The public structures devoted to the service of Religion are among the first objects that excite the attention, whilst by many they are not unfrequently looked upon with peculiar feelings of veneration and regard.
If the source of this feeling were traced, it would be found connected with those principles and associations which every one who acknowledges an all-bountiful Creator, or wishes well to his country, would desire to cherish.
Shrewsbury, we learn, did not receive much improvement from its original inhabitants, the Britons; yet what it lost in nominal consequence as the metropolis of a kingdom it ultimately gained in external splendour and real importance: this is evinced, among other proofs, by the erection of five ecclesiastical foundations, all of which were anterior to the Norman conquest, and originated in Saxon piety.
Among the earliest of these may be mentioned Saint Chad’s, which is ascribed to one of the Mercian kings, who is said to have converted the palace of the kings of Powis into a church, about 780.
A dean and ten prebendaries or secular canons, with two vicars choral, under the patronage of the Bishop of Lichfield, are stated to have been placed here at a very remote period.
Under the Anglo-Saxon monarchs this college possessed twelve hides of arable land, or as much as paid for 1440 acres to what would be now called the land-tax; which, by proper cultivation, appears from the Survey of Domesday to have increased more than double. Other estates were subsequently added, which form now only insulated districts of the parish.
By the act of 1 Edward VI. 1547, the College was dissolved, the tythes and profits at that time being of the clear yearly value of about £50. The buildings and estates were leased out, reserving only the small stipend of £4. 6s. 8d. for the parish minister, charged on the dean’s prebendal estate at Onslow.
Although a lease was granted of the tythes, yet only two years afterwards the greater portion of them were appropriated by Edward VI. in aid of the Free Grammar School.
In 1579 Queen Elizabeth granted the remaining possessions of the deanery to Sir Christopher Hatton; but the corporation and parish seem to have presented to the living from 1583 until 1658–9, from which time the patronage has rested with the crown.
Saint Alkmund’s Church owes its foundation to the piety of Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, soon after she succeeded to the sovereignty of the Mercian territory in 912.