Happy Xmas loggerheads!

Yes, you can't even keep the loggerheads out of Christmas. Any self-respecting Shrewsbury Town Football Club fans would have this bauble front & centre on their Christmas trees.

Happy Christmas-time!

Wellington's market cat

 The indoor-outdoor market in Wellington (near Telford) is open for Christmas thank goodness.

The cheerful leopard in its logo is interesting though: is it a loggerhead missing its two mates... or not?  What's its story?

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Corporation leopards

 

We found this version of the loggerheads on the cover of 'Shrewsbury Illustrated' a Shrewsbury Corporation booklet dated 1933.  This rather arty version was the standard logo for the corporation at the time.

(Though, the three leopards all seem to be disturbed by something they can see to the left of them...)

The booklet is a guide to the town, and also has a fascinating article about the famous Morris's Emporium in the centre of town, which comprised a grocer's & tea-shop & gents' smoking-room & ballroom (they didn't do half-measures in those days!)

We found the publication in Candle Lane Books, which is an old-fashioned second-hand bookshop - and an absolute trap for anyone interested in bibliophile researching.  Three hours could happily go by as you browse - and you'd never know...

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Rolled out the barrel - and away

This photo of the Loggerheads Pub in Shrewsbury centre was taken in 1999.  The barrel sign was rather well-known; as you can see, it shows the loggerheads on it, painted in gold.

However, sometime over the last twenty years, it was taken down and no one seems to know where it is now - if it exists any longer at all.

Does anyone know anything about it - or what happened to it?  The present owners are unaware of its history.
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Warding off evil (possibly)

 

These characters are definitely three in number and probably leopards - but are they loggerheads?
They are to be found inside Morville Church in eastern Shropshire, just across from Morville Hall, the National Trust property - but no one at the church seems to know their history. The guess is that they are a little more than 300 years old.
You'll find them over the door to the tower, which is often where such 'grotesques' were placed, as a charm against outside spirits, but whether this is what these ones are up to is open to question.
Anyone got any ideas?... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Loggerheads in glass

 

This is one of the least known examples of loggerheads in Shrewsbury even though many tourists pass it ever year.
The reason is: this particular set is featured in a stained-glass panel very high up at the top of a window in the Trinity Chapel in St Mary’s Church. You need binoculars to see them clearly.
When you do see them, you'll notice they have no lolling tongues like the standrd loggerheads.

The tracery around it is clearly of ancient fragments of glass, but it’s doubtful that the loggerheads work is as old.  
Why are they up there anyway?  The rest of the window has nothing to do with Shrewsbury.
Anyone want to try a guess?

They are so high that no-one has been able to get up there to check what age the glass is; and there seems to be no record of its installation. 
The last mystery is that, if you look carefully, there are little white circles over the centre of the loggerheads' mouths.  What are they?  A glazier's mark, or something more significant?  

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Shropshire blue

 

Shropshire, as a county, picked up on the loggerheads as a symbol only recently (if you think the end of the nineteenth century is recent...). 

But… why is the arrangement in blue & white colours (the one that we see here in the main picture) the one that the county most displays on its buildings?  

As we all know, the dominant colours of the device are traditionally blue & gold, or blue & amber, and, yes, the county emblem is officially in those colours (see pic right).

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Imaginary loggerheads

 

Most people in Shrewsbury will know of the Wakeman Trail, a series of collages of ceramic tablets on public sites around the town. They were made by students of the old Wakeman School and are impressions of the town’s buildings.

Mike Griffiths, a former teacher at the school, has made it his task to get them put up.

A friend of ours spotted this loggerheads on one of the works (outside the Catholic Cathedral) and asked Mike (in pic, right) which building the relevant one represented.  

In fact, said Mike, it was no particular ‘real’ building but an amalgamation of a few... which is fair enough!


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Croziers plus loggerhead

Another single loggerhead. 
At the Shrewsbury Arms in Albrighton in east Shropshire, it's obvious that the pub's name is associated with the Talbot family, the Earls Of Shrewsbury (the biggest land-owners locally until the beginning of the twentieth century).
But why the two croziers (aka bishops' staffs)?  The seventeenth century earl was a priest (and is buried in the church opposite the pub); is that why?

Please let us have your thoughts...
(See answers to this mystery in the comments field just down this page). 

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Pub carries the badge

 

One pub stands out as a real home for Shrewsbury Town Football Club supporters - The Prince Of Wales in Belle Vue.
Naturally enough therefore, its front window carries proudly the loggerheads badge of the team. These ones are slightly more bearded than the usual.

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Police mislay two loggerheads

 

The shield of arms for West Mercia Police features emblems of the three counties it represents - lion for Worcestershire, three pears for Herefordshire, and... erm... one loggerhead for Shropshire.  But... why just the one???

Please let us have your thoughts... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Morris' hopper

 

This rather beautiful 'hopper', as these guttering-bowls are properly called, is to be found in the courtyard leading to the Morris Hall in Shrewsbury.

The man who paid for the building of The Morris Hall in the 1930s was James Kent Morris II, who had a passion for loggerheads...


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No loggerheads for society

 While loggerheads are ubiquitous in Shrewsbury, they are not universally applied to every town organisation - perhaps surprisingly.

For instance, the Shrewsbury Civic Society's logo does not feature the loggerheads - though it does give a geographical map of the town-scape (Shrewsbury lies within the River Severn which loops around the town).

Does anyone know why the Civic Society decided against the loggerheads?  

Please let us have your thoughts... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Buxton's leopard

 

Like I've said elsewhere in this photo-blog, one can get obsessive in 'loggerheads-spotting'.

Much as I would like it to be, the animal here is obviously not a proper loggerhead.  

This is a piece of stained glass seen in the Pump Room at Buxton; and although Buxton is in Derbyshire, not far from Shropshire, we are definitely no longer in loggerheads-country here!

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Just a double?

 

It's rare to see just a pair of loggerheads. They come in threes traditionally.
Here, on this frieze in Grope Lane in Shrewsbury, we only see two, though they do have slightly different expressions one to the other.
Why just two?

PROBLEM SOLVED! - see answer in Comments field, just down this page

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Yeomanry designs

 

Although the loggerheads are often used formally in shields of arms in the devices of Shropshire organisations, the application is not always strict. 
In fact, one of the interesting aspects of a study of the loggerheads is that they are designed and drawn in so many different ways - they can look quite different for different organisations and at differnt periods.

For example, in these wreaths, although all using the Shropshire Yeomanry regiment badge, the loggerheads-sets have three different designs!

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Dog, not leopard

 

Sometimes, one gets obsessive, and thinks that anything vaguely resembling an animal face might be a loggerhead.  They are not always, of course.

Here on English Bridge in Shrewsbury, the animal is probably a Talbot dog, the symbol of the Earls of Shrewsbury. Not a loggerhead.

The Dresser

 

On the back wall of The Dresser, a fashionable clothes shop in Shrewsbury is this plaque of loggerheads. It looks like a hobby-piece, rather than a civic installation.
The owners, who like it as a fun-piece, say they have no idea how it came to be there, or who made it.

Anyone want to attempt an answer?
Please let us have your thoughts... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Welcome to 2009

 

This sign on the Frankwell roundabout reading Welcome To Shrewsbury naturally incorporates the town's official logo.  Curiously, it is a little out of date, as the logo seen here is that of Shrewsbury & Atcham Council which was abolished in 2009.  A new council - Shrewsbury Town Council - arose out of the ashes, and adopted a slightly different logo.

Salop House mark

 

You'd think there would be something distinctively Salopian about a building called Salop House (on College Hill in Shrewsbury).
But no, nothing one can see - except for the insurance badge.

Insurance badges are ubiquitous in Shrewsbury. Used by fire insurance companies to work out which homes were insured with them, they were also a marker for a fire engine in days gone by. Wrong insurance mark - and the fire engine left without helping!

The 'Salop Fire Office' was the longest-established of these companies, and its marks, some of which are over 200 years old, are still on frontages today all over the county. As you can see, they carry the loggerheads plus the word SALOP.

Student souvenirs

 The University of Shrewsbury has only been in the town two years, but it has kept things traditional; it immediately adopted the loggerheads device, and now, as you can see, it's all over their souvenir-ware.

Smokin loggerheads

 

Smokin’ Salop are just one of the many firms in Shropshire who see the loggerheads as a great way to give local credibility (and pride) to their business.

There are an amazing amount of variations on the loggerheads design, from the truly imaginative to the quite bizarre.  Smokin Salop have stuck to their USP though - the knife and cleaver in the design indicate what they do; they are a competition BBQ team (from Shrewsbury of course!).

Gobowen commemorative

 

We found this commemorative plate in a display cabinet the hospital in Gobowen, near Oswestry, in north Shropshire.
It bears a now outdated version of the loggerheads device used by Shropshire County. (The colours are now different.) 

Missing from field hospital

 

The C Detachment 202 (Midlands) base is just by the old Copthorne Barracks in Shrewsbury, and is used by the Army Reserve Forces.

The four quarters of its shield represent the four Midlands counties that this unit is associated with, with Shropshire's symbol in the bottom right-hand.

Curiously, while everything else is correct about the Shropshire bit (the colours, the W shape with fleur-de-lys on), the one element missing is ... the loggerheads.  It should have the loggerheads.
(To see the device complete with loggerheads, click here).

Now, why's that? Why are they missing?
Please let us have your thoughts... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Shrewsbury hopper

 

If you just look up, and carefully, you'll see plenty of loggerheads, even in the most unlikely places.
This set is on the hopper of a rain downpipe at the Old Market Hall in Shrewsbury town centre.

The OMH building rests on stilts, so to speak, with an open space beneath it that once served as a public market where the the certain stalls within it kept out of the rain.

The first floor area (which you glimpse here) would have been an civic-administrative space, which is why there are loggerheads all over the OMH.  Nowadays, the first floor at the OMH is a cafe and small independent cinema. 

I guess that the loggerheads device on this hopper is what would you'd call an example of civic pride in action.

Which firm would have erected these?

Proud lion, with leopards

 

The proud lion of the Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury stands atop a loggerheads device, though in this instance, it has a chevron separating the three leopards' heads from each other.  The basic loggerheads faces also would have dangling tongues - but not here.
Curiously, this prominent sculpture is round the back of the hotel, facing a small municipal car-park, so most tourists never see it. Shame.  

Does anyone have a date for this?  Please use the comments box below if you can help...

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