Memorials of Shrewsbury / being a concise description of the town and its environs, adapted as a general guide for the information of visitors and residents

by Henry Pidgeon

THE VILLAGE OF ALBRIGHTON,

distant three miles N.E. of the town on the Chester road, is a township in the parish of St. Mary, Shrewsbury. The church, a small humble structure, has been so effectually repaired by the modern goths with red stone and brick, that no reasonable conjecture can now be formed as to the period of its erection. A wooden loft issues from the west end, and inside the building is a curious ancient font, that will admit of total immersion, which has no doubt stood here for several centuries.

The fine old mansion near the church was formerly the residence of the ancient family of Ireland, who purchased this manor [215] on the dissolution of Shrewsbury Abbey.

A bridle road across a field leads to Albright Hussey and Battlefield. The former was the moated mansion of the Husseys, Barkers, and Corbets, but is now converted into a farm house. Here was a chapel, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, as appears by the grant of the land on which Battlefield church stands from Henry IV. to Roger Ive, of Leaton, who is there described as rector of the chapel of St. John the Baptist at Albright Hussey, and which chapel was by the said grant for ever annexed to the collegiate church of Battlefield; and Richard Hussey and his heirs were to be perpetual patrons of the same. The only vestige of the chapel is an old arch in a barn called the “chapel barn.”