Our town for more than three centuries possessed almost exclusively the
trade with Wales in a coarse kind of cloth called Welsh webs, which were
brought from Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire to a market held here
weekly. In reference to this, Camden, in his “Britannia,” published in
1586, writes of Shrewsbury—“It is a fine city, well inhabited, and of
good commerce; and by the industry of the citizens and their cloth
manufacture and their trade with the Welsh, is very rich, for hither the
Welsh commodities are brought as to the common mart.”
The termination of this branch of commerce is an event of too much
importance to be passed over. It is thus graphically alluded to by
Messrs. Owen and Blakeway: “Every Thursday the central parts of the town
were all life and bustle; troops of hardy ponies, each with a halter of
twisted straw, and laden with two bales of cloth, poured into the
Market-place in the morning, driven by stout Welshmen in their country
coats of blue cloth and striped linsey waistcoats.”
At two o’clock the drapers, with their clerks and shearmen, assembled
under the Market-house, and proceeded up stairs (according to ancient
usage) in seniority. The market being over, drays were seen in all
directions conveying the cloths to the several warehouses, and more than
six hundred pieces of web have been sold in a day. The whole was a ready
money business; and as the Welshmen left much of their cash behind them
in exchange for malt, groceries, and other shop goods, the loss of such a
trade to the town may be easily conceived. This took place about the
year 1795, and was occasioned by individuals (not members of the
Shrewsbury fraternity of drapers) travelling into those parts where the
goods were made, from which the manufacturers soon learnt that they might
find a mart for their goods at home without the trouble and expence of a
journey to the walls of Amwythig. In March, 1803, the company
relinquished the great room over the market-hall, where they had for
nearly two centuries transacted their business, and though much traffic
in flannels was subsequently carried on in the town, the total extinction
of this branch of our local commerce is fast approaching, from the market
having diverged to Welshpool, Newtown, and Llanidloes, where the
advantages of machinery are now substituted for manual labour in its
manufacture.
The cessation of the woollen market in this town has been ascribed to the
improvement of the roads in Wales, which opened a more free communication
to the interlopers of the Drapers’ company; and this again afforded some
compensation to the town for the loss of this branch of its trade. For
if Shrewsbury was no longer the emporium of North Wales, it was becoming
the centre of communication between London and Dublin; and the
agriculture of the neighbourhood and the trade of the town received a new
impulse from the vast increase of posting and stage coaches, but far
inadequate to the advantage which it derived from its trade in Welsh
woollens and the weekly visits of the Cambrian farmers.
That Shrewsbury, however, may reap the full benefit of its central
situation as the great thoroughfare from whence all the roads into North
Wales diverge, and being also the general market of the surrounding
country, acknowledged to be one of the finest agricultural districts in
the kingdom, it is highly expedient that our town should possess the
advantage of a RAILWAY communicating with the great lines to Birmingham,
London, Liverpool, &c.
Prospectuses have been issued showing the eligibility of the plan, and
the position in which the trade and general intercourse of the town will
be placed if unprovided with those facilities of cheap and expeditious
conveyance enjoyed by other large towns; and when it is considered that a
great portion of the provisions which supply the thickly-populated
neighbourhoods of Wolverhampton, Bilston, Birmingham, &c. are purchased
at our weekly markets and monthly fairs, and the deficient and expensive
means of transit on this line, a Railway would produce incalculable
benefit to the town by an increased traffic, and thereby contribute to
reinstate it in that important situation which it once held as THE
EMPORIUM OF NORTH WALES.
The chief manufactories at present are the extensive concern of Messrs.
Marshall for thread and linen yarns, three iron foundries, and Messrs.
Jones and Pidgeon’s for tobacco and snuff. The vicinity being a good
barley country, the malting business is carried on to a considerable
extent, and divided among sixty maltsters. Glass-staining has been
brought to the highest state of perfection in this town, completely
disproving assertions made some few years since that the powers of this
ancient science had then extended almost beyond the hope of eventual
excellence. The gothic chain, however, which for so long a period had
confined the mystery of this beautiful art, once, indeed, considered as
entirely lost, has been effectively broken by our townsman, Mr. D. Evans,
of whose productions our churches and many other ecclesiastical buildings
and noblemen’s mansions in different parts of the kingdom afford
specimens, contending in effect with some of the finest works of the
ancient masters.
Among the _delicacies_ for which our town is so deservedly celebrated may
be mentioned a most delicious CAKE, {204} of which but few strangers in
passing through fail to partake, especially if they have read the
encomium of the poet Shenstone:
“For here each season do these cakes abide,
Whose honoured names th’ inventive city own,
Rend’ring through Britain’s isle Salopia’s praises known.”
SHREWSBURY CAKES appear to have been presented to distinguished
personages on their visit to this town as early as the reign of
Elizabeth; and when their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Kent and the
Princess Victoria arrived here in 1832, they were graciously pleased to
accept a box of them from the Mayor.
THE SIMNEL made here is much admired, and great quantities of this kind
of cake are prepared about the season of Christmas and Lent. The word is
supposed to have been derived from the Latin _simila_, signifying fine
flour; but the common tradition fixes its origin to a dispute between a
man named “Simon” and his wife “Nell.” One of them was desirous that the
plum pudding should be baked, while the other insisted that it should be
boiled: neither party being disposed to yield, it was therefore first
boiled and afterwards baked (the processes that it now undergoes), and
thus produced Sim-nell. The exterior crust, or shell (enclosing a
compound of fruit) is hard, and deeply tinged with saffron.
THE SHREWSBURY BRAWN is unrivalled, and has lately been patronised by His
Majesty William the Fourth. Brawn is a Christmas dish of great
antiquity, and may be found in most of the ancient bills of fare for
coronations and other great feasts. “Brawn, mustard, and malmsey” were
directed for breakfast during the reign of Elizabeth; and Dugdale, in his
account of the Inner Temple Revels, states the same directions for that
society. It is prepared from the flesh of boars fattened for the
purpose.
SHREWSBURY ALE has been commended from a remote period. _Iolo Goch_, the
bard of Owen Glendower, eulogises the profusion with which “Cwrw
Amwythig,” or Shrewsbury Ale, was dispensed in the mansion of his hero at
Sycarth, which he seems to have visited previously to the insurrection of
1400.