Rooftops of Shrewsbury

(DISCLAIMER:  I do not force entry, vandalize, steal, or disclose means of entry or location if it isn't obvious. I do this to protect locations and respect them. Trespass without forced entry is a civil offense rather than a criminal one, which isn't worth acting on unless one causes damage, steals, has ill intent, etc. I simply photograph and leave everything as I find it. I do not condone breaking and entering, and I do not condone what I do. I'm a danger to myself and a terrible role model )

As the name of this blog probably suggests, this was originally a rooftopping blog, back when barely anyone in Shrewsbury was partaking. Nowadays times have changed, and I've branched out to other parts of my local area where members of the general public, as the name of the blog also suggests, are not. But I still do the occasional rooftop blog post!
Rooftopping is fun. It's dangerous, sure, but so are plenty of mundane activities. Driving, for example. Think about it- the human body is propelled in a direction far faster than they can naturally move, and the only things stopping them from a collision is a slither of paint in the middle of the road and a blind faith in the common sense of everyone else around you.

Let me tell you, blind faith in the common sense of everyone else around you is terrifying. Watch the Jeremy Kyle show, or Love Island, and tell yourself- "All these people can legally drive."
Terrifying isn't it?

When one is rooftopping, one only has their own common sense to worry about. Rooftoppers get to see the world from a whole new, unique angle, and enjoy their life without being restricted to the safe, sanitized, pre-planned adventures that require an admission fee. And the photos tend to be awesome, and regardless of the controversy, in about fifty years, people will be glad they were taken. Places like Sundorne Castle have reminded me that everything is temporary, and that it's important to capture the world as it is, while it's here.

To be honest, everyone in Shrewsbury loved the rooftop photos until the local newspaper told them that they shouldn't. The media still totally ignored me when I asked for publicity for my cancer haircut fundraiser, and then they still pestered me for my photos when I blogged about the house from Tots TV, so what does that tell you? Bottom line is the media is full of wazzocks, and you should trust me more because even though I'm also a wazzock, at least my goals in life are victimless. 

 

The only problem rooftopping poses for a blogger is that often a couple shots from one rooftop do not always justify an entire blog post, and that is why I occasionally do rooftop compilation blogs.

 

Okay, I say occasionally... This is the second, but the first one was all the way back in 2015! We're overdue a fresh perspective!

 

Starting with my favourite place, the shard, and the rooftops connected to it.

 

 

The view from up here is pretty sweet. The pictures do not do it justice.

 

 

 

Overlooking the square.

I much prefer to rooftop at night time, because stealth is absolutely integral to the longevity of my means to do it, but sometimes a daylight perspective is called for too!

 

 

 I have a couple of night and day shots of Fish Street too.

 

The night time one relied on a long exposure, and since I was only carrying a gorilla-pod, I had to keep my shot landscape. In the daylight, I had no such restriction, so I was able to portrait it and get the churches in there.

 Shrewsbury looks like an advent calendar, and I love it.

 

 

Next up... Wyle Cop!

 Now as you can see, many of my rooftop photos were taken in the winter, when Shrewsbury had Christmas decorations up. This is mainly because rooftopping is easier in the winter, when it gets darker earlier.
As an interesting nugget of information, the bollards that partially line the top of this street were allegedly placed there because the street was once widened, and the cellars of the existing buildings still extend to where the shop fronts used to be, and so the bollards were placed there to stop vehicles parking on the pavement and collapsing down into someones cellar.

Also visible from these rooftops is the big modern BT building, which is mainly a call centre where hundreds of bored employees are telling people that their phone was disconnected because they didn't pay their bill.

 This is as far as one can get via rooftop on Wyle Cop, however on the left there is the carpark entrance which used to be Infinity and Beyond, which I've also climbed on, and just beyond that is the Parveen Balti. Beyond that are more accessible rooftops!

 Here's an overlooked piece of history, dating back to when the business signs would be painted onto the building. Not many of these signs still exist in Shrewsbury, and the ones that do are often overlooked.

 From here it's possible to see over the English Bridge, so called because it faces England, as opposed to the Welsh Bridge, which leads into Wales. Over the bridge one can just about see the Abbey, the abandoned brothel, and Wakeman School.

Heading back into town...

Here's an alternative view of the BT building, except it's far in the distance. This picture was taken from the rooftops of Milk Street, near Old St Chads.

 Old St Chads is a ruined church, no longer accessible to the public, and in a similar way to the Abbey, it's only a small chunk of what was once standing there. As such, given its close proximity to town, it has been the subject of many underground tunnel rumours. In the above picture, one can see where the churchyard has a massive crater just next to the wall, where the crypt of the church once collapsed, and was exposed to the public centuries ago. It must have been a morbid sight, and in an ironic twist, Thomas Telford, who is largely blamed for reducing the Abbey to just a fraction of its former size, actually tried to save Old St Chads, pointing out that the architecture was flawed, and that it needed work being done to it. Nobody listened, and the church collapsed.

Rumour has it the crypt contained three archways leading in different directions. One has been officially confirmed to have led to the Golden Cross pub across the road, while rumours speculate that the other two archways led towards the music hall, via Princess Street, and to the awesome shop called The Cave, and its neighbouring fudge shop.

Over there is the church that I climbed in 2016.

Anyway, moving on to the Square...

 I've taken plenty of shots of this square from other rooftops but I've not shown the ones from this rooftop yet. The building with the pillars is best known today as an excellent bar and cinema, but turn back the clock a few hundred years, and it was a courtroom. A close look at the gargoyles on it will reveal that they wear little judge wigs.

 The criminals who were awaiting trial were held in small temporary cells underneath the Music Hall, which are still there today.

Onto Dogpole... Yeah, I'm really not working my way across Shrewsbury in any particular way that makes sense. If you map out my route, it might spell out something wise or deep like "The word bed actually looks like a tiny bed" but if it does, that's just a coincidence.

 The street Dogpole is allegedly so called because the town walls used to cross it, and had a tiny little door that became known as the Duck Hole, because people had to lower their heads as they passed through. Dogpole apparently derives from that.

 Dogpole brings us up to St Marys Church, allegedly the oldest worshiping site in Shrewsbury, as it was a pagan site before the Christians built their shrine to Daddy G. Allegedly there was a pagan well on the site, and the pew in the church situated above this well has healing properties, or so they say.

 Around the back of St Marys Church is the Parade Shopping Centre, which I've also climbed up in the past...

 On the right is Traitors Gate, so called because it was the entrance through which parliamentarian troops invaded and conquered Shrewsbury during the Civil War. Across from that, the black and white building, is a tattoo parlour belonging to two fellow urban explorers that I have yet to team up with, but they do a youtube channel, and it's pretty excellent. They cover a lot of the same locations as me, but unlike me, they don't look like out-of-work magicians. You should check out their channel.
The tattoo place was also once the home of Ebenezer Scrooge back when a Christmas Carol was filmed here in the 1980s.

Beyond that is Castle Street, and the rootops that we used to call the Rat Run.
And because I've covered those rooftops before elsewhere, I'm going to skip straight to Mardol.

 I don't know why this street was called Mardol, but it leads down from the town to the Welsh Bridge and Frankwell. The Welsh Bridge used to connect directly to Mardol but had its trajectory changed to be slightly off when the bridge was rebuilt. The original foundations of the bridge still survive underneath the theatre, which is just visible in the distance here.

 At the top of Mardol is the market hall, and a street called Shoplatch, which hilariously derives from Shit Place, and not because it was a shit place, but because the Schitt Family used to live here, before they changed their name to Schutt. Although to be fair, in the medieval times it probably actually was a fairly shit place. I'm sure everywhere was. They didn't have flushing toilets, equal rights, or clean water.
Sarah Schutt allegedly haunts the Hole in the Wall, but I've never seen her.

 And there's the Market clocktower, and new St Chads, both of which I've been on top of.

This monument is called Darwins Gate, because this is Shrewsbury and we can't go for too long without reminding you that Charlie D was born here.
Personally I find the fact that Shrewsbury is the set of A Christmas Carol far more interesting, but anyway, if one walks up Mardol, the big pointy parts of the Darwin Gate apparently fit together to look like a saxon helmet, or something. I only just found that out recently, but even so, the fact that it's called Darwins Gate is mystifying.

 This road leads to the back of the music hall, and also allegedly has a few underground tunnels to neighbouring premises. The trouble is they're all residential, and probably blocked off.

Moving away from the town centre, I recently climbed the Morris Clocktower and took a couple of awful photos from up there.

 The purple lights are coming from the Buttermarket nightclub and just beyond that is the Castle.

And this big imposing building is the Dana Prison, which I blogged about recently.

And now onto the completely opposite side of town, Frankwell.

 Frankwell is just across the river from Shrewsbury, and derives from "Frankville" which meant the Town of Free Trade, since it was originally outside of Shrewsburys jurisdiction. Its history is primarily due to the river trade, and it became a battle ground in the 1400s during the War of the Roses, which basically consisted of two rival descendants of Edward III fighting over the crown of England. The seriously abridged version is that Frankwell Quay was owned by the Earl of Shrewsbury, John Talbot, who died in battle in 1460, fighting alongside Henry VI. With the battle lost, Frankwell Quay fell into posession of the enemy, King Edward IV, who passed it on to the Drapers in 1462. But in 1470 when King Henry VI was reinstated, John Talbots Widow and her steward raised an army to take Frankwell Quay back by force. And they won! Hooray!

More recently, Frankwell made the news in 2006 when two prostitutes were bludgeoned to death with a hammer. 

 This is the Welsh Bridge, hilariously containing the engraving "Commit No Nuisance" on the wall.

And as far as rooftops go, that's it. However, a few of you might remember those houses being built down by Asda? Well back when that was happening, I did something outrageous and climbed the crane.

I've never climbed a crane before, so it was a nice treat. It sure was windy though! Anyway, here are a couple of shots...

Over in the distance is the Abbey, which remains one of my favourite climbs, but looks tiny from up here. I really want to climb more cranes though, purely because I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. There are a lot of rooftoppers in the cities who climb cranes and take fantastic photos.
The view is totally worth it, and it's only temporary. This view of Shrewsbury will never be captured again, without a drone. But flying a drone up here pales in comparison to actually being there!
The photos themselves pale in comparison to actually seeing this view, but now thanks to the internet, these photos will likely outlive me. In fact, just about all of us will be outlived by our internet output, which has a lot of implications for the future that we don't take into consideration now. If history is researched by finding documentation from the past, then it's fair to assume that hundreds of years from now, todays social media will provide historians with all the details they want about life in the 21st Century. And among a sea of selfies with dog snouts and photos of food, and mundane statuses about grocery shopping, they'll find some interesting photos too. 

That's all I got today. Next blog post I'm in Ludlow, and then I'm doing another rooftop blog about Shrewsbury. Until then, share this blog, like my Facebook page, follow my Instagram, subscribe to my Youtube, and follow my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!