The only existing portion of the old church is the slender square tower at the west end. The basement is of red stone, and has on its eastern side a remarkably acute and lofty arch opening to the nave. From this rises a superstructure of grey stone in the style of the 16th century; the upper chamber of which is lighted on every side by a broad short pointed mullioned window. Above is a frieze of quatrefoil pannels, with grotesque water-spouts projecting from the angles. An embattled parapet, enriched with eight crocketed pinnacles, crowns the summit. In the tower are six bells.
On the exterior of the south wall of the tower is a sculptured stone from the old church, representing St. Juliana within a foliated tabernacle.
The south side of the church was, in 1846, stuccoed over, stone pillars inserted between the windows, and surmounted with a cornice and stone parapet.
The church-yard next the street was also enclosed by a pierced parapet stone wall, and the entire structure substantially repaired at the expense partly of the parish and of the late Rev. R. Scott.
The edifice contains only one monument of any antiquity; a coarse marble slab, inscribed in Longo-bardic capitals, to a member of the family of Trumwin, of Cannock, in Staffordshire.
The modern memorials most worthy of remark, as recording men “useful in their generation,” are those to Mr. John Allatt, the beneficent founder of Allatt’s School; Mr. Robert Lawrence, the public-spirited coach proprietor, to whose exertions we owe the great Holyhead Road, and the establishment of the first mail coach to this town;—and to the elegant-minded Hugh Owen, Archdeacon of Salop, one of the learned authors of the “History of Shrewsbury.”
We now reach
THE TOP OF THE WYLE,
the upper part of the street now called “The Wyle Cop,” which is believed to have been the part first inhabited by the Britons, and was in the immediate vicinity of their Prince’s palace, which occupied the site of Old St. Chad’s church. After the Saxon invasion the town gradually increased towards the north, as is evident from the situation of the churches of St. Alkmund and St. Mary, the former founded in the beginning, and the latter at the end of the 10th century.
On the right-hand side of the Wyle Cop, three doors below the Lion Hotel, is an