Bloody British History: Shrewsbury

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AFTER AD 43

THE ROMANS ARRIVE

IN SHROPSHIRE

SOON AFTER THEIR invasion, the Roman army reached Shropshire – not that it was called Shropshire in those days. This was then the territory of a tribe called the Cornovii. Those Celtic tribes were a warlike lot, always fighting, rustling each other’s cattle, stealing each other’s women – and goodness knows what else. In all probability when the Romans invaded Britannia and landed in the south-east of the country in AD 43, the tribe of the Cornovii would have taken little notice – at first.

Having established a foothold, however, the Romans began to take control, steadily working their way north and west, subduing individual tribes as they went. But not everyone was prepared to submit. One such Celt was a man who has come to be known to history as Caratacus (although in the Celtic language of the day his name was probably something akin to ‘Caradoc’). His father surrendered to the Romans but there was no way that Caratacus was going to follow suit. Instead, he carried out a guerilla-style fight for freedom; but against such a mighty war machine his forces had little hope of success, and he was instead pushed ever westwards.

Eventually the Romans managed to force Caratacus to meet them in a full-scale battle somewhere in the region that we now know as Shropshire and, sure enough, Caratacus was defeated. But in the mayhem that followed the defeat Caratacus managed to escape and fled to the North, where he took refuge with another Celtic tribe, the Brigantes.

The Roman army worked its inevitable way north and finally forced the Brigantes, too, to surrender. As part of the peace treaty the Brigantes were forced to hand Caratacus over to the Romans and he was then taken to Rome, where he was paraded, in irons, through the streets of that city. And that should have been the end of him.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, Caratacus so impressed the Romans with the dignity and courage with which he put up with every trial they could throw at him that, in the end, they decided to spare him. Obviously he could never be allowed to return to Britannia, where we would have been a focus for any possible future rebellion, so, instead, he was allowed to live in relative comfort in what today we would describe as a form of ‘house-arrest’ until he eventually died a natural death.

LARGER EVEN THAN YORK

The Roman town of Viroconium (or Wroxeter, as it is now known) that preceded Shrewsbury was the fourth largest town in all of Roman Britain, larger even than Chester, just up the road, York or Lincoln.

In case you are wondering what the first three were – they were London, Cirencester and St Albans.

The ruins of Wroxeter, sketched in around the 1900s.

The important thing about Caratacus is that he is our first truly documented British hero. And where did that battle take place? We just don’t know. Was it at the hill-fort that bears his name, Caer Caradoc, near Church Stretton? Or was it, as archaeologists now tend to think, on the hill-fort at Llanymynech?

AROUND AD 900

THE RESCUE OF

ST ALKMUND’S BONES

ONE OF THE earliest churches founded in Shrewsbury was dedicated to a Northumbrian saint, St Alkmund, who quite possibly never had anything to do with the town. Well – not when he was alive, at least.

St Alkmund was probably born in around the 770s. He was the son of King Alcred of Northumbria and was well known for his charitable acts towards the poor and orphaned. His father and elder brother were murdered and so Alkmund fled to Scotland – where agents of Eardwulf (who had usurped the throne) found and murdered him, too, probably in around AD 800 (some reports say 819).

One hundred or so years later, the people of England suffered from a constant fear of attack from Viking raiders. With their low-draught boats the Vikings could venture far inland, using the rivers, so that it was not just the coastal areas that were at risk. Indeed, they once wintered as far upstream as present-day Bridgnorth, and from landing sites like that it was no hardship for them to steal a few horses and go marauding even further inland.

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE SHREWSBURY?

Do you say ‘Shrowesbury’ or do you say ‘Shrewsbury’? Which is right? To tell the truth, it is difficult to say. Over the years there have been numerous variations in the way the name of the town is spelt in documents and, presumably, the clerks writing it down were attempting to write phonetically whatever it is they heard. We’ve had Scrobbesbyrig and Schrossysbury, Shrovesbury and Shrowesbury – to mention just a few.

Local tradition has it that the earlier pronunciation was closer to ‘Shrow’ than to ‘Shrew’. Notice how all the above versions have an ‘o’ in them. Then, so the story goes, at some time someone made a spelling mistake and missed out that ‘o’ and so, from that day to this, people have argued about how to say the word.

Mind you, things are only going to get worse. These days many local people say neither Shrow nor Shrew but say Shoesbury instead…

A PRECARIOUS SEAT FOR THE DEVIL

The steeple of St Alkmund’s church is said, by the people of Shrewsbury, to be used by the Devil as a lookout point. Sitting up there he has an excellent view of the countryside around and, particularly, of the Stiperstone Hills to the south. It is also said that all the ghosts of Shropshire meet once a year, on the longest night of the year, and the Devil chairs this meeting sitting in one of the rock formations on the Stiperstones known as The Devil’s Chair.

It would appear that the Devil is very possessive about that chair and, when he sits on St Alkmund’s spire, should he see someone sitting in it, he promptly sends a thunder and lightning storm to frighten such upstarts away.

I’m always curious as to where such strange stories come from, and there seems to be a clear origin for this story. Apparently, in the 1550s there was a severe storm over the town during which lightning struck St Alkmund’s. The following day the townspeople went to inspect any possible damage and discovered that the strike had hit a bell within the church tower, causing what looked very much like a claw mark down the side of the bell. Was this caused by the Devil’s talon?

St Alkmund’s church and spire today.

The burgh town of Scrobbesbyrig, however, was deemed to be relatively safe when the Vikings, pictured above, were attacking lands further to the east, along valleys such as that of the River Trent. And so it’s quite possible that the bones of a saint such as St Alkmund, who had been buried in Derbyshire, could have been brought here for safety. The problem is that we just don’t know for certain, though this does seem to be the most likely explanation of why a church here should be dedicated to him.

The establishment of burgh towns such as Scrobbesbyrig had been an innovation of King Alfred. Waging constant war against the Vikings, Alfred soon realised that they were seeking easily portable plunder. If people could take refuge in strongly fortified towns, the Vikings might lay waste to stretches of the countryside around but find little to satisfy them in terms of portable wealth and would therefore, it was hoped, leave all the sooner to seek out easier pickings elsewhere. The strategy was relatively successful and Alfred established many burgh towns all through his territory of Wessex.

Subsequently, after King Alfred married off his daughter, Ethelflaeda, to King Leofric, who ruled the realm of Mercia, Alfred’s strategy was followed throughout Mercia too. Indeed, when Leofric died, Ethelflaeda ruled in her own name and continued this policy. Ethelflaeda founded a number of castles – Warwick, Stafford, Hereford and Runcorn amongst them. It has been suggested that she also founded the first castle in Scrobbesbyrig but, unfortunately, there would appear to be no evidence, either on the ground or in documentary sources, to prove this.

AD 1069

WILD EADRIC

ATTACKS SHREWSBURY

MUCH OF WHAT we know of this period in Shrewsbury’s history comes to us from a historian with the wonderful name of Ordericus Vitalis. He was born in 1075 just a couple of miles from Shrewsbury in the village of Atcham, his father (a French priest) having come to Shropshire in the retinue of Roger de Montgomery.

At the age of five, Ordericus (or Orderic) began his education with an English priest named Siward. The boy must have shown some promise because, aged eleven, he was then sent to Normandy, where he entered the monastery of St Evroul-en-Ouche. It is said that his father paid the enormous sum of thirty marks in order to get the boy admitted. From then on Ordericus was linked to the French monastery, although he is known to have travelled occasionally – and even returned to England at least once. Though he spent most of his life in France and had a French father, he seems always to have considered himself first and foremost to be an Englishman. Unable to speak the French language when he first arrived in Normandy, he describes, in one of his works, how he felt like a stranger in France – he was obviously very homesick for England and never lost his attachment to the country of his birth.

Today, Ordericus Vitalis is best known for his Historia Ecclesiastica, a history that, in a number of volumes, describes, amongst other things, the Norman conquests of both England and southern Italy. He has been described in recent years as ‘an honest and trustworthy guide to the history of his times’.

Ordericus certainly had a lot to record in this era, including the Norman Conquest in 1066 – and the many revolts that followed it. Many English lords led a resistance against the Norman invaders. The best known of these eleventh-century resistance fighters is Hereward the Wake, who fought from his stronghold in the Isle of Ely. There were many others ranging as far afield as Yorkshire to the West Country but, sadly, they seem never to have found a