Showing posts with label Shrewsbury Borough Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shrewsbury Borough Council. Show all posts

A latter-day mason's mark?

Mountford Carriage Works

The puzzle in this photo is: when were these loggerheads put up?   

This is the early nineteenth-century building, in Dogpole in central Shrewsbury, which is still known as the Mountford Carriage Works, even though Mountford & Company had left by 1916.  (Edward Burd, the owner of next-door Newport House, seems to have disliked the noise the works made, and forced them out).

In 1917, the new owners of Newport House were the local Borough Council (who then resurrected the house’s old title - The Guildhall) and then (in the 1940s?) took over this adjacent former carriage works building.
Did they put up the loggerheads as a 'proprietorial' sign at this time?
The second theory is that the Dogpole roadway was widened outside Newport House, some time, by the borough’s engineers - who put up the loggerheads as a sign of their work - a kind of latter-day mason’s mark.

However, I’ve never found proof of either theory.  Does anyone have thoughts to add?

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Bloody place

 Historic plaque, Pride Hill, Shrewsbury - detail
This loggerheads design is the standard one for Shrewsbury Borough Council (as was) in the 1930s - flaring fur, very red tongues, staring slightly to their left. 

You'll find it on the 'execution plaque' at the top of Pride Hill in the centre of Shrewsbury.

Historic plaque, Pride Hill, Shrewsbury

This marks the spot (almost) where Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last prince of an independent Wales was executed in 1283, not to mention some rebels of the 1403 rebellion.
The plaque was erected by Shrewsbury Borough Council sometime in the first half of the last century.


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