purpose of affording skilful medical assistance to the suffering poor,
and is most munificently supported by the voluntary subscriptions and
benefactions of the county. According to the last report the total
number of persons who have received the benefit of this useful charity
since its commencement, are,—In-patients 65204; whereof 32298 have been
cured, and 25156 relieved; Out-patients 138039, of whom 98376 have been
cured, and 24700 relieved. The yearly number of patients is 1277
in-patients, and 4835 out-patients. Several of the physicians and
surgeons of the town most humanely afford their valuable advice and skill
gratuitously; and in order that medical aid may always be ready in cases
of emergency, a surgeon, retained at a salary, is constantly resident in
the house. The pecuniary and ordinary concerns of the institution are
superintended by a board of directors, consisting of eight trustees, the
deputy treasurer, and secretary. The domestic economy is regulated by a
matron. Two of the subscribers, weekly attend as house-visitors. The
Chaplain the Rev. J. Lewis reads prayers daily and visits the sick in the
wards. A treasurer is also annually appointed, who, on the anniversary
day in the Hunt week, is accompanied to church by the subscribers and
patrons of the charity, where, after a sermon, a collection is made in
aid of the funds; the plates on this occasion, being held by two ladies
and two gentlemen of rank or opulence.
The house surgeon is allowed to take three pupils at a premium of 20
Guineas to himself, and 200 Guineas to the Infirmary, which entitles the
pupil to board and residence for five years. Attendance at this hospital
is recognized by the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Apothecaries’
Company, London.
There is a Library of about 3000 volumes, to which the best new medical
works are yearly added by purchase.
The present building was erected in 1830, on the site of the Old
Infirmary, after a design by Mr. Haycock, of this town, at an expense of
£18,735 18s. 10d. of which £12,994 1s. 3d. was raised by subscription,
and the remainder disbursed from the funded property of the charity.
It is constructed of freestone, in the Grecian style, is 170 feet in
length by 80 feet in height, and has a handsome portico in the centre,
supported by Doric pillars. The disposition of the interior is adequate
to the accommodation of from 150 to 160 in-patients, and comprises four
stories. The various offices, in number twenty-two, are arranged in the
basement; the ground floor is appropriated to the board-room, dispensary,
rooms for the admission of patients, the house-surgeon and matron’s
apartments, and two wards for surgical cases; the first floor has seven
wards for male patients, with day-room, scullery, and baths; the upper
story contains a spacious operation room, with wards for female patients
on each side; and in the attics are four other wards, with nurses’ rooms,
&c. A staircase, at either end, communicates with spacious galleries
extending the length of each story. A proper ventilation is kept up
through the whole structure, and an uniform temperature preserved by a
patent hot-water apparatus, which likewise affords a constant supply of
warm water. The walls of the board-room are decorated with the portraits
of Sir Rowland Hill, Bart., General Lord Hill, and Lord Clive, the
armorial bearings of the successive treasurers, and the tables of
benefactions.
The spacious terrace on the eastern side, commands an extensive view of
unequalled richness and beauty. The eye, after dwelling on the nearer
objects of the rugged declivities of the Castle Mount,—the Railway
Viaduct over the Severn,—the majestic ruins of the Abbey,—the stately
grandeur of the White Hall,—the elegant Column,—and the venerable church
of St. Giles—wanders uninterruptedly over an extensive tract of fertile
and finely wooded country, bounded by the long ridge of Haughmond Hill,
the Wrekin, the Acton Burnell, Frodesley, and Stretton Hills.
Opposite St. Mary’s turnstile, at the corner of Church Street, stands
JONES’S MANSION,
the front of which is now obscured by modern erections, though portions
of its lofty gables are still visible from the street. This house was
built by Thomas Jones, Esq., called the _Rich Jones_, (the uncle of Sir
Thomas Jones, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,) who, after serving
the office of Bailiff six times, was appointed by Charles I., in 1638,
the first Mayor of Shrewsbury. In 1624 he also served the office of
Sheriff of the county. Subsequently the mansion became the residence of
the Chief Justice Jones. In 1642, during Charles I. stay in Shrewsbury,
the Duke of York was lodged here, and Prince Rupert also made it his
residence after the battle of Worcester.
In the adjacent street, Dogpole, is
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTE,
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.