Shropshire military's guidon

  

In the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum, you’ll find this guidon (a kind of large military pennant), which outlines the battle honours of the Shropshire Yeomanry.  Although the regiment goes back to the 1790s, the first service overseas that its members saw came in 1900.  
Its service over the next 20 years was so distinguished that it needed a guidon just for the conflicts it had taken part in during the two decades!

What also interests us is the loggerheads in the guidon’s centre.  The Yeomanry had always used the loggerheads as its main symbol, but – up to this point – they had used the simple ‘Shrewsbury loggerheads’ design (see pic right).

But this guidon, created in the 1920s, shows an alternative loggerheads design.  The guidon actually shows the ‘Shropshire loggerheads’, i.e. the arms of the ceremonial county of Shropshire.

This change reflects an odd quarrel which had taken place in the 1890s.  In that decade, Shropshire County Council was formed; and, as expected, it took the Shrewsbury loggerheads for its symbol (by extension the Shrewsbury loggerheads had, for some 300 years, also been the symbol of Shropshire). 
However, the other boroughs of Shropshire were not happy about this – and forced a change.  When the county council applied for a set of arms, soon after its formation, it proposed and got a radical new variant of the loggerheads (which you can see in the guidon).  The story is told in the The Mysteries Of The Loggerheads book.
It seems that the Yeomanry fell in line with the change fairly quickly! 

Sadly, the Yeomanry do not exist any longer as such.

Incidentally, today (February 23rd) is officially ‘Shropshire Day’.

 

A new book has been published to celebrate 600 years of the loggerheads - click here to find out more.

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Rail poster is sealed

 

Posters from the 1930s that promoted Shrewsbury as a ‘destination town’ are fascinating; they seem to tell social historians so much about attitudes of the time.
For us though, the most interesting element of this poster is the way that the ancient and original town-seal (which dates to 1425) has pride of place on it (see full pic below). 

(The loggerheads first entered history when they appeared on this seal - although the details of what’s on the seal are too blurred on this poster, sadly, to allow one to see much of them).

Why the PR people of the time thought the town’s seal would grab the attention of potential tourists is difficult to fathom. Perhaps its presence on this poster does underline the town’s ‘historicity’ though.

Incidentally, the scene in the poster is real.  It shows the public gardens in front of Castle Gates House, from which one can go (through the arch) into the grounds of the castle (now a museum), with Laura’s Tower at the right. 

The style of poster was not unusual.  The major railway companies produced lots of these sorts of posters, all with a very similar design approach.  They were supposed to encourage people to take trips (on railways of course) to destination-towns such as York and Nottingham, and many more.  
One can almost date Shrewsbury’s mass-tourism profile from the era in which these posters started to appear.

 

A new book has been published to celebrate 600 years of the loggerheads - click here to find out more.

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