The Victoria History of Shropshire
The Victoria History of Shropshire

Author: Judith Everard

Publisher: University of London Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781912702084

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Wem lies on the North Shropshire Plain, about nine miles north of Shrewsbury. The centre of a much larger medieval manor and parish, the township consists of the small medieval market town and its immediate rural hinterland. Anglo-Saxon in origin, the town developed after the Norman Conquest, with a castle, parish church, market and water mill. The urban area of the township, 'within the bars', was distinguished from the rural, 'without the bars'. Burgages were laid out, with a customary borough-hold tenure, but the borough never attained corporate status. Isolated from the main regional transport routes, Wem developed as a centre of local government and trade in agricultural produce, especially cheese. It was thrust onto the national stage in 1642 when Parliamentarians defeated a Royalist attack and held the town for the duration of the Civil War. The 'great fire' of 1677 then destroyed many of the existing buildings in the town centre, leading to its predominantly Georgian and Victorian appearance today. The decline in agricultural employment and the withdrawal of services and industries from small market towns like Wem in recent decades is a challenge, met by the advantage of the railway station to residents who work elsewhere but choose the town as a place to live. Wem is the first 'Short' history to be produced by the Victoria County History of Shropshire. It is intended to establish a model for the histories of other market towns in Shropshire. This book tells the story of the town, its people and institutions: the built environment, landownership, economy, social and religious life and local government. It reveals for the first time that Wem was a planted medieval castle-town, and presents the evolution of its urban topography. It offers detailed accounts of the town's medical profession and health care, trades and industries, and retailing, where Wem's weekly produce market is enjoying a 21st-century revival.

Shropshire
Shropshire

Author: J. A. B. Somerset

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 9780802006486

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The Records of Early English Drama volumes make available historical transcripts that provide evidence of early English drama, music, ceremonial, dance, and other forms of communal public entertainment in Britain before 1642, together with the necessary interpretive introductions and notes to explicate the materials for the reader. Shropshire, in two volumes, is the eleventh publication in the series. In the introduction Alan Somerset surveys the social and economic history of each major borough and provides a commentary on the major issues raised in the documents. He discusses travelling performers routes, the places they performed, and the remarkable public exhibitions of high-wire artists, camels, bears, and giants. The records for this county are rich and varied, providing new detail about local playing and festivities. From Shrewsbury for example, comes the complete documentation of a unique, semi-circular outdoor amphitheatre. The documents reveal much - from robbery and riots - to the sometimes acrimonious disputes that show the growing Puritan opposition to sports, which attempted to combat an equally stubborn affection for traditional customs. These records are an invaluable addition to the scholarship of early drama, establishing as they do part of the total context of the great drama of Shakespeare, his predecessors, and his contemporaries.

The Medieval March of Wales
The Medieval March of Wales

Author: Max Lieberman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-01-28

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1139486896

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This book examines the making of the March of Wales and the crucial role its lords played in the politics of medieval Britain between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and the English conquest of Wales in 1283. Max Lieberman argues that the Welsh borders of Shropshire, which were first, from c.1165, referred to as Marchia Wallie, provide a paradigm for the creation of the March. He reassesses the role of William the Conqueror's tenurial settlement in the making of the March and sheds new light on the ways in which seigneurial administrations worked in a cross-cultural context. Finally, he explains why, from c.1300, the March of Wales included the conquest territories in south Wales as well as the highly autonomous border lordships. This book makes a significant and original contribution to frontier studies, investigating both the creation and the changing perception of a medieval borderland.

The Morville Hours
The Morville Hours

Author: Katherine Swift

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0802779808

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Nobody writes about the garden like the English. And few in England have ever been as eloquent or astute as Katherine Swift. Some twenty years ago, she and her husband leased a house in the town of Morville, in Shropshire, whose garden became her passion. Driven to uncover its history, she takes readers on a journey through time, back to the forces that shaped the garden, linking the stories of those who lived in the house and tended the same red soil with her family's own. Spanning thousands of years, The Morville Hours is also deeply personal, a journey through the seasons, but also one of self-exploration, of finding one's place in the world and putting down roots. The Morville Hours takes the form of the medieval Books of Hours, recalling the monastic past of the house. Each chapter is named after one of the Hours of the Divine Office, and summons vividly to life an hour of the day or night--from the crunch of grass underfoot at midnight on a frosty New Year's Eve to a perfumed May Day morning when the whole world seems sixteen again; from the enervating heat of a midsummer noon to the bloom of blue-black damsons picked on a golden September afternoon. Together, they describe the arc of the gardening year, and the arc of life.