Everything but the loggerheads

This postcard is on sale widely in Shrewsbury. It displays a list of the curious & particular words, places, people and aspects which are essential - and even unique - to the town,  But do you see what important and historic characteristic is missing?  Yes..., there is no reference to the loggerheads. It's bewildering.
In the last post we wondered (sadly) if the people simply no longer understood the role the loggerheads have played and do play in the town’s life. 

However ... the good news for loggerheads-lovers is that a new book, marking the 600 years since they appeared in history, comes out next month.  Entitled 'The Mysteries of The Loggerheads', it will explain much and reveal even more. It may even help townsfolk remember how central to Shrewsbury town the loggerheads are! Look out for our next post for details.

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Noticeable by absence at the tree fest

 
Are the loggerheads losing their popularity?  Usually there are plenty of them to be seen, one way or another, at the Shrewsbury Christmas Tree festival.  (The festival is held at St Chad's, the town’s famous round church, every year).
However, although there were around fifty decorated trees this year, all identifying local businesses and organisations, there were no loggerheads to be seen.  Let's hope the absence is a blip!

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Visitors' loss

 
Oddly, now and again, you DON'T find loggerheads when you really would have expected them.  Shrewsbury Bus Station is a building that is dreary beyond belief, so it would be enhanced by a set of loggerheads - but not one is in evidence.
Also, you'd have thought that a loggerheads would be prominently displayed anyway, just as an identifying form of welcome for arriving visitors.  But no.

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No loggerheads for society

 While loggerheads are ubiquitous in Shrewsbury, they are not universally applied to every town organisation - perhaps surprisingly.

For instance, the Shrewsbury Civic Society's logo does not feature the loggerheads - though it does give a geographical map of the town-scape (Shrewsbury lies within the River Severn which loops around the town).

Does anyone know why the Civic Society decided against the loggerheads?  

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

If you'd like more of these loggerheads mysteries as soon as they are posted (weekly), just use the Follow By Email box (which you will see in the upper right-hand corner of this page)

Dog, not leopard

 

Sometimes, one gets obsessive, and thinks that anything vaguely resembling an animal face might be a loggerhead.  They are not always, of course.

Here on English Bridge in Shrewsbury, the animal is probably a Talbot dog, the symbol of the Earls of Shrewsbury. Not a loggerhead.

Missing from field hospital

 

The C Detachment 202 (Midlands) base is just by the old Copthorne Barracks in Shrewsbury, and is used by the Army Reserve Forces.

The four quarters of its shield represent the four Midlands counties that this unit is associated with, with Shropshire's symbol in the bottom right-hand.

Curiously, while everything else is correct about the Shropshire bit (the colours, the W shape with fleur-de-lys on), the one element missing is ... the loggerheads.  It should have the loggerheads.
(To see the device complete with loggerheads, click here).

Now, why's that? Why are they missing?
Please let us have your thoughts... Use the comments field just down this page.

If you'd like more of these loggerheads mysteries as soon as they are posted (weekly), just use the Follow By Email box (which you will see in the upper right-hand corner of this page)