Railing against lost Shrewsbury heritage
Get ready to say goodbye to some of Shrewsbury's heritage. Because Barry Coupland has got in touch to identify what was behind these railings in the town in this 1950s picture.
We had carried it in Pictures From The Past the other day, showing Dorothy Dales standing by the railings round the structure in Victoria Avenue, by the River Severn leading to the Quarry.
"Those railings were around the foundations of an old Norman tower that was built on the riverside as part of the fortifications around Shrewsbury," Mr Coupland, of Heath Farm, Shrewsbury, tells us.
"It was similar to the tower that still stands on Town Walls. The wall behind it used to have a plaque on it explaining what it was all about.
"I don't know when that was all removed. It's now all part of Victoria Avenue where cars park on it. I don't know whether the plaque is still there.
"The wall at the back of it is the wall of the playground of the old Priory School for Boys, which I used to go to. I left the Priory School in 1949 at the age of 16."
As to when these foundations disappeared, he does at least have a timespan to bookend potential dates.
"I left Shrewsbury in 1949 and didn't return until 1973 by which time it had disappeared. I went down there to park a car and suddenly realised that the railings and everything had gone and it was now part of Victoria Avenue which they use for parking.
"There was a period in Shrewsbury's history in about the 1960s when they had no regard for history at all and knocked places down all over the place."
