About Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury is Special
It really is!
Shrewsbury has the unique quality of combining an outstanding historical heritage with a vibrant, contemporary, and stylish vibe you would struggle to find anywhere else outside of London!
Do not just take our word for it, Shrewsbury has become a magnet for whose in the know!
It just has so much to offer, visitors from far and wide have now made it and very happily call it home.
It has the elegant grandeur of a time long since forgotten yet, it has a very advanced sense of exciting adventure and a haven for original innovation.
Shrewsbury has over 600 listed buildings, more independent shops than anywhere else in the UK, Britain’s most loved indoor market, a delicious array of extremely fashionable bars and restaurants and a constantly expanding choice of coffee shops to add to our already well-established Café culture.
You will be hard pressed not to find a tucked away retreat off the beaten track or somewhere right in the middle of the action, serving the best fayre with the added attraction of exceptionally spectacular surroundings and great company.
It really is!
Shrewsbury has the unique quality of combining an outstanding historical heritage with a vibrant, contemporary, and stylish vibe you would struggle to find anywhere else outside of London!
Do not just take our word for it, Shrewsbury has become a magnet for whose in the know!
It just has so much to offer, visitors from far and wide have now made it and very happily call it home.
It has the elegant grandeur of a time long since forgotten yet, it has a very advanced sense of exciting adventure and a haven for original innovation.
Shrewsbury has over 600 listed buildings, more independent shops than anywhere else in the UK, Britain’s most loved indoor market, a delicious array of extremely fashionable bars and restaurants and a constantly expanding choice of coffee shops to add to our already well-established Café culture.
You will be hard pressed not to find a tucked away retreat off the beaten track or somewhere right in the middle of the action, serving the best fayre with the added attraction of exceptionally spectacular surroundings and great company.
A little bitesize biography of some of Shrewsbury most famous figures!
CHARLES DARWIN
Shrewsbury is the birthplace of Charles Darwin, the renowned father of evolution. His most famous published work ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)’ is still considered central to the modern evolutionary theory.
He was born in 1809 at Mount House, Shrewsbury and attended school here at what is now Shrewsbury Library.
Shrewsbury Library is housed in a Grade I listed building situated on Castle Gates opposite Shrewsbury Castle.
Darwin also fished for newts in the Dingle and studied rocks in the towns Quarry Park.
Literature is synonymous with Shropshire and it has many connections to some of the best writers, poets and wordsmiths.
CHARLES DICKENS
Shrewsbury, has a number of connections with the Victorian writer Charles Dickens, he visited the town on a number of occasions.
Most prominently, Shrewsbury was undoubtedly on his mind when he came to write A Tale of Two Cities. He stayed at The Lion hotel, which is a very short walk from Wesley House. He wrote to his sisters from here, "...we have the strangest little rooms, the ceilings of which I can touch with my hand..." His room at the hotel can still be visited today.
It is also alleged that the nearby town of Newport was home to a woman called Elizabeth Parker who became a recluse after being stood-up on her wedding day. It is claimed that this was the inspiration for Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.
In 2022 Shrewsbury became the location for the filming for a new BBC TV series of Great Expectations. Starring Olivia Colman of The Crown, produced by actor Tom Hardy, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and veteran director Ridley Scott.
The Dickens connection also received a boost in 1984 when a film of A Christmas Carol was shot in Shrewsbury starring George C Scott. The grave of Ebenezer Scrooge can be found still in the grounds of St Chads Church.
WILFRED OWEN
One of the greatest World War One poets, Wilfred Owen lived in Shrewsbury on Monkmoor Road and was educated at Shrewsbury
Technical School.
He wrote many of his early works in this house, and the landscape of the area where he grew up in Shrewsbury appeared in the verses, he wrote in the trenches of wartime France.
Owen is an iconic and important literary figure, and Shrewsbury is the place where he began to find his own unique poetic voice.
MARY WEBB
Mary Gladys Webb was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger based on the novel of the same title. A statue of Mary can be found in the grounds of Shrewsbury library.
Shrewsbury is the birthplace of Charles Darwin, the renowned father of evolution. His most famous published work ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)’ is still considered central to the modern evolutionary theory.
He was born in 1809 at Mount House, Shrewsbury and attended school here at what is now Shrewsbury Library.
Shrewsbury Library is housed in a Grade I listed building situated on Castle Gates opposite Shrewsbury Castle.
Darwin also fished for newts in the Dingle and studied rocks in the towns Quarry Park.
Literature is synonymous with Shropshire and it has many connections to some of the best writers, poets and wordsmiths.
CHARLES DICKENS
Shrewsbury, has a number of connections with the Victorian writer Charles Dickens, he visited the town on a number of occasions.
Most prominently, Shrewsbury was undoubtedly on his mind when he came to write A Tale of Two Cities. He stayed at The Lion hotel, which is a very short walk from Wesley House. He wrote to his sisters from here, "...we have the strangest little rooms, the ceilings of which I can touch with my hand..." His room at the hotel can still be visited today.
It is also alleged that the nearby town of Newport was home to a woman called Elizabeth Parker who became a recluse after being stood-up on her wedding day. It is claimed that this was the inspiration for Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.
In 2022 Shrewsbury became the location for the filming for a new BBC TV series of Great Expectations. Starring Olivia Colman of The Crown, produced by actor Tom Hardy, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and veteran director Ridley Scott.
The Dickens connection also received a boost in 1984 when a film of A Christmas Carol was shot in Shrewsbury starring George C Scott. The grave of Ebenezer Scrooge can be found still in the grounds of St Chads Church.
WILFRED OWEN
One of the greatest World War One poets, Wilfred Owen lived in Shrewsbury on Monkmoor Road and was educated at Shrewsbury
Technical School.
He wrote many of his early works in this house, and the landscape of the area where he grew up in Shrewsbury appeared in the verses, he wrote in the trenches of wartime France.
Owen is an iconic and important literary figure, and Shrewsbury is the place where he began to find his own unique poetic voice.
MARY WEBB
Mary Gladys Webb was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her novels have been successfully dramatized, most notably the film Gone to Earth in 1950 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger based on the novel of the same title. A statue of Mary can be found in the grounds of Shrewsbury library.