A guide, descriptive and historical, through the Town of Shrewsbury

by W. A. Leighton

a spacious and commodious brick building, erected in 1804, and subsequently enlarged and decorated in a handsome style.

Besides these, there are meeting-houses for the Calvinistic Methodists, and Sandemanians, or Scotch Baptists, in Hill’s Lane;—for the Baptists and Independents, in Doglane and Castle Forgate; and for the Unitarians, in High Street.

At the bottom of St. John’s Hill is

THE THEATRE,

the fine and lofty stuccoed front of which has a bold and imposing effect, and constitutes the principal ornament of the street. The central part comprises a range of excellent shops; at each end of which is a comfortable dwelling-house, with entrance doors to the Theatre. The interior is handsomely decorated, and adapted for the comfortable accommodation of a numerous audience. The scenery, properties, and other ornaments, are entirely new, and in a superior style.

The remains of an embattled stone mansion, called Charlton Hall, the residence of the ancient family of Charlton, Lords of Powis, previously occupied the site of the Theatre.

Opposite to the Theatre, in Barker Street, is

THE BELL STONE,

a red stone structure, surrounding three sides of a small quadrangle, erected in 1582, by Edward Owen, alderman and draper of Shrewsbury, but lately modernized, and completely re-cast, and now occupied as the banking-house of a Branch of the National Provincial Bank of England. The mansion derives its name of the Bell or Bente Stone, from a large block of Chert or Hornstone, which originally lay in the street, at the north angle of the outer wall, and which is still preserved in the court, whither it was removed during the late alterations. The derivation of the name and its connexion with the Stone have hitherto baffled the ingenuity and researches of antiquaries.

Passing onwards through Shoplatch, we have on our right a mass of red stone buildings, communicating with the street by a passage,—which conjecture has assigned, either as the remains of the town house of the Abbots of Haughmond, (that monastery having possessed property in this immediate locality,) or as the residence of the ancient and extinct family of Shutt, the name of Shutt Place being supposed to be preserved in the name of the adjoining street, Shoplatch.