SkyscraperPage Forum - Home town tour

SkyscraperPage Forum (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/index.php)

- My City Photos (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=321)

- - Home town tour - Shrewsbury, UK (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=227683)

Home town tour - Shrewsbury, UK

Nice! Thank you for sharing.

Very lovely. So is the local accent a general Midlands one, or is it closer to the the Black Country with thee's and thou's?

St. Marys is one cool church. In the centre of town. Nice people there too.

The town is at a bit of an accent crossroads really, the 'native' Shropshire accent especially among older people and those from rural areas is I would say the northernmost example of the accents found down in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Bristol area. If you go 15 miles east to Telford you will find many more Black Country type accents, go 20 miles north and you start to hear more influences from northern England while 15 miles east and you will get more Welsh accents, all are quite different from each other.

Speaking of St Mary's church, it's deconsecrated now, mostly used for civic events, fairs, exhibitions etc, it's where the photography exhibition seen in the previous photos was located. It does have some beautiful stained glass, much of it came from Frankfurt in the 17th century, I took some pics inside though it's difficult to capture the glass, especially on my phone camera!

https://s9.postimg.org/5fs79gf73/WP_..._52_Rich_2.jpg

https://s9.postimg.org/qdyd7jf1r/WP_..._45_Rich_2.jpg

https://s9.postimg.org/xv7kmr4kv/WP_..._05_Rich_2.jpg

https://s9.postimg.org/xjq49zo4v/WP_..._52_Rich_2.jpg

https://s9.postimg.org/9u0olaprj/WP_..._28_Rich_2.jpg

"the abbott's house, circa 1450"...................*shakes hands in frustration*....fine shrewsbury, you win! alas, north america will always lose the history battle. looks great.

Beautiful part of the country, I've been many times as had family that originated from there. A very friendly town from my experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdxtex (Post 7760158)

"the abbott's house, circa 1450"...................*shakes hands in frustration*....fine shrewsbury, you win! alas, north america will always lose the history battle. looks great.

nah we do alright - have a beautiful serpents mound from 1000bc:
:tup:

http://blitzlift.com/built-great-serpent-mound/

and some pyramids 100bc-250ad:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan

Nice tour. Did Shrewsbury largely escape some of the urban renewal mistakes one sees in Birmingham? It's much quainter and intact than I expected.

Thanks for the comments guys. :)

Hi there Isaidso! Yes, two completely different situations there really, Shrewsbury is much older than Birmingham which exploded in population following the industrial revolution and is now waaay bigger than Shrewsbury.

Only one bomb fell on the town here during WWII, and that was an afterthought by a pilot dumping the rest of his payload on returning to Germany after a raid on Liverpool. Being a small town without a lot of key war industry Shrewsbury was not a priority target. That meant there wasn't much rebuilding to do in the 1950s and 60s when most of those mistakes were made in cities like Birmingham.

A quick peek inside the ground floor of the town museum, including the live global population clock in the courtyard. I didn't pay the entry fee to go into the main exhibits but part of the interior is a 14th century merchants house that was gradually built on top of over the following few centuries but has now seen its interior partially revealed again when the museum was created from the 19th century former theatre building a few years ago.

https://s10.postimg.org/jmz50dmi1/WP..._50_Rich_2.jpg

https://s10.postimg.org/8onvi6xwp/WP..._11_Rich_2.jpg

https://s10.postimg.org/5j39rzfah/WP..._59_Rich_2.jpg

https://s10.postimg.org/l5uj5ct2h/WP..._17_Rich_2.jpg

Looks so quaint and comfortable. Love it, thanks.

Nice set! Just curious what kind of industry or what do the towns folk do for a living? Is it all tourism based?

It's not tourism based as such, the town is a regional centre for retail etc with people coming from nearby towns and cities for day trips to spend their money and there are people coming from further afield in the UK for weekend breaks etc and a programme of various festivals and events through the summer months to attract those weekend visitors. In terms of international tourists there is a steady trickle of folks passing through the town for a day or two while touring the UK and in the summer you get groups of French and Spanish schoolkids coming on educational trips but nothing major.

The economy is largely service based, there are the usual professional things you get everywhere like healthcare, education (a new university was founded a couple of years ago but it's very small at the moment, and there is a very expensive private school which attracts students from all around the world), lawyers, real estate etc. The town has never had any heavy industry like steelworks, mines and so on but there is a tradition of light engineering/machine tools type stuff. Caterpillar has a remanufacturing plant here, I think their business includes servicing and rebuilding tank engines for the Swedish military.

http://www.caterpillar.com/en/compan...facturing.html

then there are a couple of automotive component plants and there's a plant of Doncasters Airmotive which services and repairs aerospace components.

http://www.doncasters.com/manufactur...ers-airmotive/

Plus various small manufacturing and service industry businesses and some people also commute out to other towns and cities or have jobs that are partially home-based and partially out on the road around the country. And also the local government for the county is mostly based here so that's another chunk of the workforce.

Unemployment is low, well under the national average, but because of the lack of big companies in high-pay sectors like finance average salaries are also a bit below the national average. But then the cost of living, especially housing, is also a lot cheaper than areas with higher salaries like London and SE England to make up for that.