Shrewsbury in the Great War

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Chapter One

A brief history of Shrewsbury

THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY the town of Shrewsbury has known much of war. Its very position, sitting on a hilltop site and surrounded by the natural moat of the River Severn, tells us that the first people who settled here had the threat of warfare and the need for defence very much on their minds.

We don’t know when the first people settled here. When the Romans first arrived nearly two thousand years ago they found the region was already occupied by a warlike people, the Celts, who had established hill forts that dotted the landscape. From such fortified positions individual tribes could watch over their own territories and that of neighbouring tribes – always ready to grab any opportunity to raid their neighbours’ cattle.

Then the Romans arrived. They had no need of the protection afforded by forts strategically placed on the tops of hills. Their strength was in their legions and the psychological terror such efficient soldiers inflicted on the people they overran. So it was that when the Romans established a legionary base they chose a low-lying site near the banks of the River Severn some four miles east of Shrewsbury, a site that we now know as Wroxeter. As time passed the legions moved on, first to Chester and then to northern England and relative peace descended on the region.

The Roman ruins at Wroxeter.

This peace lasted for several hundred years but was eventually torn apart by the arrival of a new breed of warrior-people – the Anglo-Saxons – and it was they who chose the site we now know as Shrewsbury. Those Saxons chose well. A hill-top site, presumably with some form of palisade or ramparts around it, almost completely surrounded by river and what would, in those days, have been pretty soggy, permanent marshland. Even the town’s name reminds us that this was a carefully chosen and fortified site. The bury element in Shrewsbury tells us that this was a burgh town, a fortified town. And it needed to be.

Shrewsbury Castle.

Shrewsbury was the new settlement established by an invading group and therefore needed protection from attack from the natives whom they had displaced – those Welsh people, as they came to be known. Indeed, even the name Welsh comes from a Saxon word that meant foreigner which is a bit cheeky really, when you come to think of it because it was the Saxons who were the real foreigners.

And so, for the next few hundred years an uneasy truce (with regular interruptions as the two groups raided each others livestock) would have been the customary way of life for anyone living here. Until the arrival of the next invaders – the Normans.

Medieval tower on Town Walls.

The Normans set about a systematic domination of the nation they had just defeated. In Shrewsbury Roger de Montgomery built a castle; it was one of a whole series that protected the English-Welsh border – those Welsh were still proving to be troublesome and were to remain so for the next few hundred years. In fact their attacks on the town were such a regular feature of life that in the 1240s King Henry III decreed that whatever protection the town had at that time was insufficient and proper stone walls should be built. Stretches of this wall still survive along with one tower.

From then on Shrewsbury became more of a base from where English armies could depart on campaigns into the Welsh hills. It’s an indication of just how secure the Shrewsbury people felt once these walls had been built when one considers that within some forty or so years, they were already building houses abutting those walls. Doing this must inevitably have impeded access along the walls for defenders in times of attack and yet it was still allowed.

With the Welsh held in check beyond their borders and the only real fighting for professional soldiers taking place in France the Shrewsbury people settled down to what they did best – trading – and Shrewsbury prospered. It became a major market centre for the region and the wealth of those centuries can still be seen in the fine old timber buildings that adorn the town.

But life wasn’t without its troubles. In the year 1403 Shrewsbury was to be the scene of a major battle between King Henry IV and the rebel Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, who is generally better known as Harry Hotspur. Just a couple of miles to the north of the town the two armies met on 21 July. Parleys were held but none of the main protagonists really wanted to avoid a fight and so the battle began at around four o’clock that afternoon. It lasted for some three or so hours and at the end of that time probably somewhere in the range of 6,000 men lay dead or dying.

The Battle of Shrewsbury was not an important battle historically. It never changed a dynasty; indeed, it could be said to have confirmed Henry IV’s position as king since he had usurped the throne some four years before. On the other hand, it was an extremely important battle militarily. This was the first battle fought on English soil where both sides used the longbow – to devastating effect. Moreover, the teenage son of the king could be said to have been well and truly blooded here – he was the future King Henry V, the future victor of the Battle of Agincourt. And blooded he certainly was, being wounded in the face by an arrow.

Statue of Henry IV on Battlefield Church.

Battlefield Church.

The end of the 1400s almost saw another battle in the town. In this case, in 1485, Shrewsbury was threatened by Henry Tudor who, accompanied by his army, was on his way to meet King Richard III at Bosworth Field. On demanding entry into the town he was first refused but, subsequently, he was allowed in for fear of the damage his army would undoubtedly cause if they had to fight their way in.

Henry Tudor House on Wyle Cop.

Following his victory at Bosworth Field Henry Tudor became King Henry VII; under him England and Wales became linked and a further 150 years of peace descended on the town.

And then, in 1642 King Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham and so began the Civil War. It wasn’t long before war came to Shrewsbury, first of all in the guise of the king himself, seeking money to fund his campaign. He borrowed from Shrewsbury School (it’s a debt that has never been repaid, incidentally), he billeted his men on households throughout the town (which inevitably caused annoyance) and he had the castle refortified.

Finally, in February 1645, the Parliamentarians attacked. The town was taken relatively easily and ever since then debate has raged as to whether or not there was a traitor within the walls who opened the gate at the bottom of St Mary’s Water Lane. (The street has been known locally as Traitor’s Gate ever since, which does seem to lend some credence to the tale.) Whatever the truth of the matter, several hostages were captured at the castle and subsequently executed but, here too, there seems to be controversy. Tradition has it that the executed soldiers were Irish but no-one seems sure as to just what this means – were they Irish men fighting for the King’s cause or Royalist soldiers who had fought in Ireland?

One Shrewsbury man who was involved in the capture of Shrewsbury was Captain John Benbow. As a Parliamentarian sympathizer he had joined the army and so, with his local knowledge, was one of the leaders in the attack on the town. Subsequently, however, King Charles I was captured and then executed in January 1649. The execution of an anointed king appalled people throughout the country and caused many Parliamentarians to change sides. Captain Benbow was one who changed his allegiances so that, two years later, he was fighting for the Royalist cause at the Battle of Worcester. The last battle of the Civil War, it was a disaster for the Royalists. Benbow was captured and, inevitably, considered a traitor for having changed sides. He was brought back to Shrewsbury and executed by firing squad in front of the entrance to Shrewsbury Castle. His grave is to be found in the churchyard of Old St Chad’s Church.

Once again calm descended and from this period on any militaristic associations that there are with the town are through those of its men who either joined the British forces or who passed through the town at some point in their lives. One of the latter was Judge George Jeffreys – notorious as the judge who oversaw the Bloody Assizes following the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. He quickly became known as the Hanging Judge – on one day alone he condemned nearly 100 people to death. His association with Shrewsbury, however, is only slight – he attended Shrewsbury School for a short time.

Another, who like Jeffreys was not a Shrewsbury man, was Thomas Anderson. Anderson was a Yorkshire man with Jacobite sympathies at the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion in 1745. Despite this he had joined the British army but then went absent without leave and was eventually captured in Edinburgh. By this time the regiment with which he was supposed to be serving was based in Shrewsbury and so he was brought to the town for his court martial, after which he was executed. Feelings against Jacobites were running high at the time so that, when his body was brought to St Mary’s Church for burial not only did his fellow soldiers refuse to carry his body into the church but neither were the local people prepared to do so. Despite this he was buried in the churchyard.

St Mary’s Water Lane, known locally as Traitor’s Gate.

A contemporary of Anderson’s was a man whose reputation ran high for many years – although these days it is deemed politically incorrect to praise him. I speak of Robert Clive, conqueror of India. Imperialism is a bad word nowadays and people tend to forget that it was not just the British who had imperialistic ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In India in the mid-1700s both the British and the French (each of them supported by different Indian factions) were in India fighting each other for supremacy in what both countries saw as the potential jewel in a future empire. If India had not become part of a British Empire it would have been part of a French one instead.

St Mary’s Church.

French ambitions turned to Europe instead, particularly following the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. One Shropshire general, whose deteriorating statue still looks over the town, was Rowland Hill. Joining the army at the age of eighteen, Hill rose through the ranks so that by the time of the Peninsular Wars he was a general and it was there that his reputation was really established. He became Wellington’s right-hand-man and was the one general Wellington always felt he could rely on. Second-in-Command (under Wellington) at the Battle of Waterloo he was thought at one time to have been killed when his horse was shot under him. He survived, however, and subsequently became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.

And so, throughout its history the town of Shrewsbury has known much of war. But when war came in 1914 it was to be like nothing that had ever affected the townspeople before.