Magnificent gates

 
You'll not come across gates looking like this very often!  This photo shows just one of the range of gates, put up in 1885, at the roadside entrances to Shrewsbury's Quarry Park.
The grounds of the park, which run alongside the river at the other end, were donated to Shrewsbury Corporation in order to make a public park.  The gates were a gift of the Shropshire Horticultural Society, although they show a Shrewsbury loggerheads device rather than a Shropshire loggerheads device.
In full sunshine, they are a pretty magnificent sight in their blue & gold colours.

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Civic pride loggerheads

 When one first sees the 1A Castle Gates building in Shrewsbury, it looks yet another great example of the town's ‘black & white’ Tudor buildings. In fact, although very attractive, it’s deceptive, as it was actually built in 1902, probably as a shop.

On the bottom corners of the third storey, it has two tiny heraldic shields, as you can see in the photo – with loggerheads on the left, the Cross of St George on the right. Another example of civic pride no doubt.

However, I have still yet to find out who built 1A Castle Gates, and what exactly its first use was.  Can anyone help? 

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A latter-day mason's mark?

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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Anonymous planter

 
You'll see a number of lead planters/troughs around Shrewsbury, some of which go back 250 years (see Shrewsbury Library planter for example).  However, the story of this one is not clear.  It bears the loggerheads and sits on the wall outside St Julian's Church, but otherwise it's rather anonymous.
Can anyone help us by giving us any clues to its story?  

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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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Leaving his mark

 
One of the least noticed loggerheads-sets is this one, which is in the apex of The Old Bank Buildings in Shrewsbury's Barker Street. They were probably erected in the 1930s when Arthur Ward, the Borough Surveyor, drove through the plans to widen the road at this point, resulting in new frontages. 

You could call them 'post Arts & Crafts' in style if you wanted to.  (Ward was no philistine, so he ensured the new-build was sensitive).
Ward was also very proud of the town, so (it's thought) he liked to leave a set of loggerheads here and there!

(Credit for the information for this post to: Phil Scoggins' article in the Civic Society's Newsletter of March 2020)

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Freemen loggerheads

 
This corner-detail of a lovely piece of modern stained-glass (the St Benedict Window) in Shrewsbury Abbey reminds us that the sponsors of the window were The Gild (sic) of Freemen of Shrewsbury.  As you'd expect, their badge carries the loggerheads.

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