvings and delicate mouldings, runs along the ground-story of the front.

Contiguous to St. Alkmund’s is

ST. JULIAN’S CHURCH.

[Picture: St. Julian’s Church]

of whose early foundation in the Saxon times, we possess no particulars. According to Domesday, it held before the Conquest half a hide of land in the city. It was a rectory and royal free chapel with a peculiar jurisdiction, and appears to have been annexed, at a very early period, to the chapel of St. Michael, in the castle. In 1410 the rectory was granted, amongst other things, by Henry IV., to augment his new foundation of Battlefield College, and thenceforth this living became a mere stipendiary curacy. On the dissolution of that college, St. Julian’s was granted by the crown, in 3rd Edward VI. to John Capper and Richard Trevor, and after numerous subsequent transfers, passed into the family of Prince, from whom it has descended to the present patron, the Earl of Tankerville.

The parish comprehends the Wyle, the Wyle Cop, and under the Wyle, and considerable disjointed portions extending wide into the country.

The present church, erected in 1749, on the site of an ancient irregular structure which had become ruinous, is an oblong Grecian building of brick and stone. The interior is handsome and conveniently fitted up. Four Doric pillars on each side of the nave support the ceiling, which is curved and decorated with considerable effect with carved foliated bosses, preserved from the beams of the old church. Over the side aisles, and at the west end, are commodious galleries, in the latter of which is an organ by Fleetwood and Bucer, erected by subscription in 1834. In the central light of the large Venetian window in the chancel, is a figure of St. James in ancient stained glass; and in the side lights are the royal arms, and those of Lichfield and Coventry impaling Cornwallis. The galleries on the north and south are lighted by large circular-headed windows, containing the arms of Queen Elizabeth, the town, and the families of Bowdler, Prynce, and Bennett.

The only existing portion of the old church is the slender square tower at the west end. The basement is of red stone, and has on its eastern side a remarkably acute and lofty arch opening to the nave. From this rises a superstructure of grey stone in the style of the 16th century; the upper chamber of which is lighted on every side by a broad short pointed mullioned window. Above is a frieze of quatrefoil pannels, with grotesque water-spouts projecting from the angles. An embattled parapet, enriched with eight crocketed pinnacles, crowns the summit. In the tower are six bells.

On the exterior of the south wall of the tower is a sculptured stone from the old church, representing St. Juliana within a foliated tabernacle.

The south side of the church was, in 1846, stuccoed over, stone pillars inserted between the windows, and surmounted with a cornice and stone parapet.

The church-yard next the street was also enclosed by a pierced parapet stone wall, and the entire structure substantially repaired at the expense partly of the parish and of the late Rev. R. Scott.

The edifice contains only one monument of any antiquity; a coarse marble slab, inscribed in Longo-bardic capitals, to a member of the family of Trumwin, of Cannock, in Staffordshire.

The modern memorials most worthy of remark, as recording men “useful in their generation,” are those to Mr. John Allatt, the beneficent founder of Allatt’s School; Mr. Robert Lawrence, the public-spirited coach proprietor, to whose exertions we owe the great Holyhead Road, and the establishment of the first mail coach to this town;—and to the elegant-minded Hugh Owen, Archdeacon of Salop, one of the learned authors of the “History of Shrewsbury.”

We now reach

THE TOP OF THE WYLE,

the upper part of the street now called “The Wyle Cop,” which is believed to have been the part first inhabited by the Britons, and was in the immediate vicinity of their Prince’s palace, which occupied the site of Old St. Chad’s church. After the Saxon invasion the town gradually increased towards the north, as is evident from the situation of the churches of St. Alkmund and St. Mary, the former founded in the beginning, and the latter at the end of the 10th century.

On the right-hand side of the Wyle Cop, three doors below the Lion Hotel, is an

OLD TIMBER HOUSE,

in which Henry VII. is reported to have lodged during his short stay in the town, immediately previous to the battle of Bosworth. For the good services which Henry experienced from the burgesses on this occasion, he remitted, on his accession to the throne, ten marks annually for fifty years, of the fee farm at which they held their town, and exempted them from all taxes and contributions. The intercourse which had begun thus favourably was kept up in after years by Henry, who, with his queen and son, frequently visited this town, upon which occasions they were feasted by the Bailiffs in a most royal and hospitable manner.

Opposite to St. Julian’s church is

SHEARMANS’, OR CLOTHWORKERS’ HALL,

an ancient red stone building, of whose original erection no particulars are now extant. The high gabled west end fronts the High Street, and displays a pointed window of the 14th century, long since deprived of its mullions. On the east and south sides are remains of similar windows. The interior, formerly in one apartment, is now converted into a dwelling-house and warehouses.

The business of the Shearman consisted in dressing the Welsh webs, by raising the wool on one side. In the reign of Elizabeth great numbers were employed in this process; but subsequent discoveries proving it to be injurious to the texture of the cloth, it was gradually laid aside. Few, if any, Shearmen now remain in our town. The precise date of their incorporation is unknown, though doubtless it was at a very early period.

From entries in their ancient books dated 7th, 8th, and 9th, Edward IV. we learn that the Company constituted the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose chauntry was in the north aisle of St. Julian’s Church. From the same documents we find that it was the custom on their festival day, to erect in front of their Hall, a May-pole or green tree, thence called “the Shermen’s Tree;” the bringing in and fixing of which was accompanied with much festivity and expensive jollity. The ceremonies observed on these occasions, doubtless bore considerable resemblance to those practised at the erection of the May-pole on May-day, as described by old writers, when

“Forth goth all the court both most and lest, To fetch the floures fresh, and braunch and blome.”

During the reign of Puritanism these pastimes caused great disgust to the professors of those principles, and strenuous efforts were used to suppress “the Shermen’s Tree.” Disturbances consequently ensued, in which the Bailiffs of the town appear to have espoused the cause of the Puritans, and even directed their Public Preacher to deliver sermons against the merriment of our honest forefathers.

Adjoining the south side of the Shearmen’s Hall is a large and curious old timber house, called

THE OLD POST-OFFICE,

which forms with it a court, entered from the street by a gateway. These premises were erected in 1568 by George Proude, draper, bailiff in 1569, and member of a family formerly of considerable note in our town.

We now approach the only remaining portion of

OLD ST. CHAD’S CHURCH,

consisting of the Lady Chapel on the south side of the choir. The two semicircular arches, still visible in the masonry of the outer walls, communicated with the choir and south transept. The north-west angle is flanked by the great south-eastern pier of the central tower, and at the opposite corner are the remains of a staircase buttress. The southern and eastern sides are each lighted by two pointed windows, three of which are divided by elegant trefoil tracery. The south-western window is plainer, and of an earlier date than the rest. On the outside of the north wall are three stone stalls, with groined roofs, originally on the southern side of the altar, and used by the officiating clergy during the celebration of the mass. The roof is of a plain oak panelling.

[Picture: Old St. Chad’s Church]

This chauntry chapel was first erected in 1496, but having subsequently fallen into decay was nearly re-edified in 1571, at the expense of Humphrey Onslow, Esq. of Onslow, in this parish, for the reception of the altar tomb, (now in the Abbey Church,) of his nephew the Speaker Onslow, who died at Onslow during a visit to his uncle. After the Reformation it acquired the name of the Bishop’s Chancel, from being used as a consistory court at the visitations. Its present use is as a receptacle for the monumental memorials rescued from the wreck of the old church.

This church, when perfect, was a plain heavy, solid pile, totally devoid of ornamental sculpture on the outer walls, and from its situation on a commanding eminence, presented from a distance, a fine, solemn, cathedral-like appearance. It was cruciform, and comprised a nave, side aisles, transept, choir, a broad low central tower, and chauntry chapels north and south of the choir. The architecture was chiefly of the Anglo-Norman and lancet styles of the 13th century, with some subsequent additions of the 15th and 16th centuries. {109}

Early in the summer of 1788 considerable fissures were observed in the north-western pier of the tower, which continuing to increase, Mr. Telford was employed to examine and report the cause. On inspection, it was discovered that the foundations had been undermined by graves heedlessly made too near the walls, and that the pier, in consequence, had given way; that the tower and the whole of the north side of the nave were in a most dangerous state, and the chief timbers of the roof decayed. He recommended that the tower should be immediately taken down, the pier rebuilt, and the other parts of the fabric properly and substantially secured. This reasonable advice through ill-judged economy was fatally rejected, and a stonemason employed to cut away the infirm parts of the pier, and to underbuild it, without lessening any of the incumbent weight of the tower and bells. The workmen accordingly commenced, and proceeded in their operations for two days; but on the third morning, July 9th, 1788, just as the chimes struck four, the ruinous pier gave way, the tower was instantly rent asunder, and falling on the roofs of the nave and transept with a tremendous crash, involved those parts in one indescribable scene of desolation and horror. Many portions of the building still remained standing but so great was the panic occasioned by the catastrophe that they were all immediately taken down, with the exception of the present chapel.

The collegiate establishment of St. Chad consisted of a dean, ten secular canons, and two vicars choral, and was founded soon after the subjugation of Pengwern, in the 8th century, by Offa, king of Mercia, who, as tradition states, converted the palace of the kings of Powis into his first church. In Edward the Confessor’s time, this church held twelve hides of land, which it retained at the compilation of Domesday. Between the years 1086 and 1326, other considerable possessions were acquired by the college, so that at the dissolution their revenues amounted to the clear yearly sum of £49 13s. In 34th Henry VIII. on the apprehension of a dissolution, the last dean, Sir George Lee, granted a lease of the deanery, (with the exception of certain tithes previously disposed of) to Humphrey Onslow, Esq. for sixty-one years, at a rent of £10, and a payment of £4 6s. 8d. to a curate to celebrate divine service in the church. On the dissolution of colleges, 2nd Edward VI., the crown leased the collegiate property to George Beston, Esq. for a term of twenty-one years; and two years afterwards, without any notice being taken of that gentleman’s interest, it was appropriated to the Free Schools, in which it is now vested.

The living, though properly a curacy, has long been styled a vicarage, and is in the patronage of the crown. The incumbent is always the mayor’s chaplain.

This parish is by far the largest in the place, comprising very nearly half the town, and a great extent of the surrounding country.

The day-spring of the Reformation early visited our town. In 1407, Master William Thorpe, a priest, came to Shrewsbury, and mounted the pulpit in St. Chad’s church, from whence he boldly condemned the favourite tenets of popery. Thorpe was in consequence thrown into prison, subsequently conveyed to Lambeth, and after a confinement of several months convened before the Archbishop of Canterbury at Saltwood, on a complaint exhibited against him by “the bailives and worshipful cominalte” of this town. In his examination he candidly admitted the charges laid against him, but adhered to his opinions with manly and unshrinking steadiness. Of the result of the trial and his subsequent history we possess no account.

In the year 1394, this church, which had at that time a wooden steeple covered with lead, was consumed by accidental fire, which extended its ravages to a great portion of the town, then chiefly consisting of timber houses with thatched roofs. The damage sustained was so considerable, that Richard II. remitted the payment of the fee farm of the town for three years towards the repairs.