tell me about Shrewsbury

this question was prompted by the fact that Shrewsbury still has a Grope Lane (admittedly not Gropec*nt Lane) whereas other streets around the country have had this name replaced by more polite alternatives. I do not know whether this tells us anything about the town's character.

1. Shrewsbury Town used to play at Gay Meadow, but no more :(

2. Derek Smalls, bass player of Spinal Tap, can be seen wearing a Shrewsbury Town top in various sequences of "This Is Spinal Tap" - notably the cucumber down the trousers airport security scene

3. Big public school.

4. There's a big prison right in the centre of town, next to the railway station (5). The most overcrowded prison in the UK.

5. 5 railway lines meet at the station. There will be a direct train to London soon.

I knew about 3., largely through its famous alumni, inc Darwin, Palin, Peel & Sinker!

also, confusion over pronunciation of the name. Most ppl I know pronounce it as spelt, but I have also heard SHROWSbury.

It was the southernmost point covered by the British Rail season ticket my parents would buy every summer (the northernmost being Windermere), so I spent one day of each August there in the mid-late 1970s. I remember nothing about it. I went back with a college friend about 12 years ago. Bits of it look similar to Chester.

6. Further former pupils of Shrewsbury School: Tim Booth; Michael Heseltine; Willie Rushton; Christopher Booker; Richard Ingrams; Paul Foot; Nevil Shute; Richard Todd; Lord Hutton; Nick Owen; Nick Hancock

I'm "from" Shrewsbury. Let's go over the most important points

1. No one outside of Shropshire knows where Shrewsbury is, or even Shropshire for that matter.
2. Only residents who can trace their ancestry back to the Domesday period feel comfortable with calling it "SHROWS-bury".
3. About half the books in WHSMith are entitled "The Shropshire Walkways" or "The Shuts and Passages of Shrewsbury" (no, that's not a double entendre)
4. Yes, there is a Grope Lane. My Dad used to work there (Mardons, circa 2000). Nowadays its home to a Costa Coffee full of sloany skiving Shrewsbury Girls High sixth formers.
5. There is massive class segregation. The town is shaped like a figure of 8, and thanks to the 1960s petri dish of nearby Telford, the top half has become chav central and a wasteland of destitution (although the road I live on is not that bad - the road that gets you the hell out of there), whereas the bottom half is one of the most sought after living areas in the UK.
6. I went to school about 16 miles away from home, because if you want a decent education in Shrewsbury you have to pay £27,000 a year.
7. None of those alumni of Shrewsbury School ever come back. In fact, no one comes back. Not even T'Pau.

All I know are the biscuits. I love them.

Had a girlfriend there last year, the large cafe behind the hospital that overlooks the river does a wonderful cream tea.

I know where you mean! However, that place changes franchise every few years, whereas the Armoury Inn (?) next door is a famous mainstay, and is my favourite for getting drunk during the day in a respectable way.

3. About half the books in WHSMith are entitled "The Shropshire Walkways" or "The Shuts and Passages of Shrewsbury" (no, that's not a double entendre)

Do they not sell Cadfael books anymore? I went to Shrewsbury in 1998 to see Mansun play the Buttermarket (I somewhat mistakenly thought Shrewsbury was nearby, as it's fairly close to Wrexham, and Wrexham was fairly close to where I grew up, but it was actually miles away, and the A5 is a rubbish road). I had to go there to buy the tickets and I remember everywhere selling Cadfael shit.

1. No one outside of Shropshire knows where Shrewsbury is, or even Shropshire for that matter.

This is obviously not true. It contains Ludlow and therefore the Ludlow food festival, where every year you can hear me gasping with delight at the quality of the Swiss Chard.

I have been to Ludlow but not Shrewsbury! Ludlow has a particularly fine castle.

1. No one outside of Shropshire knows where Shrewsbury is, or even Shropshire for that matter.

I do, but then my Dad lives in Ironbridge, so I suppose that gives me honorary Shropshire status.

I haven't been to Shrewsbury for years. It's pretty in a chocolate box heritage England way, but I don't really remember much else. I'd generally go for special out-of-Wolverhampton shopping trips with my mum when we didn't fancy Birmingham - they always used to go all out with the Christmas decorations - I'd assume they still do, it's that kind of place. Other than that it was all about changing trains on the way to Wales.

I think I first ate a sorbet in Shrewsbury too.

I hate you break it to you but The Cadfael Museum (or whatever it was) is long gone.

Ludlow and Bishops' Castle remind me of the Wicker Man communities. I went to a "Christmas Festival" in Bishops' Castle in 2002 and I felt like I was in 1300s Finland. A mish mash of druids, gypsies and psychics (and a few Morris dancers...)

Clun where my Mum grew up, used to have a famous blind/deaf "white witch" in residence called Bill Sharpe. This guy had been scaring the local kids since about 1932 and anywhere else would have recieved an ASBO, but the small town never missed out on the opportunity to exploit him during their scary pagan festivals.

So yeah, small town Shropshire is more or less the end of the universe.

A mish mash of druids, gypsies and psychics (and a few Morris dancers...)

If you add in professional story tellers, stained glass makers, coracle builders and rich rich rich techy/ science types who commute to Telford, then you've basically got Ironbridge.

i am goin back there on sat, to visit my dad for a few days

pr0n table:

shrowsberry <--- v posh
shrowsbree <--- mildly posh
shroosbree <--- careful standard
shoosbree <--- normal standard
soosbree <--- old local, possibly vanished by now

i probbly posted that before, it is the only thing i know really

also Salop/Shrops

My mum always puts Salops on her letters to, er, Salopians.

The main problem with that? In French it means "BITCH"

If Shrewsbury had an underground system would it be called the Salopian Tube?

1. No one outside of Shropshire knows where Shrewsbury is, or even Shropshire for that matter.

I'm surprised Anna's dad claims to live in "Ironbridge" and not Madeley or Coalbrookdale. I always thought "Ironbridge" was just a made up name for the tourism?

I always think of Coalbrookdale as being the area surrounding the Musuem of Iron, down to Dale End/ the youth hostel and of Ironbridge as being the collection of shops and houses facing the river and up the hill on the north side of the bridge. I think that's a pretty common definition. I suppose I should have said Jackfield as he's on the south side of the river, but the actual bridge is about 100 yards from the front door, so...

I'll stop cluttering up Mark's Shrewsbury thread with Ironbridge talk now.

If Shrewsbury had an underground system would it be called the Salopian Tube?

-- Michael Jones,

I love this though Mike.

it's underwater

It’s *possible* we could have picked a better day to visit Shrewsbury. #floods #flooding #StormFranklin pic.twitter.com/SmQdDWk6G6

— Brian Crombie-Fisher 🔶 (@brighamfisher) February 21, 2022

twitter is saying record flooding depth tho i can't find pictures that indicate that tbh (it floods a lot)

lol i found a really deep-looking photo in the shropshire star of the low-lying bit just the other side of the welsh bridge as you turn towards frankwell, and
(a) the story was abt a flood dated last feb and
(b) the actual pic was dated from the previous year

it floods a LOT in shrewsbury

do they sound off an air raid siren when it floods, like in Hebden Bridge?

they do not

https://i.imgur.com/zbQcRVj.png

^^^this is from the legendary shropshire star pull-out picture supplement memorably entitled SHREWSBURY UNDERWATER IN THE THE YEAR 2000

which i have a copy of somewhere in my flat lol

flubbed the record lads

Severn at #Shrewsbury close to peaking at 5.14m, making it 4th biggest flood ever recorded.

Beaten by

2000 - wettest Autumn on record since 1766
1946 - huge snow melt
1795 - the big one!

This was caused by 150mm of rain over 5 days in upland Wales

Time’s up! pic.twitter.com/LN72dIuWvv

— Dave Throup (@DaveThroup) February 22, 2022

mum's geography-degree ghost getting cross at new-build home-owners posting awed pix of the vast lake that is currently frankwell car park: no part of the town more obviously a flood plain

busily discussing with ilxor fizzles on twitter our electoral winner of a shropshire-floods development plan (given the uselessness of the current MP, who is not coincidentally probably the tallest MP in british history): our plan involves STILTS and CORACLES*

*the shrewsbury town fall-fetching coracle is presumably free for public use since the ground moved off the flood plain a few years back

All this flooding has reminded me that there is a WHOLE LOST MEDIEVAL TOWN under water in the Humber Estuary in East Yorkshire! Ravenser Odd appeared, flooded, and disappeared again over a period of just 200 years. This story is so WEIRD. Thread! 🧵 1/ pic.twitter.com/wZmrfJVL05

— Florence of Northumbria (@FlorenceHRScott) February 21, 2022

not about Shrewsbury but a good thread about the rather strange lost Town of Ravenser Odd.

this makes me a bad person i know but i'm looking at the all the photos of great sheets of water across car parks and water meadows and yes some streets and roads also and thinking how pretty the town looks right now: the venice of the agricultural west midlands