Up front on Shrewsbury Cathedral

 

Here’s another odd set of loggerheads.  They seem crammed in, rather higgledy-piggledy, in what is admittedly quite a small space for them, a half-shield.

This arrangement is on the front of Shrewsbury Roman Catholic Cathedral, over the main doors.  The most likely explanation for the loggerheads being there is that, at the time the cathedral was being built in 1851, there was a deep suspicion of Catholics, and historians suspect that the cathedral authorities were trying to exhibit their very real loyalty to the town by displaying the loggerheads.

(It might have been better if they’d got the configuration of the loggerheads right though!)

+

To comment on this post, just use the Comments field down this page or email us direct.

To get an email alert into your inbox every time we make a new post (about once a week), just click 'Subscribe & Follow' (at the top of the column to the right on this page) and just fill in the form