Part 7

In 1490, Henry VII., accompanied by his queen and son, Prince Arthur, kept the feast of St. George, (April 23,) in this church. In 1581, Sir Henry Sidney, President of the Council of the Marches, as a Knight of the Garter, kept the feast of St. George, (April 23,) in this town, with great splendour. He marched in solemn procession from the Council House to St. Chad’s Church, the choir of which was fitted up in imitation of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and the stalls decorated with the arms of the Knights of the Garter. Sir Henry sat in his proper stall, near that reserved for the Queen; in passing which he bowed with the same respect as if her Majesty had actually been present. On the conclusion of divine service Sir Henry devoted the afternoon to feasting the burgesses.

THE COLLEGE OF ST. CHAD

adjoined the south-western extremity of the church. Its buildings, now converted into three handsome houses, are so entirely modernized, that scarce a vestige is visible, except a portion of the wall adjacent to the church-yard. The outer walls of its precinct may be traced to a considerable distance in the neighbouring gardens.

North of the church-yard, in a close passage called “the Sextry,” are some old timber buildings, once communicating with the church by a covered passage over the street. These were, as is supposed, the dwellings of the Vicars Choral. In this old tenement the attendants of Henry VII. were lodged during his visit to the town in 1496, when the Bailiffs entertained him in almost sumptuous and royal manner. These premises were subsequently used as

THE MERCERS’ HALL,

though the Company have long since ceased to hold their meetings here. The Company of Mercers, on their union with the Ironmongers and Goldsmiths, received on May 11, 1480, a confirmation of their composition, from Edward V. then Prince of Wales, and resident in Shrewsbury. This fraternity were patrons of the Altar of St. Michael in St. Chad’s Church.

On the south side of the church-yard are

ST. CHAD’S ALMSHOUSES,

wretched hovels, projecting considerably into the adjoining street of Belmont. They were founded in 1409, by Bennet Tipton, a public brewer, then residing at the College, who, so far as can be ascertained, did not make any provision for the support of the almspeople. An annual rent-charge of £8, charged upon the Lythwood estate by the family of Ireland, and a payment of 2s. 2d. from the Mercers’ Company, constitutes the whole endowment, which is distributed in allowances of 14s. 7½d. per annum to each of the inmates. These tottering habitations, from the want of a fund for judicious repairs, are capable of affording little comfort or accommodation to the infirm tenants, who are nominated by the proprietors of the Lythwood estate.

Opposite to the almshouses are

THE JUDGES’ LODGINGS,

a handsome house, purchased by the county in 1821, and appropriated to the accommodation of the judges and their retinue during their attendance at the Assizes.

Passing down College Hill, we have on our right the south elevation of the Public Rooms. In this spot previously stood the remains of

VAUGHAN’S PLACE,

an ancient stone mansion, erected in the early part of the 14th century, by Sir Hamo Vaughan, knight, of West Tilbury, in Essex, or by his father, Sir Thomas Vaughan, knight, of Stepney, members of an old Welsh family, probably of the illustrious lineage of Owen Gwyned. By marriage with Eleanor, daughter and heiress of Sir Hamo, Reginald de Mutton, member of a family conspicuous among our early Bailiffs, acquired this property, which thenceforth became, for many generations, the town mansion of the Myttons, and by whose descendant, the late John Mytton, Esq. of Halston, it has been sold. The spacious hall and adjacent apartments now contain

THE MUSEUM

of the Shropshire and North Wales Natural History and Antiquarian Society.

This Society was established on the 26th June, 1835, and has for its object the formation of a Museum and Scientific Library of Natural History, Antiquities, &c. and the collection from every quarter, of accurate information respecting the Natural and General History of the important District of Shropshire and North Wales—its topography, statistics, climate, and meteorological phenomena—its geological structure, mineral, and organic fossils—its mines and collieries—its various animal and vegetable productions.

In order to place the Institution on the most liberal basis, and to render it of the greatest possible public advantage, the property of the Society is vested in the Lords Lieutenant, (for the time being,) of the county of Salop, and of the several counties of North Wales, as Trustees for the permanent use and benefit of the district at large; by which arrangement the perpetuity of the Institution is secured, and the possible dispersion of the Museum, at any future period, effectually guarded against.

The affairs of the Society are under the management of a Council, consisting of a President, and other Officers, elected annually, and twelve Members, of whom six retire by rotation.

All persons proposed to the Council by two Subscribers, and contributing One Guinea annually, are Members of the Society, and have the privilege of admission for themselves and families to the Museum and library, and of introducing Visitors.

To diffuse a taste for Science, periodical meetings of the Society are held, at which scientific communications are read, and popular lectures on the various branches of Natural History delivered.

In addition to the more local objects of the Society, the Museum is open to the reception of any specimens from distant localities, with which the friends of science in various quarters may be induced to enrich it, and which may serve to complete the series, and enhance the scientific value of those indigenous to the district. For this purpose the Council have authority to effect exchanges of the natural products of Shropshire and North Wales, for specimens furnished by the Cabinets of Societies, or Individual Collectors in other parts of the world.

A General Meeting of the Society is held in August, in each year, at which the officers are elected, the Annual Report of the progress of the Society is read, and an appropriate Address delivered by the President.

The Museum and library are open every day, (Sunday excepted); during the summer months, from ten o’clock in the morning until six o’clock in the evening; but in the winter are closed at four o’clock in the evening.

In the same building is

THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN,

for the purpose of “establishing classes for acquiring elementary instruction in Art, in connexion with existing Public Schools and Institutions, with a view of diffusing a knowledge of Art among all classes of the public, whether artisans, manufacturers, or consumers, and for preparing students for entering the Schools of Art heretofore known as Schools of Design.”

On some part of this property it is supposed the chapel, dedicated to St. Blase, formerly stood.

Turning to the left we proceed down Swan Hill, near the bottom of which, on the right-hand side is

THE INDEPENDENT MEETING-HOUSE,

a brick building, of an oblong form, erected in 1767.

Immediately adjoining is

ALLATT’S CHARITY SCHOOL,

erected in 1800, pursuant to the will of Mr. John Allatt, thirty-eight years chamberlain of the Corporation, who died 2nd November, 1796, and bequeathed his property for the education and clothing of the children of the more respectable classes of poor persons resident in the town, and for providing coats and gowns for a considerable number of indigent men and women. The structure is of freestone, plain but elegant, and comprises commodious houses for the schoolmaster and mistress, connected by arcades with spacious school-rooms.

The interest of the money unexpended in the building of the schools is applied to the maintenance of a master and mistress, who instruct twenty boys, and the same number of girls, in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the girls in sewing. They are clothed once a year, and at a proper age apprenticed. Twenty coats and eighty stuff gowns are also annually distributed to the poor.

Proceeding on the left along Murivance, we soon arrive at

EBENEZER MEETING-HOUSE,

erected in 1834, by a congregation of seceders from the Wesleyan Methodists.

Contiguous to this is the only remaining

TOWER ON THE TOWN WALLS,

It is square, embattled, of two stories, lighted by narrow loops, the entrance to the upper being from the top of the wall, through a small plain pointed arch of the age of Henry IV. A similar arch forms the doorway of the lower story.

[Picture: Tower on the Town Walls]

The more accessible parts of the Town Walls, particularly on the south and south-western sides, were formerly strengthened by similar towers, all of which are now demolished.

At a short distance further on, a considerable portion of

THE TOWN WALLS,

now reduced in height and stripped of its battlements, forms an useful and agreeable public walk. This and the Walls on the north side of the town, called Roushill Walls, extending from the Castle Gates to the Welsh Bridge, are all the existing remains of our ancient fortifications, which, when entire, could not have been much less than a mile and half in compass.

At the end of the walls, on the left, is

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC MEETING-HOUSE,

a neat building, erected in 1776, and enlarged in 1825. The interior is fitted up with much taste and elegance. The altar rests on a sarcophagus, on the front of which is a painting of the Last Supper, after Leonardi da Vinci. Above is a figure of Christ on the Cross, with the inscription “Thus God loved the world.” The roof is coved and rests on a broad cornice, consisting of angelic figures in relief united by wreaths and garlands of flowers. In the gallery is a small organ, and on each side the entrance an elegant white marble shell for the holy water.

BOWDLER’S CHARITY SCHOOL

next demands our attention; a plain brick building, founded in 1724, pursuant to the will of Mr. Thomas Bowdler, alderman and draper, for the instruction, clothing, and apprenticing poor children of St. Julian’s parish. The dress of the children is blue, whence the school is sometimes called “The Blue School.”

Passing at the bottom of the Wyle a curiously carved timber house, formerly the mansion of the highly respectable family of Sherar, we cross “swift Severn’s flood” by

THE ENGLISH, OR STONE BRIDGE.

This elegant structure was completed in 1774, after a design of Mr. Gwynn, a native of the town, at an expense of £15,710, of which £11,494 was raised by voluntary subscriptions. It is of freestone, 400 feet in length, and comprises seven semicircular arches, the central one being sixty feet in width, and forty in height, and is crowned with a fine balustrade. The fronts are embellished with light and graceful ornaments. The ascent, owing to the height of the central arch, is disagreeably steep, and the breadth of the thoroughfare, (only twenty-five feet,) highly inconvenient to the innumerable carriages and passengers which are continually passing over it.

[Picture: English Bridge]

The Old English Bridge, built probably by the Abbots and Burgesses conjointly, was taken down on the completion of the present one. It was constructed on seventeen arches, and extended over the main stream, and also an arm of the river now filled up, which crossing the road, flowed past the monks’ infirmary into the Meole Brook. The principal course of the river was extended by six large arches. Within two arches of the eastern extremity, was a gate and strong embattled tower, with chamber and portcullis, and beyond a drawbridge. The thoroughfare was of the extremely narrow width of twelve feet, and was greatly encumbered with houses built on the northern parapet.

We now enter the little hamlet of

MERIVALE,

where, on the left, are still seen several specimens of the timber architecture of our forefathers, and on the right stands

THE PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION CHARITY SCHOOL,

called also the “Brown School,” from the brown dress of the children, erected in 1778. Children from all quarters of the town are admissible on the recommendation of subscribers, and an useful religious education is afforded to them on the Madras system.

The Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway here crosses the street by an

IRON BRIDGE,

with pierced balustrades, springing from stone abutments.

Our attention is next attracted by the venerable remains of

THE ABBEY OF ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL.

which owes its foundation to Roger de Montgomery, the first Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, and arose on the site of a small wooden church dedicated to St. Peter, built in the reign of Edward the Confessor, by Siward, a Saxon gentleman, then resident in Shropshire. The earl peopled his abbey with monks of the Benedictine rule, whom he invited over from a religious house founded on the estates of Mabel, his first Countess, at Seez, in Normandy. During his last illness the warlike founder entered himself a monk of his own foundation, and received the tonsure on the 14th July, 1094. He had previously obtained from the Abbey of Clugni, in Burgundy, the kirtle of St. Hugh, which holy vestment he occasionally wore, doubtless in anxious hope of its communicating some portion of the sanctity of its former possessor. Three days after his assumption of the monastic garb he breathed his last, and was honourably interred in the Lady Chapel, between the two altars. His son Hugh, the second earl, who was slain by Magnus, King of Norway, near Castell Aber Lleiniog, in Anglesea, in the year 1098, also received interment in the cloisters.

On the confiscation of the Earldom of Shrewsbury, in the reign of Henry I., our Shrewsbury Abbots, became tenants in capite, and were thenceforth under the necessity, (as it was deemed in those days,) of attending the King in his Parliaments, as Barons or Peers of Parliament, which honour was continued to them by Edward III., who limited the number of mitred or Parliamentary Abbots to twenty-eight, and enjoyed by them down to the Dissolution.

In 1137, during the Abbacy of Herbert the third Abbot, the monastery was enriched through the exertions of the prior, Robert Pennant, by the acquisition of the bones of the martyred Virgin St. Wenefrede, which were translated from their burial place at Gwytherin, in Denbighshire, and placed with becoming solemnity in a costly shrine, prepared for their reception in the Abbey church. To this shrine, countless numbers of pilgrims and diseased persons continually resorted to pay their devotions, and to experience cures, which, according to assertion, must have been little less than miraculous; and the wealthy vied with each other in the costliness of their offerings. In addition to these treasured bones, the Monks appear to have possessed, in the reign of Henry II., a most extensive and varied assortment of other reliques, doubtless of equal value and efficacy. In 1486, the Abbot Thomas Mynde, incorporated the devotees, both male and female, of St. Wenefrede, into a religious Guild or fraternity founded by him in her honour. A great bell was also dedicated to her memory.

During the various visits with which the English Sovereigns from time to time honoured our town, it is highly probable that they took up their residence in the Abbey, and there can be little doubt that the Parliament of Edward I., 1283, {126} and that of Richard II., 1398, called the Great Parliament, were held within the spacious apartments of the monastery.

The original endowment was very slender, but within a century and half after the foundation the abbatial property comprised seventy-one manors or large tracts of land, twenty-four churches, and the tithes of thirty-seven parishes or vills, besides very extensive and valuable privileges and immunities of various kinds. In 26 Henry VIII. their possessions were found to be of the yearly value of £572. 15s. 5¾d. equal to upwards of £4700 in the present day. The monastery was dissolved on 24th January, 1539–40, and pensions assigned to the Abbot, Thomas Boteler, and the seventeen monks.

On the dissolution the burgesses presented a petition to the crown that the Abbey might be converted into a college or free school, which request Henry refused to accede to, alleging as a reason his intention of erecting Shrewsbury into one of his proposed thirteen new bishoprics. The diocese was to have comprehended the counties of Salop and Stafford, and the endowment to have consisted of the monastic revenues. We learn from undoubted authority that John Boucher, Abbot of Leicester, was actually nominated Bishop of Shrewsbury; {127} and hence doubtless arose the appellation of “Proud Salopians,” founded on the tradition that our townsmen rejected the offer of having their borough converted into a city, preferring to inhabit the First of Towns.

On the 22nd July 1546, Henry VIII. granted the site of the dissolved Abbey to Edward Watson and Henry Herdson, who, the next day, conveyed the same to William Langley of Salop, tailor, in whose family it continued for five generations until 1701, when Jonathan Langley, Esq. devised it to his friend Edward Baldwyn, Esq., who by will dated in 1726, devised it to his sister Bridget, the wife of Thomas Powys, Esq. for life, with remainder successively in tail male to her sons Henry, Edward, and John Powys. In 1810 the premises were sold by the Trustees of the will of Thomas, Jelf Powys, Esq. eldest son of the above named Edward Powys, to Mr. Simon Hiles, in whose devisees they are now vested.

The living is a vicarage, and prior to the dissolution was in the presentation of the monastery, but after that event it remained in the crown, until 1797, when it was transferred to the Right Honourable Lord Berwick, in exchange for certain advowsons in Suffolk.

From time immemorial certain lands in the Parish were given to and vested in the Churchwardens and their successors “for the maintenance and repairing of the Churches of the Holy Cross and St. Giles, and of either of them.” Consequently there has never been any need of a Church-rate. The lands, &c. are chiefly let out upon long building leases, and the present annual income is about £150, which upon the falling in of the several leases will of course be greatly increased. The Vicar and Churchwardens are a Corporation, with the power of making leases, &c. of the landed possessions of the said Churches, and have a common seal which is appended to such documents. The seal is kept in a chest secured by three locks, and the keys are severally in the possession of the Vicar and the two Churchwardens. It is of brass, of the _vesica piscis_ form, and has in the centre a baton or mace, and on either side a clothed arm projecting towards the centre, that on the dexter side holding a pastoral crook, that on the sinister side, a naked sword: the ground-work studded with stars, and around the margin this inscription, * S COMMVNE DE FFORYATE MONACHOR’. This seal was, according to an entry in the Parish Book, “viewed and confirmed” by the Heralds, 16 Sept. 1623, for which 10s. was paid.

The site of the Abbey comprises ten acres. An embattled wall surrounded probably the whole. Of the once stately monastic buildings the remains are inconsiderable, and consist of the Church, the Infirmary, the Dormitory, the Reader’s Pulpit of the Refectory, the Guesten Chamber, and the Cloister of the Abbot’s Lodging.

The space of ground on the east of the present church, containing 7300 square yards, known lately by the name of “The Abbey Garden,” whereon formerly stood the Choir and Lady Chapel of the monastery, was in 1840 consecrated as a public Cemetery.

The present parochial church of THE HOLY CROSS embraces within its walls the nave, side aisles, north porch, and western tower of the Abbey church. It is principally constructed of red stone, and though bearing deep marks of mutilation, is still venerable and spacious, and exhibits many curious and interesting features of ancient architecture. The principal entrance is at the west end under the tower, through a pointed doorway, richly laced with mouldings, skilfully inserted within a deeply recessed semicircular arch, the exterior rib of which springs on each side from a Norman pillar with indented capital. Immediately above rises a magnificent and elegantly proportioned window, its sides and arch enriched with delicate mouldings; in the deep hollow soffits of which is a series of pannels, having foliated arch heads. The outer mouldings of the arch rise high above it, forming a spring canopy, enriched with crockets, and ending in a flower; from which again springs very elegantly a niche or tabernacle, with a high straight-sided canopy, flanked with a small pinnacle at each impost, containing a figure of Edward III. in complete armour. The body of the window to the spring of the arch contains two stories, divided horizontally by embattled transoms, and perpendicularly by six upright mullions into seven compartments. The two central mullions, as they approach the spring of the arch, bisect the head into smaller arches on each side, and these are further subdivided into others, which are uncommonly acute, the interstices of all filled with several tiers of small open pannelled tracery, mingled with trefoiled and quatrefoiled foliage, in beautiful and varied profusion. To the angles of the tower are attached square shallow piers, ending in pointed canopies, and midway of each is a niche, containing statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. Two small double windows light each side of the upper story of the tower, the summit of which is terminated by an unsightly battlement of brick.

[Picture: Abbey Church, or Church of the Holy Cross]

The eastern portion of the nave is separated on either side from the side-aisles by three semicircular arches, resting on short massive round pillars, with shallow bases and filletted capitals, in the plainest and earliest Anglo-Norman style. Above, the remains of the triforium of the ancient church may be distinctly traced. The western portion has, on each side, two pointed arches in the pure Gothic of the 14th century, delicately lined with mouldings, and rising from well-proportioned clustered pillars, with capitals composed of a series of small horizontal mouldings. A clere-story, pierced with handsome Gothic windows, crowns this part of the edifice; and similar windows are continued along the north and south sides of the tower.

A lofty and graceful pointed arch, springing from high clustered imposts, opens from the nave to the tower, and affords a view of the fine west window; the upper portion of which is filled with the armorial bearings of Richard II.; his uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester, Lancaster, and York; and the alliances of the noble families of Fitzalan and Stafford, Earls of Arundel and Stafford, and the lower part with those of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, William Lord Berwick, patron, the Rev. R. Lingen Burton, vicar, Dr. Butler, Bishop of Lichfield, Archdeacon Bather, and Rev. Richard Scott, (the donor). The whole area of the tower is occupied by a capacious gallery, erected in 1817, for the accommodation of the children of the National School, in which stands a fine-toned organ, made by Gray of London, and purchased by subscription.