Taking the Shrewsbury biscuit

 

The Shrewsbury Biscuits & Pastry Makers company has a rather interesting place-holder image on its website.  It shows a set of loggerheads in a stripped-back design (see photo above). It’s a surprisingly subtle, clever image.

You don’t hear so much about the Shrewsbury Biscuit these days; once upon a time you could buy them all over the town.  Based on a very simple recipe, like all ‘people’s foods’ are (though the twist is always in the way the individual baker makes them), their history goes back to the 1500s.  There’s even still a plaque in town marking the site of ‘Mister Palin’s Shrewsbury Biscuits Shop’, which flourished in the eighteenth century.

In the photo above, you’ll notice some small text in the corner of the image (“J Speed”). This acknowledges the fact that these loggerheads are based on ones designed by the seventeenth century map-maker John Speed. Copies of Speed’s map of Shropshire, which shows the loggerheads, are held in Shrewsbury Museum.

 

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

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Earl Roger in gold & blue

 

Thanks to JT for responding to my post about Earl Roger of Montgomery, the original Norman overlord of Shrewsbury.  I was mulling there over the theory that the gold & blue colouring in the loggerheads might have come from Earl Roger's shield of arms (even though if he had a set of arms, I couldn't find them).

JT pointed me in the direction of the 17th century map made by John Speed, a copy of which is to be found in the Civil War Room at Shrewsbury Museum.  Speed clearly has Roger's colours as gold & blue. 
However, as Speed lived five hundred years after Roger, he may have just been responding to a 'folk tradition'.

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