Hello everyone. Today I'm checking out one of Shrewsburys more underrated features, and last remaining chunks of the town walls. Many, many people walk or drive past this every single day without even knowing its historic significance. However, it's enigmatic in that unlike the castle, it's not publically accessible. It's tiny, and clearly ancient, and I've wanted to see inside it for years, so I'm beyond happy to say that I've finally done it.
And I thought I'd blog about it pretty quick, to make up for the last blog which wasn't in Shropshire, and makes my blog title inaccurate.
However my last blog did serve to get me some more contacts among urban explorers in the West Midlands. Some glorious opportunities may be presenting themselves.
Now watch as I check out the last of Shrewsburys watchtowers!
One thing you might notice is that the tower is actually leaning slightly towards the road. It turns out medieval architects didn't consider that cars might be invented in the next seven hundred years, and a continuous stream of traffic gradually eroded the foundations, causing it to lean, up until the pavement was put there to reinforce it in 1991. Prior to that, the door opened up right onto the road whereas the door above it led onto a walkway around the original town walls.
The "bury" in Shrewsbury actually derives from the old English "byrig" which means fortress. Today it's difficult to imagine Shrewsbury being a fortress, what with the fact that anyone can go there and we love our tourists, but there are still clues, what with the town centre being on a loop in the river, almost an island, with the castle overlooking the connecting land path. Back in the day, the town walls wrapped the town up all snug from those pesky Welsh invaders, and the towers, like this one, were positioned on the side facing Wales, to guard against invaders crossing the river.
Prior to the town walls being built, the river provided sufficient defence, or so the good people of Shrewsbury thought, right up until 1215 when the town had its ass kicked by the Welsh.
And as such, it was decided that maybe they needed a little bit more to protect them, and between 1220 and 1242 the town walls were constructed, although the watchtowers are believed to have been added between 1399 and 1413.
Quite intriguingly, this is why the nearby park is called The Quarry, even though it's actually really not very Quarry-like and pretty easy on the eyes. Back in the day it's where they got their stone to build the town walls, and somehow over the centuries it's still retained its name without anyone even pondering the significance.
The town walls were originally dotted with towers, gate houses, and other fortifications, and while chunks of the town wall can still be seen in such places as the dana footpath and St Marys water lane, and in subterranean places like McDonalds and the Prince Rupert Hotel, this tower is the last surviving of its kind.
So let's slip inside!
Check out the fireplace tiles!
As you can see, it looks a lot less fortressy than you'd expect, having once had a fireplace fitted, and then decorated with tiles, and that's because it's had a few hundred years to be used for other things, and along the way acquire various nicknames. In 1580 it became known as "Warings Tower" when the Waring family leased it as a wool merchants.
What became of it after that isn't known, but depictions of it from the early 1800s show that it had become derelict over the intervening centuries. In 1816 a watchmaker used it as a workshop, and then in the 1860s it was converted into a dwelling by a man named John Humphries, who let his coachman live in it.
To me, that sounds amazing. Imagine your employer buying and fixing up a medieval watchtower for you to live in? What an awesome guy!
What nobody can tell from looking at the tower from street level is that it's actually much taller, due to the sloped nature of Shrewsbury. This was a fortress, and as such the street is actually higher than the side of the tower that was facing invaders. These stairs actually lead down to a lower floor. There's a curtain at the bottom of the stairs, which hides the toilet, now long since out of order, but still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
The rest of the bottom floor was turned into a kitchen when the tower became a dwelling.
And this little hole in the wall was a toilet chute.
Past the kitchen and toilet I was quite happy to find a tiny little garden, which is invisible and inaccessible from the street, but quietly hidden behind the tower.
It ends at this gate, which then leads onto the gardens of the surrounding property. However, centuries ago this would have been a nice uninterrupted slope down to the river. Any invaders attacking from this directon would have had to cross the river and charge at the town walls, evading a storm of arrowfire from the fortification. And from this side, the tower looks a lot more formidable.
Here's the view, looking up from the garden. The street on the other side is considerably higher, but from here one really gets a feel for the kind of defence Shrewsbury had back in the day.
But to think someone actually lived in this, and called it home is pretty damn enviable. Sure, it's not the most spacious of accomodation, but it's a goddamn medieval watchtower!
The upper door is at the top of the stairs, and currently leads to a drop onto the street below, when once it would have led to a walkway around the town walls.
The windows up here were once narrow arrow slits, but were widened when it was converted into a dwelling, which it remained long into the 20th Century.
After being lived in by John Humphries coachman, in 1930 it was lived in by the gardener of Johns daughter Sarah. And then, from 1937 it was lived in by a lady called Janet Mitchell until 1954. It was then lived in by a lady named B Curtis until 1967. Apparently it was a dwelling up until 1980, but today it's empty, but I understand it's occasionally used by the nearby girls school.
Even though it has electricity, there's an actual gas lamp still up here, from its days as a Victorian dwelling.
The windows are narrow, but provide a nice little view of the town.
Rooftop access was heartbreakingly impossible, due to the stairs being unsafe and in the process of being worked on, but from here one could look up and see the trap door in the top of the tower. There doesn't seem to be a way up to it though.
But someday I will get photographs from the top of this tower. Someday...
That's all I got for today.
As cool as I think it would be to live in a medieval guard tower, I don't think I could personally be comfortable here, due to it being quite small. It would be very homely for someone more minimalist than me.
But nevertheless, I still love this place, and I was very, very lucky to get a peek inside.
As a final tidbit, rumour has it that it's still legal to shoot Welsh people if we see them climbing over the wall after dark. Apparently the law dates back to Shrewsburys days as a fortress and was never revoked. I have no idea if that's true or not, but apparently Chester had something similar. But it is just a rumour I'm including for amusement, and not something I encourage you to do. Given that we're no longer at war with them, shooting a Welsh person probably counts as a hate crime, and if you go to jail for murdering Welsh people, it's not my fault.
But that's all I have from this excellent watchtower. Next blog post, Brother Michael and I hit the road to find something else in the Shropshire countryside that will hopefully be well recognised and nostalgic.
In the meantime, share this blog wherever you want, like my Facebook page, follow my Instagram, and my Twitter, and subscribe to my Youtube just in case I ever add a video to it.
Thanks for reading!
I have so enjoyed that. Thank you 👍
ReplyDeleteThats brilliant.
ReplyDelete