The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 08/06/25
Down By The Riverside (Now With Update!)
My recovery now being as complete as it is ever going to be, and summer having arrived (this may be vouchsafed by the amount of rain we've been getting), I determined to make the most of my new-found mobility to go on those days out which I had promised myself during the times of struggle.
Since getting my bus pass in June 2022, my attempts to make the maximum use of it during the summer had been stymied, not merely by my health (or lack thereof) but by other events. In July 2022, my brother died; the next year, my work on Volume One over-ran into mid-July, after which it pissed down for six weeks; and last year I was simply in no state to travel.
As I mentioned here, I had drawn up an itinerary for this year which involved visits to no fewer than seven towns and cities within easy reach. Last Monday was the time for my first ramble, and the destination was not merely a day out, but also a sort of pilgrimage or nostalgia trip in the literal sense.
I had been to Shrewsbury a number of times when I was a boy because my brother married a girl from that town and moved there. About half a dozen times a year between 1966 and 1973, I and my parents would pay them a visit. These were little adventures for yer Judge between the ages of four and eleven, and I got quite familiar with certain parts of the place. But - although I had passed through Shrewsbury on a number of occasions since (travelling to and from Uni or, latterly, going to Depratmental team meetings in Telford or Birmingham) - I had not actually been in the town since a dark evening in December 1973 when my brother (by this time single again) moved back in with us. It therefore seemed appropriate to make it my first stop.
Ironically enough - in the light of what I said earlier - the bus pass was going to be of minimal use for this jaunt; merely a way of getting from home to the station and back, the rest having to be paid for like any other non-freeloading member of the population. But the train ticket would be just £15.20 - about the same amount that it costs me to go to Broad Green - and one has to splash out occasionally, does one not?
So it was that at a quarter to nine last Monday morning I - with my bag containing the cheese and red onion sandwich I'd bought from Sainsbury's the previous Saturday, a bag of Seabrook's cheese and onion crisps and a bottle of water - caught the 14 bus into town. As neither of the bus routes from here go particularly near Wrexham General station anymore (a sign of what one might call 'disintegrated transport'), I had to get off at the top of Bradley Road and walk the hundred yards or so to the station.
Ticket bought, I waited. Bang on time, the train from Holyhead to Birmingham Central pulled in and I got on. Unfortunately, I went into a carriage with no forward-facing double seats which weren't across a table, so was doomed to take the whole journey backwards. Not that this was any particular problem; I've never suffered from travel sickness.
I've often said that the train is the most civilised way to travel, and it was very pleasant to just sit there and let the driver take me at up to seventy miles an hour through the familiar locations; Ruabon, then over the viaduct which gave a clear view of the world-famous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, on to Chirk, Gobowen and then the long uninterrupted stretch to Shrewsbury (all intermediate stations having been closed in 1960 or before).
The train then slowed as we passed the long-remembered Coton Hill signal box, which once served as the point I would say, "Are we there yet?" (now converted into a somewhat bizarre-looking private residence) and pulled in to Shrewsbury station. Down the stairs from Platform 4 I went, and out onto the taxi rank in front of the building.
I stood there for a moment, and had a feeling of deep familiarity with my surroundings, although over half a century had passed since I had last actually seen them. I walked over to the bottom of Castle Gates and looked up the hill. There was the old ABC cinema, now a bingo hall, otherwise much as I had remembered it.
I had brought my old camera with me, as I didn't want to rely on the camera on my phone, if only because the tremble in my right hand often means that any pictures taken with that tend towards the blurred. What this meant in practice was that I took one photograph with each, so there was a certain amount of prestidigitaion involved in switching between them.
I took a shot (all right, two shots) of the adjacent castle which loomed over the taxi rank, and then looking up the slope, after which I set off in a leisurely stylee up towards Castle Street.
My first thought was about how stylish, how full of character the place was. The guardians of the town had taken their duty to its heritage very seriously and had preserved the architectural integrity of the place. Utterly unlike Wrexham, where generations of councillors and officers have trashed the town centre and created concrete oases of barren consumerism scattered around the inner suburbs.
The grand building which now houses the town's library (previously a school dating back to the seventeenth century) dominated the top of the hill, and that was duly snapped. Having reached the top of Castle Street, I turned left onto St. Mary's Street and walked along the highest part of the town centre.
As I had all day, and - apart from one definite target which I will come to later - I took the time to dodge down a side street to look at the spire of St. Alkmund's church, before re-tracing my steps back to the main road. I continued along Dogpole (which is one of the most amusing street names I've come cross; my automatic response is to call it 'Dogpile', which would be a far more appropriate name for the road I live on, peppered as it is with the exudations of incontinent mutts), and down the slope to Wyle Cop.
I had forgotten just how steep that street is, and was glad that my intended route meant that I wouldn't have to walk back up it.
Way back in the when, we would follow this same route (ecclesiastical detour excepted) from the station to my brother's house, but here I diverged from it. Rather than pass through St. Julian's Friars and over Greyfriars bridge, I carried on to the bottom of Wyle Cop, where I crossed the English Bridge and sat myself down for a few minutes on the low wall outside one of the buildings of Shrewsbury College.
My main target was close at hand, but instead I walked the short distance to the Abbey, where the depradations of Henry the Sexually Incontinent may still be seen. Behind what remains stands a memorial to the poet Wilfred Owen. I had a degree of difficulty finding it, because it didn't stand out. Having located it, I wished that I hadn't. Rather than anything which might be called 'dignified', it is little more than a low-lying concrete sculpture which looks more like something one would find corralling the trolleys in a supermarket car park. I took a photo of it in any case, if only to capture the full outrage of it.
Returning under the railway bridge to the junction of Coleham Head, I turned left by the United Reformed Church and headed for Longden Coleham, passing over Rea Brook just before it merges with the Severn, and admiring the handsome houses along the way.
This was the act of nostalgia to which I referred earlier. For Longden Coleham was the location of the house my brother and his first wife lived in. Number 15, in fact.
Let me tell you about the house. It was in a terrace which probably dated from the late nineteenth century. It fronted on to the pavement, and one entered up two stone steps. Once through the door, one was immediately in the living room (no faffing about with halls or vestibules here). The room - like the house itself - was scarcely fifteen feet wide. Off the rear right of the living room was a passage which led to the kitchen, which was ranged across the back of the premises. The lav was in the back garden, reached by crossing a narrow drainage channel (over which the landlady - or a previous tenant - had placed what looked like a thick slate slab in order to obviate the need to either leap or wade). Returning to the living room, there was a door - rather like a yard door - set in the rear wall. Opening this and mounting the two wooden stairs which stuck out into the room revealed the staircase. This went up to the back of the house at first, and at that point there was a tiny bedroom to the left; 'tiny' in that one could scarcely fit a single bed and a bedside cabinet in it. The stairs then doubled back and up to the first floor proper, where stood the main bedroom. This - being the same dimensions as the living room - was big enough (barely) to contain a double bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. It was in this room that my brother and wife were marooned for a couple of days as a result of the flooding which plagued (and still troubles) the area, the house being scarcely eighty yards from the river. Not very long after that, they moved to a bigger house on the Belle Vue estate about a mile to the south west.
It is a measure of how great an impression that little house made on me at such an age that I can see it and describe it with such clarity more than half a century on.
The terrace at Longden Coleham was demolished in about 1970 and replaced by a row of grey-bricked properties which are raised up somewhat from street level, presumably to reduce the danger of inundation. Walking past them on this occasion, I was struck by doubt. There were two sets of such rows there now, and I couldn't figure out which one was on the site of the old terrace. I thought that it couldn't be the first one, because it seemed to be too near the main junction, but the second one didn't appear to be in the right place either. It was the second one I took snaps of (and found, having consulted maps when I got home, that I had indeed photographed the wrong row).
I stood there for some minutes, pondering on the nature of time and its passing - as I am frequently wont to do - and particularly on the actuarial fact that the number of people who could remember that row of tiny abodes even being there was diminishing by the year, and that all that would be left after the last of us has gone will be old photographs, lifeless snapshots (in the literal and figurative sense) of what once was and is no more.
Shaking myself, I made for the alleyway which leads to Greyfriars Bridge. This was the way we used to come when visiting, so I had crossed it a number of times. At this point, I realised that my memory had played me false; I had somehow remembered it as a suspension bridge, but I was reminded now that it was actually a wrought iron truss bridge. I think that I had it mixed up in my mind with the Queen's Park bridge in Chester.
Crossing the bridge on this date was something which, for a while, looked like being impossible, as the Town Council had earlier decreed that the bridge was going to be closed for several weeks for refurbishment. However, faced with fury from the commercial and general populace at the lack of consultation before the announcement was made, the burghers decided to lay off it until next year. So cross it I did, then turned down the steps to the path which runs alongside the river, heading for my next intended destination.
The weather was good - warm without being too warm - and I had a very pleasant stroll along the bank, seeing the swans and ducks floating about on the rather murky water and watching the sightseeing boat chug calmly by (a reminder that dear old Sabrina is as much a boon to the place as it can be a curse upon it). On my right was a tennis club from which the clunks of racket on ball were audible. There were a sizeable number of citizens walking their pooches, along with the inevitable joggers and pushbike-wallahs.
I hadn't quite realised how far it was from Greyfriars Bridge to my next stop - the somewhat unattractively-named Quarry - where I intended to have lunch, and I found myself wondering as I passed under Kingsland bridge whether someone was moving it further away as I approached. Finally, however, I passed the statue of Hercules (whose fig-leaf seemed slightly inadequate for its task), and headed for a bench in the shade of a large hedge. It was getting on for one o'clock by this time. A few yards in front of me on the grass was a couple and their three children - boys of about nine and six and a girl of about three in a pushchair. I watched the boys tumbling and racing about while I stuffed my face. When it was time for them to go, the elder boy was detailed off to put the litter in the bin next to where I was sitting. Unprompted, he said hello to me and asked me how I was (I must have been looking particularly harmless at this point), I replied that I was very well, thank you, and I found myself hoping that good things happen for someone so well-mannered and so self-confident at such a young age.
All the time I was sitting there, I could hear splashing from the other side of the hedge. Getting up to leave, I realised that I was by the Dingle, with its ornamental lake. I went through the gate and marvelled at what I could see; not merely the lake but some beautifully laid out flower beds, one of which was being attended to by one of the Council's employees. To think that I could have eaten my lunch whilst revelling in such a scene had I gone a few yards further.
But time was getting on, and I needed to find my way back to the town centre. I found my way back up to by the impressive St. Chad's church, then turned right and then left on to St. John's Hill. Not for the first time that day, I found myself marvelling at all the small shops in all the old buildings, a reminder of how nearly all towns were well into my own lifetime, something which disappeared from Wrexham a generation or more ago thanks to the stupidity and cupidity of a long, baleful sequence of councillors and council officers, dunderheads all.
Eventually, I reached the Market Hall, reputed to be one of the most popular of such venues in the whole of the sacred realm. I remembered being here before, and my first ever experience of riding in a lift, a slightly discombobulating experience at the age of about five or six. I didn't avail myself of the elevator this time, instead lummoxing my way up three flights of stairs to the lower trading floor...
...to find that, whilst the hall itself was open, all the stalls were closed, and the only activity was of one or two people doing some light dusting. This, as I discovered upon getting home, was because the market doesn't open on Mondays.
More than a little disappointed, I returned to the street and continued up Pride Hill to the Darwin Centre. This is, of course, another shopping mall, tastefully done but I wonder what old Charlie would make of it. There was a fancy chocolate shop by the entrance, and I did dawdle before it for a few minutes in a state of temptation, but finally thought better of it with the realisation that whatever I might purchase there would have melted by the time I got home. Most of the 'units' were for chain stores of one species or another (I was surprised to find that HMV still had actual, y'know, shops), and I wandered around for a while before finally finding my way back out onto the street, where I eventually reached the top of Castle Street again and made my way down the hill to the station.
I knew that I needed platform 3 for my return journey, but I thought that I could get to it via the main entrance, and thereby ignored the signage on the southern end of the building. I then discovered that I did indeed have to go back outside and go in through the doors marked 'Platform 3'. It was then up another flight of steps and onto the platform. The train from Brum duly turned up on time, and I had a pleasant and swift passage back, eventually getting home shortly before 1700 hours.
All in all, a fine day out and one I hope to repeat before the year's end (but not on a Monday; or indeed a Thursday, because not all of the stalls in the Market Hall open on that day either). Shrewsbury is a very fine town, and I only scratched the patina'd surface of its charms this time. Next time, I will be more of a tourist and sample the museums and suchlike attractions.
A good start to my wanderings. Now, where next...?
Update (10/06/25): I've now received a couple of old photos of Longden Coleham from Shroppie, who runs the Memories of Shropshire site, which confirm that I indeed did photograph the wrong row of houses. Oh well, that's for next time.
