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?  

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

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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).

Please let us have your thoughts on this mystery... Use the comments field just down this page or email us direct.  

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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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