Defences of Tudor Shrewsbury in depth

This was written by Bill Champion, author of "Everyday Life in Tudor Shrewsbury" and is a finely researched look at this theme for those who wish to explore it in great detail.
An updated version will shortly be produced.
© W.A. Champion (2006)

Shrewsbury defences, c. 1540-1640.

Upper Castle Gate, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury (image) [+]
The Upper, or Burgess, Gate had a double portcullis. It was used during the Tudor period and until the 18th Century as a prison. The north tower was used as the gaol and the south tower was the gaolers' quarters. It was probably built in the 13th Century...

Arranged in three sections: (1) town walls, bridges and gates, (2) towers, (3) the castle, (4) Civil War fortifications. Spelling and punctuation modernized.

The upkeep of Shrewsbury’s civic fabric was the responsibility of the two coroners elected each year. (For the brief comments that follow, see in particular W.A. Champion, The Economy of Shrewsbury 1400-1560/1660, unpubl. TS, 1987, copy at Shropshire Archives [SA] 6001/6866, pp. 45-58 ‘Murage expenditure’.) Traditionally expenditure on the walls etc. was meant to be drawn from the receipts of murage, a toll exacted on goods for sale coming through the town gates, although in practice it is clear from examining the borough accounts in the 15th century that murage was once also allocated for other purposes. Nonetheless, the massive decline in borough income after c. 1460 as a result of a commercial contraction meant that expenditure on the civic fabric was drastically cut back (to about a third of its previous level). By the late 15th century it had become necessary to maintain expenditure on the walls etc. by raising revenue from other sources, in particular from the fines of newly admitted burgesses – and this method of paying for fabric repairs and new investment became common thereafter, as the evidence given below reveals. It was not until after after 1530, however, that expenditure on the civic fabric began an obvious recovery from the late 15th century depression, and this may help to explain the poor state of some of the town’s major structures at about that time, e.g. the Stone Bridge Gate which collapsed in 1546 (below). The Welsh Bridge too is recorded to have been in a poor state by 1555 (below). How the cut-back in expenditure may also have affected, for example, the condition of the town walls is as yet unclear. No proper survey of the walls has ever been undertaken which might throw light on this question (N. Baker, Shrewsbury. Archaeological discoveries from a medieval town, 2003, 17). ‘Defaced’ or ruinous towers on the town walls are recorded in 1565 and 1586, but these were let to private individuals and their condition may not properly reflect levels of civic concern (below).

Although building on the town walls, particularly on Pride Hill, had begun even before the 15th century (Baker, forthcoming) – a much later recorded instance is that of the ‘Stone House’ in St. Mary’s churchyard of 1609-10 (below) – the evidence provided below suggests that right up to the Civil War the borough, in its corporate capacity, remained reasonably interested in preserving the integrity of its fortified inheritance. (Keeping the bridges in good condition was of course a sine qua non.) The problem was more with individual townsfolk, who seem increasingly to have felt little compunction about exploiting breaches in the walls, and removing fallen stones. Several examples of such behaviour are given below. In addition, the Pope family who after the Dissolution had acquired the monastic estates abutting the town fabric showed themselves little concerned with its fate. Things came to a head in 1617-20 when the borough went to law with the barrister Roger Pope, owner of the three friary precincts. Indeed the evidence, such as it is, suggests that private insouciance about the integrity of the town’s communal fabric, much of it erected in a more martial era, became more evident at about that time. A rude shock was to be administered with the outbreak of Civil War in 1642 and the urgent need to restore, and even to extend, the town’s fortifications.

Many new facts relevant to this subject are likely to emerge when the borough records are examined in greater detail. This is particularly true of the bailiffs’ accounts (especially vouchers of expenditure), and of the records of presentments by the town streeters (male householders) to the Great Court which dealt with communal offences. These presentments contain many interesting clues to the town’s topography, but most are in poor condition and remain as yet unavailable to the researcher.

1. The town walls, bridges, and gates.

1530/1531. The streeters (male householders) of Romaldesham (Barker Street) and Claremont (Hill) presented the coroners ‘for at the spout’s end must be mended in stone work’, and ‘the town wall is fallen to decay at the end of the spout’ (SA 3365/1081/1/26-7). The ‘spout’ was the outlet of the stream which flowed down from the former kettle hole in the Cornmarket (The Square), through Gullet Passage, then along Barker Street as the ‘channel’ (also mentioned by the streeters at this date), and came out at the ‘Mudholes’ by the Austin Friars (Nigel Baker, forthcoming). The Barker Street/Claremont streeters were still presenting the coroners in 1533 for failing to repair the wall at the spout, now described as coming out at the Friars, i.e. the Austin Friars (SA 3365/1022). Cf. the borough rental for 1657 which, under Romaldesham and Claremont, has an entry for the tanner Richard Meighen who held a piece of void ground ‘without the walls near the spout hole and adjoining to his tan house’ (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106v).

In the same civic year (1530/1) the Frankwell streeters presented Thomas Brewer for damaging the king’s wall with his floats (rafts).

1536. The Coton streeters presented the coroners for not repairing the town wall (SA 3365/1024).The Knockyn (Hill’s Lane) streeters presented Elyn Hordle for ‘breaking of the town wall with drawing up her hode’, and Thomas Mon for a ‘heaving house’ (i.e. privy) erected on the town wall (SA 3365/1025/1/5). Cf. 1544/5 when Thomas Forster, gent, was presented for his privy beside Cripple Lode postern, i.e. Cripplegate (SA 3365/1033/6/10).

1537. An entry in the borough assembly book indicates that a number of burgesses had been admitted whose entry fines were intended to be used for repairs to the town walls (SA 3365/75, fo. 35v).

1546. The town annalist: ‘This year and the 22nd day of January 1545 [i.e. 1546, new calendar] there was a great flood in Shrewsbury and the 23rd day the Stone Gate of the same town there at 5 o’clock in the morning fell down, and being therein at the fall a prisoner for felony who was so wonderfully and miraculously saved, contrary to all person’s expectation, and doors and windows barred and locked and also bolts on his feet, for the which he was let go and pardoned.’ (Trans. Shrop. Arch. Soc. [T.S.A.S.] iii. 257-8.)

1552. The town annalist: ‘This year and towards the latter end of these bailiffs’ times [i.e. 1551-2], the Stone Gate of this town of Shrewsbury was made up again in better force and comelier manner that it was before’. (T.S.A.S. iii.262.) So it had taken about six years to complete the repairs after the collapse of the gate in 1546.

1555. The Mardol streeters presented the coroners because the Welsh Bridge ‘is almost down’ (SA 3365/1042).

1564. On 7 December 1564 the corporation made a grant to the corvisor Richard Barnes of all the town ditch (i.e. the ditch in front of the town wall) lying between the east side of the Castle Gate ‘bridge’ (drawbridge), and another parcel of the town ditch to the west. The town wall lay to the south, and land of Thomas Trentham and Robert Ireland (tenanted) to the north. A proviso was added that the corporation should have liberty to come and go with carts and anything else needed to keep the walls and the bridge in repair, including digging the foundations. Barnes was not to damage the walls, bridge or gate, and was not to dig within a certain distance of them (length not specified). Nor could he plant trees or an orchard close to the feet of the walls and bridge (SA 3365/76, fo. 254v-255r). This reference comes from the borough assembly book. The actual deed, however, was abstracted in the 18th century, and it appears that the grant actually involved two parcels of the town ditch, on either side of the Castle (draw)bridge. Barnes was not to dig within four yards of the town wall, nor within two yards of the bridge. And no trees were to be planted within six yards of the wall (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 6, fo. 43v).

A similar grant of part of the town ditch was made at the same time to the corvisor Richard Jewks (SA 3365/76, fo. 255r). This was said to lie on the north side of Roushill wall between two other parcels of the town ditch, one held by Richard Barnes (as above) and one by Mr. Dawes (see under 1580 below). He was not to dig within four yards of the wall, or plant trees within 12 yards (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 6, fo. 43v).

The grants to Barnes and Jewks are both mentioned in the borough rentals of 1580 and 1610 (below). The descriptions in 1564, and later (below), imply that the grants involved the ditch in front of the wall which ran down from the Castle Gate towards the river (i.e. in the area of Meadow Place).

1565. William Rowley’s later brewhouse was supplied with water by a waterworks with a pump located on a plot of land, 33 x 15 yards, lying immediately outside the town wall on the banks of the Severn between Mardol Quay and the postern gate at Cripplelode (see biographical notes on William Rowley). This land, part of the corporation estate, had originally been granted by the borough in 1565 when it was said to stand alongside an old ‘defaced’ tower on the town walls, beneath which a ‘sink hole or gutter’ ran (Bodl. Lib. MS Gough Shrop. 6, fo. 52v; 12, fo. 97r). William Rowley had petitioned for a grant of this strip of land in 1620, and this was agreed to in 1622 (SA 6001/2795, p. 214). The Rowleys also kept a rubbish-dump there, doubtless for the brewery waste (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106r).

1566. The Knockyn (Hill’s Lane) streeters presented the coroners for failing to repair their street and also Cripplegate, ‘for there was no reparation there this [last] sixteen years’ (SA 3365/1057/9). In the same year the High Street streeters complained that Humphrey Onslow and Richard Dawes (both aldermen) were throwing out their muck ‘at the postern gate that goeth to Mr. Bailiff Allen’s pastures’ (SA 3365/1057/27). This was probably either the postern at the top of Claremont Hill or at the end of Shoplatch/St. John’s Hill (SA 3365/76, fo. 260r; Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 106v). This presentment is given here as an example of a frequently presented nuisance, i.e. throwing out rubbish at the postern gates in the town wall. In 1586 even the carcasses of three horses were disposed of at Murivance postern (SA 3365/1098, Murivance presentments). As Nigel Baker points out (forthcoming) this means that these sites are of considerable archaeological potential.

1575. The town council agreed that the drawbridge of the Welsh Gate should be made up (repaired), with free stone if possible, otherwise with timber (SA 3365/76, fo. 166).

1575. The town annalist: ‘This year the draw bridge at the Welsh Gate was new made with wood.’ (This drawbridge was on the Frankwell side. T.S.A.S. iii. 275.)

1576, 1577. The town council agreed in March 1576 and in May 1577 that the town walls, bridges, towers and the Council House should be repaired (SA 3365/76, fos. 207, 213v).

1576. The town annalist: ‘This year the foresaid bailiffs Mr. Dawes and Mr. Owen repaired and beautified sundry places of this town of Salop as the front of the Welsh Gate, and upon the same bridge made certain shops with a pretty tenement in the place of the cage and privy, which cage being old and fallen to decay they caused to be removed and new built and place under the front of the said Welsh Gate over Cripplelode. . . also [they] fortified the corner of Roushill town wall which before lay open in ruinous manner, and very dangerous for passengers, especially children, and now made pleasant for all people. . .’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 279).

The tenement and shops described in this entry survived into the 18th century, and are shown on illustrations of that date. Leases of these properties can be found in the borough records.

It is likely that the ‘beautification’ of the Welsh Gate involved altering the front that faced Mardol with columns and other architectural elements using classical motifs. Owen wrote, ‘The side of this gate which faced the town, was not less beautiful, though in a style entirely different, having been perhaps one of the earliest attempts that had yet appeared in the kingdom, towards the revival of the architecture of Greece and Rome. The great opening was square, without an arch. Above was a loft embattled tower, with its front adorned by two composite twisted columns, rudely desinged, resting on scrolls, having a circular-headed nich(e) between, and supporting a regular entablature, frieze and cornice. On the left hand on a mantle, was a shiled with the arms of the Corporation, well carved, inclosed within fulted pilasters, and opposite, a patera chaged with the cross of St. George. This front was erected in the year 1539.’ (Rev. H. Owen, Some Account of the Ancient and Present State of Shrewsbury, 1808, 82.) The date 1539 comes from Thomas Phillips, but no proof of this statement has been found, and it seems certain that the alterations which Owen describes were those made in 1576.

1580. The town annalist: ‘This year and the same month [August] the Castle Gate in Shrewsbury, to say the Burgess Gate [the upper Castle Gate] there was new repaired with stone work very beautiful, to say the front thereof towards the town with the Queen’s Majesty’s arms and the town’s arms by the politic oversight of Mr. Richard Owen, draper, being coroner for this year.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 284).

1580. The borough rental of this year shows that there were three parts of the town ditch that were then being rented out. Two correspond to the grants made in 1564 (above). The third referred to a holding of Richard Dawes for the ‘town ditches’ (T.S.A.S. liii. 227). The Dawes grant was probably made about the same time, perhaps a bit earlier. Richard Dawes was a draper and served as bailiff in 1545/6, 1553/4, and 1561/2, and these probably give a rough idea when the grant was made (T.S.A.S. 3rd ser. iv. 274). All three holdings, though with different tenants or sub-tenants are mentioned again in the borough rental of 1657, where all three were said to involve the town ditch ‘behind Roushill Wall’ (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 100v).

The Dawes and Jewks holdings were held of the borough for a fee-farm rent of 8d. p.a. and one of these was eventually sold outright by the corporation in 1793. It comprised 143 feet of land, called the ‘town ditch’, and was said later (1837) to lie near the new road (i.e. Smithfield Road) running from Back Lane (Chester Street) to Mardol. One end lay beside the River Severn (SA 3089/2/4). This particular parcel of the town ditch must therefore have lain in front of ‘Garewald’s tower’.

1581. The town annalist: ‘This year two of the new built shops upon the Welsh Bridge in the town of Salop are altered and made for privies for necessary easement of strangers.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 288.)

1583. The town annalist: ‘This year and in these bailiffs times 1583 the drawbridge upon the Stone Gate in Shrewsbury being in decay was repaired and new railed.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 296.)

1585-6. The coroners were presented by the Mardol streeters for not repairing the Welsh Bridge and the ‘pyles’ This last reference may be to piles driven into the water-logged ground beneath the bridge approaches on the Mardol side (SA 3365/1098).

1587. The town annalist: ‘This year and the last day of November being Saint Andrew’s day in the night the prisoners of the Castle Gate in Shrewsbury, to say of the sheriff’s charge, broke out of prison, of the which two of them escaped, the rest were prevented. They had found the means to ease themselves out of their irons and [had] they had not been espied they had escaped all, and had [would have] put the gaoler to great trouble.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 311.)

1589. The town annalist: ‘This year and the 22nd of January, being Wednesday and in the night, the prisoners of the Castle gaol in Shrewsbury found means to unfasten their bolts and links and were at liberty in the prison, who had pulled down certain stone of the wall towards the school house to have gotten out, but could not pass by reason the earth that way was far above the breach, the which if they had made it on the other side, which they durst not for awakening the gaoler and other people, they had [would have] gone further. So at the last with their bustling and noise the gaoler’s men called up the gaoler, who perceiving them to have the bolts in their hands to brain the which had first come in, went to the bailiffs for assistance, who sent thither certain men weaponed and so forced them all to yield to peace and were all put to surer hold, and so kept till the next great assize.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 315.)

1589. The corporation agreed to admit eight new burgesses whose entry fines would be partly used to defray the costs of the new charter of 1586, and partly for repairs to the gates and posterns. Repairs to the gates, portcullises and posterns were also ordered in 1598, 1604 (T.S.A.S. xi. 161, 163, 165).

1603. On 9 April 1603, the town council agreed to spend £30 on repairs to the gates, portcullises, walls, bridges and towers (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire, 1, fo. 164r).

1604. The Shoplatch streeters presented, by way of an information, ‘those officers unto who it appertaineth to oversee a reform, the ruins of the walk on the town walls, by very many stones thrown down and carried away, a thing to be enquired of and a reformation, to avoid peril to the passengers and going on the walls.’ (SA 3365/1154).

1609. The town council was much exercised in this year about repairs to the town walls, and the need to fine those who were making breaches in them. (Bodl. Gough Shropshire 1, fos. 16v-168r.) In July it was agreed that all the stone that had been robbed from the town wall at the house near the Welsh Bridge, then occupied by the dyer John Gardner, should be used to repair the same stretch of wall (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 166r).

1610. The borough rental of this year shows that there were still (only) three parts of the town ditch that were rented out. Two correspond to the grants made in 1564 (above). The third referred to the Dawes holding for the ‘town ditches’ (T.S.A.S. liii. 237).

1609-10. On 17 June 1609 the corporation, for a small annual rent, granted to Humphrey Lee esq. (of Langley) part of the stone wall in or near to St. Mary’s churchyard, adjoining his gardens, ‘whereon he hath built his Stone House’ (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 99v). The land comprised 44 yards of the town wall extending from Mr. Barker’s land (the site of St. Mary’s deanery, later the Infirmary) to St. Mary’s Water Lane (T.S.A.S. xi. 167). In the 1610 borough rental, under ‘New Takings’, Lee was recorded as now paying a rent for a parcel of ground belonging to the town above St. Mary’s Friars ‘whereupon his house is now built’ (T.S.A.S. liii. 240).

1612. Eight new burgesses were admitted to pay for repairs to the bridges (T.S.A.S. xi. 167).

1617-18, 1618-19, 1620-1 Altogether 36 new burgesses to be admitted to pay for repairs to the gates, walls and bridges (T.S.A.S. xi. 169, 172).

1617-20. Chancery suits during these years pitted Roger Pope against the corporation (NA C2/Jas. I/P18/2, C2/Jas. I/P18/27). Several interesting details about the state of the town defences emerge from the pleadings. Pope, a barrister, was the grandson of the draper and alderman Roger Pope who had bought the sites of all three Shrewsbury friaries in 1544 (Letters and Papers Henry VIII, xix [2], 87; Revs. H. Owen, J.B. Blakeway, A History of Shrewsbury, 2 vols. 1825, ii. 459-60).

In two bills of complaint of (1617, 1618) Pope claimed that the corporation were now claiming rights of way through the three priories, and had recently indicted him at a special sessions of the peace. The corporation had also blamed him and some of his tenants for undermining the town walls near the Grey Friars, which had then collapsed, when in fact it was the corporation’s fault for not repairing them. As a result townsfolk were throwing out their waste and excrement in the ground opened up by the breaches in the wall, and permitting animals to wander about.

To the 1618 bill the corporation replied that Pope’s bill was virtually identical to one he had already entered in Chancery the previous year. The replies of the corporation to each bill included (among others) the following claims. That the collapse of part of the town wall was due to Pope undermining the bank on which the wall stood. That there had also been a suit at the Council in the Marches about a tower which lay between the town wall and the Austin Friars (where Pope now lived), which Pope’s ancestor had pulled down previously (a copy of Pope’s bill of complaint to the Council relating to this suit is at SA 3365/2761/-). That Pope had blocked a little door near the end of Beeches Lane, which provided a way into the Grey Friars, ‘where was a pleasant walking bank . . . where the inhabitants of the said town used to walk and recreate themselves.’ That Pope had also blocked a way which ran alongside the river beside St. Mary’s Friars (formerly the Dominican house), and built a wall there, thus hindering the watermen’s passage along the river bank. That on the other side of town at the Austin Friars he had also encroached on lands leading to the river, ‘and doth likewise keep possession without any just cause or title of one tower and the rooms therein, being part of the said town walls, and of right belonging to the said corporation . . .’

Statements of a number of witnesses, in response to 31 prepared questions, were taken down in the Shermen’s Hall at Shrewsbury in April 1620 (NA C21/P19/11). As well as some interesting questions put to the witnesses about the friary precincts, the interrogatories also asked about rights of way – had Pope blocked them, and were watermen being inconvenienced? – and about the ditch below the town walls, ‘wherein the dung and other filth of the inhabitants of the said town for cleansing of the said town was and yet is cast’. Had Pope undermined the town walls by converting the land to gardens which he then rented out? Had Pope defaced the ‘fair stairs’ leading down from the postern at the end of Beeches Lane? What arrangements existed for locking the postern gates? In relation to the Austin Friars the witnesses were also asked if Pope had converted the premises to a residence for himself. Had he also stripped the battlements off a tower beside the Austin Priory near the town wall which stood on the banks of the Severn (this was part of the medieval ‘New Work’) and converted it into a tanning room, which he then let to tenants? (To the latter question Richard Weaver, one of the witnesses, deposed in the affirmative.) Finally the witnesses were also asked if Pope had converted a blockhouse on the backside of the Austin Priory, built originally for defensive purposes, into a dovecot.

The witnesses (for both plaintiff and defendants) settled on a number of different points, only relevant ones being mentioned here. Richard Weaver, an old weaver of about 80 years of age, said that he could remember another passage which once led from Under the Wyle through the backside of the property once held by George Higgons but now by his son Richard, the current resident – this was the Lion and Pheasant plot – through the town walls to the Grey Friars and so to the Severn. In the wall there was a door (shut at night), and a ladder which led down to a plank placed across the town ditch. In daytime this right of way had been used for fetching and carrying water, and for bringing clothes to the river for the wash. As well as some observations about the Grey Friars precinct, Weaver also stated that he knew an old wall at the lower end of the bank, on which the town wall was built, below Humphrey Lee’s house (i.e. the ‘Stone House’, on the site of the later Nurses’ Home, beside the Infirmary). This wall, Weaver said, supported the bank and helped to prevent it from collapsing. It thus protected the town wall and the houses which were built upon part of it. Weaver added that part of the walls of St. Mary’s Friary near St. Mary Waterlode had recently collapsed, but that Pope had re-built them a further yard out towards the River Severn. This had made it more difficult for the trowmen to walk between the end of the wall and the river. Thomas Revell thought that the Popes had been obstructing the rights of way through the friaries for upto 30 years. And Thomas Haines (a 60 year-old shearman) stated that a ‘sink’ (drain) had recently been made about six years before through the town wall into St. Mary’s Friars from the dwelling house of Mr. Kynaston – the former deanery of St. Mary’s, roughly on the site of the Infirmary. He also said that there was a great gate and a postern gate leading to the Grey Friars, and that at the end of the lane leading to Under the Wyle (from the Friary, i.e. St. Julian’s Friars) ‘was two vault gates’. He could remember when these two gates were kept with locks and bars, ‘all which said gates are to be seen at this present time, together with the bolt holes and hinges or hooks made and fastened in the outside of the said wall next unto the said Priory.’

Edmund Clarke said that about 16 years before part of the town wall adjoining St. Mary’s Friars had collapsed, and that the borough coroners had then taken away the stone for the town’s use. He confirmed Haines’s statement that a sink hole had been made from Mr. Kinaston’s house into St. Mary’s Friars, through which much filth was got rid of. Alice Bedow, wife of an old Shrewsbury shoemaker, and once a servant of both Pope’s father and grandfather, deposed (inter al.) that she could remember that local inhabitants used to ask permission to bring wine, timber, hay and other goods through the Grey Friars precinct up to Under the Wyle, and it was usually given, though not to those that the Popes ‘did not think well of.’ She added that ‘she herself being their servant hath delivered the keys of the said gates to divers of the said persons that so obtained licence as aforesaid, appointing them where they should leave the said keys when they had done with the same.’ Richard Swayne said that about 48 years ago, being hired by Nicholas Proude to fetch timber from the Severn, he could not go through the great gate of the Grey Friars until Mr. Proude had first borrowed the key.

Borough rentals show that the Popes in fact rented from the corporation the postern leading into ‘freer london’, i.e. the Dominican/St. Mary’s Friary (T.S.A.S. liii. 224, 235). This was not a new grant. The same gate had once been held by the wool merchant Thomas Otley (d. 1485). (SA 3365/480.)

1619. In this year the town attorneys submitted their own complaints to the bailiffs, requesting that the Great Inquest of the curia magna (Great Court) should enquire into and make its own presentments of certain nuisances. They included: (1) that the streeters of Under the Wyle had not presented the obstruction of the right of way through the ‘great and postern gate’ beneath the Wyle leading into the precinct of the old Grey Friars; (2) that the baker John Jeffreys was piling up his broom and gorse on the town’s ground outside the walls near the lower end of Beeches Lane, and was keeping the postern gate locked at his pleasure; (3) that the ancient rights of way across Stury’s Close were now stopped with high rails and a broad ditch. This last complaint, and similar ones about rights of way to the river, had often been made during the 16th century (SA 3365/1198/10).

1621. The Romaldesham (Barker Street) streeters complained that William Rowley, the brewer, had damaged the postern gate at Cripplelode and obstructed the passage-way there (SA 3365/1205).

1621. The Coleham streeters presented ‘the causie [causeway] at the end of Colehm Bridge that many men are stalled with their loading and the neighbours are troubled to heave at their wains very grievously to heave them up’ (SA 3365/1205).

1625. Six new burgesses to be admitted for necessary repairs to the town fabric (T.S.A.S. xi. 175). A similar order for eight new burgesses was made in 1626, for repairs to the walls and bridges (ibid. 176).

c. 1631 (and see next). An assessment on the burgesses was taken to raise money for the repair of the Welsh Bridge (T.S.A.S. xi. 178).

1632-3. The town council agreed to set up a committee who, together with the two coroners, would view the decay of the Welsh Bridge, and to find out from workmen how much it would take to repair. Any costs were to be paid out of the proceeds of an assessment upon the burgesses. (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 202r.) Later in 1633, it was agreed to admit 10 new burgesses whose admission fines would be used to pay for the cost of repairing the bridges, gates and walls. A sum of £100 lately left for charitable purposes was diverted to the same end (ibid. fos. 203-204r).

1633. On September 1633 the Commons agreed that the trowman Richard Davies, on his petition, should be admitted a burgess without paying an entry fine ‘in consideration of his breaking ice at the Stone Bridge on going off of the frost etc., and had offered freely to carry 40 ton of stone to repair the Bridge from Emstrey quarry.’ (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 216v.)

1634. The town council agreed to have a survey taken of the decay of the Stone Bridge, and to consider whether that part of the bridge upon which the houses stood ought to be repaired by the town, given that the borough received no rent from it (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 204r).

1635. The town council agreed to get the advice of the borough recorder whether both non-resident, as well as resident burgesses could be assessed to raise money for the repairs of the town walls etc. Ten burgesses were admitted for that purpose on the same day, 23 March (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire, fo. 205v; T.S.A.S. xi. 179).


2. Towers on the town walls.

By the 16th century towers on the town walls of Shrewsbury were being rented out by the corporation to private individuals. There are a number of references. But note that leases of the towers were not new. Similar grants are recorded for c. 1392 (corner tower near the Austin Friars), c. 1428 (also near the Austin Friars) and c. 1447 (Bodl. Gough Shropshire 3, fo. 88r; 12, fos. 100v, 103v).

In 1545-6 the corporation made a perpetual grant to alderman Thomas Berington of a tower upon the town wall (with a garden in Castle Foregate) for a rent of 1s. 8d. (Bodl. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 99r). This refers to what became known as ‘Berington’s tower’ which lay close to the cistern later erected in c. 1666 beside the town walls near the top of Claremont Hill (SA 53/10; T. Phillips, History and Antiquities of Shrewsbury, 1779, p. 134). It can therefore be identified as the tower demolished to make way for new St. Chad’s in 1793 (N. Baker, Shrewsbury. Archaeological discoveries from a medieval town, 2003, 19). In 1586 Roger Berington was presented for failing to repair this tower which was said to be ruinous and ready to fall (SA 3365/1098). The Berington family had a town house in what is now St. Alkmund’s Square, and their country seat was at Moat Hall, Hanwood. They had long historical links to the town (H.E. Forrest, Some Old Shropshire Houses, 1924, 181-7).

On 19 April 1564 the corporation agreed that William Smythe alias Bo(w)yer, should have a tower upon the walls in Roushill, ‘next’ to the Castle Gate (presumably meaning the one nearest the Castle Gate) for a fee-farm rent of 8d. p.a., reserving its use to the town in time of war (SA 3365/76, fos. 68v, 251r). This must be ‘Garewald’s tower’ which in the 18th century was described as ‘situate about the middle of that flank wall between the lower Castle Gate and the steps at the end of that old wall, and was built on the bank of the ditch without the wall. The remains of it in about the year 1716 was called the shitten tower having a convenience of that kind wherein to go from the wall, which was afterwards made up with stone even with the wall.’ (SA 6001/299, fo. 68v.)

On 4 November 1564 the town council agreed that the draper Richard Onslow could have ‘the great decayed tower in Roushill hard at Severn side’ at 4d. p.a., and that ‘he shall build it accordingly and after to be no worse.’ (SA 3365/76, fos. 73v, 259v). This must be ‘Gilbert’s tower’ at the end of the wall which extended alongside the river, with the Severn on one side, and the Raven and Roushill meadows on the other.

1580, 1610, 1657. The borough rentals of these years record other towers under lease. Note that these did not include the two towers granted in 1564 (above) which appear in a different part of the rental. In 1580 towers were held by William Waring, Thomas Pontesbury, Roger Berington, Richard Dawes, and Robert Ireland senior (T.S.A.S. liii. 223: some of the names may be anachronistic). For his tower ‘Thomas Pontesbury’ paid 2s. p.a., and this helps to identify it as the ‘great tower’ next to the Austin Friars, held by Adam Goldsmith, which was listed in a borough rental of 1464 5 (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 6, fo. 53v). In 1581/2 the towers held by Pontesbury and Dawes were said to be tenanted by John Lewis and Thomas Lewis respectively (SA 3365/518). In 1610 the tenants’ names were given as William Waring, Richard Montgomery gent., Roger Berington, Thomas Lewis gent., and Richard Ireland gent. (T.S.A.S. liii. 234). By 1657 the names of the tenants appear as Richard Waring gent., the stationer Robert Forster, Edward Lewis, clerk, William Berington esq., and Edward Montgomery gent. (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 107r). This rental shows that the Montgomery holding consisted of a 60 year lease originally granted by the corporation in 1590. The Lewis lease had recently expired, but was then renewed for 60 years. Edward Lewis, descended from a family of Shrewsbury merchants, was vicar of Chirbury. Edward Montgomery’s family had once been among the biggest tanners in Shrewsbury, with a town house at Romaldesham Hall at the end of Barker Street, and on the corner of Bridge Street and St. Austin’s Street. Their tower was the one once held by the Irelands, paying 1s. p.a. in 1580. It may therefore be identified as another tower next to the Austin Friars which John Baxter was renting for that amount in 1464-5 (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 6, fo. 53v).

Thus altogether by 1580 seven of the towers on the town wall were under lease from the corporation. ‘Waring’s Tower’, on Town Walls (between the bottom ends of Belmont and Swan Hill), is the only one which still survives. Its location is nicely described in a grant of 1629 (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 102v). On that occasion the corporation granted to Thomas Owen (the town clerk) land of 102 yards in length lying between a buttress on the town wall beside the tower granted to the ancestors of Nicholas Waring overlooking ‘Stury’s Close’, and a buttress beside the postern which gave access from Murivance (Swan Hill) to the river. Stury’s Close lay on the other side of the town wall from Belmont (J.L. Hobbs, Shrewsbury Street Names 1954, 111-12). Most of this ground now belongs to the Shrewsbury High School for girls. Nicholas Waring was a merchant of the Calais wool staple and a member of the Shrewsbury Mercers’ company. He served as town bailiff in 1500-01, and died in 1510, so the Waring’s grant may have dated from as far back as the 15th century (SA 6001/2792, p. 576; 6001/2291, unpag.).

Also leased by the corporation was the blockhouse on the Frankwell side of the Welsh Bridge. Described as the ‘utter gate’ (outer gate) it was held by Roger Luter in 1580 and Thomas Gardner in 1610 (T.S.A.S. liii. 222, 233). By 1657 the sub-tenant was Widow Parker (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 105r). It was eventually pulled down in 1773. Built of white (probably Grinshill) stone it had a room over the gate-way called the guard-room, and in the 18th century was said to be ‘commonly used as a place for soldiers to keep guard in.’ (Bodl. Lib. Blakeway 16, note interleaved at pp. 148-9, citing Pearce MS.)

3. The castle.

c. 1533-43. ‘The castle hath been a strong thing, it is now much in ruin.’ (L. Toulmin Smith ed., The Itinerary of John Leland, 1964, ii. 82).

1565. On 25 January 1565 the Crown leased the castle to Richard Onslow for 31 years (i.e. to 1596) for a rent of 13s. 4d. a year (Cal. Patent Rolls, 1563-6, p. 274). And then, by the new charter of 1586, granted the castle to the borough itself, i.e. the Onslow interest then became tenant to the town. For this grant the borough paid a fee-farm rent of 13s. 4d. which the corporation eventually bought out during the Commonwealth in 1651 (T.S.A.S. iii. 307; Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 3, fo. 88).

Richard Onslow, who obtained a lease of the castle in 1565, was the son of a Shrewsbury mercer. He was the recorder of London, and served as clerk of the council of the Duchy of Lancaster, and then as Solicitor General from 1565 until 1571. He was also speaker of the House of Commons in 1566-7. He died in Shropshire in 1571 on a visit to his uncle Humphrey Onslow, a Shrewsbury alderman. Richard Onslow also bought the ‘Council House’ in 1564, which he, and his son after him, owned until 1596.

J.A. Morris, in his article on the castle (T.S.A.S. xlix. 1937-8, pp. 97-118) did not consider the possibility that the modifications to the Great Hall, including the fine roof, which were made at some time in the late 16th or early 17th centuries, were made by the borough rather than the Onslow family. See the next item.

1590. The town annalist: ‘This year the Council of the Marches of Wales kept Michaelmas term in Shrewsbury which began in the beginning of November by the means of master Justice Shuttleworth, where the seal remained until the week before Christmas because they were uncertain either to go or tarry until they heard from London – to which place the town of Salop sent Mr. Roger Evans to be a suitor to have the Council to remain still for the helping forward the reparation of a ruinous castle there, to be repaired and built hereafter to be a place both to receive the Council as also a convenient place for the prisoners of the shire.’ (T.S.A.S. iii. 319.)

This evidence indicates that the corporation was already thinking of repairing the castle by 1590, although the latest summary of the castle’s history suggests that the hall range was re-roofed and fitted up at some date between 1609 and 1627 for the Council in the Marches (J. Newman, N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England. Shropshire, 2006, 535). However, about the early 17th century the Council in the Marches ended its practice of holding occasional law terms in Shrewsbury, despite a Privy Council order of 1612 instructing it to do so (see ‘Government and politics 1540-1640’ in the concise history of Shrewsbury on this site), and it seems unlikely that after that time the borough would have gone to the expense of re-fitting the castle, and inserting the fine roof in the Great Hall. It is possible that a careful trawl through the surviving borough accounts, and especially the coroners’ vouchers for expenditure, would unearth evidence for the work in question, and provide the date.

1606. The town council ordered an enquiry after stones had been removed from the ruins of St. Michael’s chapel in the castle (T.S.A.S. xi. 166).

1620s. By the 1620s Susan Jones was the town’s tenant of the castle and she complained to the bailiffs at that time of vandalism to the premises. Locks, staples and pales had been knocked off, pigs were rooting about, and young boys were playing football and ‘cat and dog’, and trampling the grass bare. She asked if the town officers could be instructed to tell the boys’ parents to keep them away (SA 3365/2639).

1622. A 99 year lease was made by the corporation to Mr. Borraston (a surgeon) of part of the Castle bank (T.S.A.S. xi. 173). The 1657 borough rental indicates that this lease was renewed in 1631 for 81 years, described as being ‘for the Castle hill next the River Severn’, and it was then in the tenure of Roger Owen esq. (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 102r).

1624. Three town councillors were requested to view an encroachment and the removal of stone at the castle (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 12, fo. 194r).

1628. On 31 March 1628 the corporation leased the castle, with all its grounds, to George Harries for seven years at a rent of £3 0s. 6d. a year. He was to keep it in grass, and to keep the fences in sufficient repair. (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shropshire 3, fo. 86b recto; 12, fo. 214v.) This entry, and that of the 1620s (above), suggests that the inner bailey may have been used at this time for grazing.

In 1663 the corporation surrendered the castle to the King, who then in 1666 granted it to Francis, Lord Newport (T.S.A.S. xi. 186; Bodl. Lib. Blakeway 16, ms. note added by Rev. J.B. Blakeway on p. 140; Raby Castle deeds, 1/39/5). It remained in the hands of the Newport family and its ultimate descendants into the 20th century.

4. Civil War fortifications. (These brief notes are simply meant to add a little to what is already known.)

(i) Frankwell ‘fort’ (notes to indicate its proximity to the site of Cadogan’s chapel).

Hobbs thought that Chapel Street in Frankwell (effectively removed when the Frankwell roundabout was constructed in the 1970s) commemorated the site of the chapel of St. John the Baptist (Shrewsbury Street Names, 1954, p. 28). This is a mistake – St. John’s Chapel lay near the Welsh Bridge (notes on Ancient Chapels for the intended volume by the Victoria County History, Shropshire, on Shrewsbury). Another possibility is that the street took its name from the Chapel Yard which, as Chapell Yards, Chapell Yard Croft, and Chapell Yard, appears (1685-1702) in the deeds of Millington’s Hospital whose grounds abutted the street (SA 2133/142). However, a close examination of the deeds indicates, contrary to the calendar, that the yard itself, although once part of a group of fields some of which came to the hospital, was not itself included in the conveyance. Moreover, in 1773 an observer noted that the Chapel Yard abutted the Bull in the Barn – which was on or near the site of Cadogan’s Chapel – and no doubt represented the yard attached to the chapel (SA 177/1/15). A parallel would be the Chapel Yard beside St. Katherine’s Chapel in Coton. But in that case the yard must have been located at some considerable distance to the west of Chapel Street, and it seems unlikely that the name can be linked to Cadogan’s Chapel. Perhaps more likely Chapel Street records property held by St. John’s Hospital in that quarter. Cadogan’s Chapel itself with its close was sold by the Crown in 1549 (Victoria County History, Shropshire, ii. 130). The Sherer family who, as borough rentals show, owned the site of the chapel by 1686, also owned the Chapel Yard – supporting a connection between the two properties (Bodl. Lib. Gough Shrop 6, fo. 51r; SA 133/142).

The association between the chapel site and the municipal defences dates from the Civil War when a ‘fort’ was erected in 1643 in the vicinity by the royalist Lord Capel to command two of the main roads into Frankwell from the west (R. Gough, The History of Myddle, ed. David Hey, 1981, p. 267; Owen & Blakeway, i. 436; J.L. Hobbs, Shrewsbury Street Names, 1954, p. 19). A petition, addressed to the mayor and probably dating from the 1650s, survives asking for a grant of some void ground ‘within the workes of Frankwell . . . over against the fforte there’ (SA 3365/2640/-). The exact location of the fort has been the subject of some speculation (Salopian Shreds and Patches, 4 Aug. 1880), but the ‘workes’ mentioned in the petition may refer to a defensive ditch, probably dug about 1643, which ran from ‘the windmill bank at the further end of Frankwell over the backsides to the pinfold and so down to Severn field’ (SA 6000/13296).

The windmill was described vaguely in 1609 as being ‘at Shrewsbury town’s end beyond the Welsh Bridge’ (NA Prob 11/115, 12 Wingfield, will of Edmund Barkeley), but in 1616 Wyndymill crofte, in which an old decayed windmill then stood, was said more precisely to lie near Caduggons Crosse on the right hand side of the road to Shelton (NA 6000/1222). The mill’s proximity to the cross is also mentioned in other documents (Owen & Blakeway, ii. 466). From the description it stood on the north side of The Mount, on the escarpment overlooking the River Severn – probably near the row of houses marked on Hitchcock’s 1832 map as Cadogan’s Place – and the defensive ditch of c. 1643 must have started about there. Wyndemyll Hyll, recorded in 1450 (SA 3365/877) may refer to the same location, but the Wyndmylfold mentioned in 1545 (SA 6001/2794, p. 21), also in Frankwell, was located beside the Hanwood road, indicating that in the 15th century there was another windmill operating in the suburb – probably at the top of Porthill. Windmill Field mentioned in a 1662 deed may be another reference to it (SA 6000/18890-1), as more certainly a description in 1657 of a lane which led from the Windmill to the Copthorne Road (Brit. Lib. Add. MSS 30,317, fo. 105v).

Roushill Walls.

In 1642-3 during the Civil War the huge sum of £2,000 was raised by assessment for fortifying Shrewsbury (SA 3365/587). Much of this was evidently spent on extending the line of Roushill walls, running alongside the Severn, to Mardol. Interestingly, even after the town was captured by the parliamentary forces in 1645, the borough still elected to plough ahead and complete the work, as the following entries show, and the new line of walls seems to have been completed about 1651.

1647. In February the town council ‘agreed that the coroners shall go on with the finishing of Roushill walls this summer’. (Bodl. Lib. Blakeway 16, note attached to p. 141).

1649. The Great Inquest presented Jonathan Rowley and Thomas Fawkener (baker) for two mixens near the new wall at Roushill ‘which will be a means to overthrow the wall.’ (SA 3365/1280/5).

1651. In November he town council ‘agreed that a course be taken to finish the new stone work in Roushil this year.’ (Bodl. Lib. Blakeway 16, note attached to p. 141).