Phil Gillam: 'Back-to-front' Shrewsbury pub faces uncertain future

Well, I will happily confess to being an incurable romantic.

Like Jude Law's character in the film, The Holiday, I cry easily.

And I never fail to get a lump in my throat each time I watch adorable little Zuzu, in It's A Wonderful Life, tell her daddy: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings".

Regular readers will know that I also have tremendous affection for old buildings.

Which is where the dilapidated Castle Inn in Coleham comes in. It's one of a surprisingly small number of Shrewsbury pubs that has closed in recent years.

I say "surprisingly small number" because – nationally – we've seen pubs closing at a rate of 29 a week. Britain boasted 69,000 watering holes in 1980, but this number was down to 50,000 in 2015.

Now, hang on a minute.

Two things:

One: I am not so unrealistic as to think every old building must be saved just by virtue of the fact that it's old. That would be silly.

Two: If a business becomes unviable and shuts down, and that business (in the case of a pub, for instance) was housed in a building unfit for any other purpose, there may well be compelling reasons to just clear the site and build something useful instead.

But surely each case needs to be considered on its individual merits.

So let's just have a think about The Castle Inn.

It's been closed for seven years now, and it is being dubbed "an eyesore" by the planning agents working on behalf of developers keen to build apartments on the site.

But The Castle Inn has a story of which most people will be unaware.

Yes, it's a very sad-looking place these days: abandoned and unloved. But it is of historic significance and I believe an argument could be made for its preservation.

You see, as you head towards Belle Vue from the English Bridge, the roads to Meole Brace and Longden have always separated outside the Seven Stars (thankfully a still-thriving pub to this day), but the Meole Brace road followed the course of Old Coleham until 1826 when the turnpike trustees built a straighter line – Moreton Crescent.

About 40 small cottages lined Old Coleham in the 1830s, and there were more than 50 by the 1860s, but all have since been swept away.

Now then. The landmark that makes sense of a much-changed landscape (explains historian Barrie Trinder) is The Castle pub, previously the Windsor Castle and the Bull and Pump, which faces the old road; hence it is the back-to-front pub. The back of the building faces the 'modern' main road: Belle Vue Road.

The inn adjoined a mansion, once called Gibraltar, that was rebuilt and named Moreton Villa by William Hazledine, about the time that the new road was built.

The grounds of this villa occupied the whole southern end of the 'island' between the old and new roads.

The Castle Inn (the back-to-front pub) is the only remaining building that signposts all this history.

Just one thought. Go ahead and redevelop the site, but could not some of the existing fabric of the old pub be incorporated into the new development so we get the best of both worlds?