Lady Catherine & the loggerheads

The front cover of the first edition of Old Shropshire Life (1904) features the loggerheads, as you’d expect, even though these are the Salop loggerheads and not the Shropshire County ones.  They are not ‘langued’ either.

The book was written by the ‘minor author’ Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, who lived with her family at the grand house of Wenlock Abbey. They were one of the county’s leading families in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Catherine was something of a beauty, being sketched by the artist Dante Rossetti, but it was literature that inspired her. She wrote novels as well as profiles of the county and her life. Major novelists including Henry James and Thomas Hardy were frequently invited to stay.

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A kerchief for Xmas

 

The Christmas Tree Festival at St Chad’s in Shrewsbury is always a welcome event. The town’s organisations all submit trees decorated to promote their various roles in the community.

Naturally the Shrewsbury Morris Dancers had to sponsor a tree, and naturally their loggerhead kerchiefs, as well as blue & amber coloured ribbons, were fully in evidence. 

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Up to date street sign

 

In a previous post we noted that nearly all of Shrewsbury’s street signs are out of date, as they show the badges of the old Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council, which came to an end with local government changes in 2009. Shrewsbury then went its separate way from Atcham - and Shrewsbury Town Council was formed… with a revised badge.

Slowly, very slowly, the street name-plates are being replaced; to have the town’s own, new badge.  The designs of these newer loggerheads are more leopard-like than the old shaggy loggerheads of the S&Atcham days.

If you’re wondering what the red mark is where the mouth is, it’s a much-reduced version of the heraldic red-tongue.

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Loggerheads in brown & yellow

 

After mentioning the way the Scouts' Shropshire logo features laughing-style loggerheads (see previous post), here are some more of the same - on the side of the Andy Miles Scout Centre at the West Mids Showground in Shrewsbury.  

The colours of the Scout Movement are brown & yellow, which is , I presume, why the loggerheads here are in those colours and not in their traditional colours of gold & blue. Earl Roger, who gave the gold & blue colours to Shrewsbury-Shropshire, may perhaps be turning in his grave!  (see our Earl Roger In Gold & Blue post)

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Scouting for Shropshire

 

Many thanks to the local Scout leader who lent his arm for this photo. He was pretty proud of his badge with the Shropshire arms.

In yet another twist on how the loggerheads are depicted, this set seem to be laughing in a kind of devilish fashion..., which I can’t think was the original intention.

See also our post on The Scout Centre

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Battlefield medal

 

In 1903 a medal was struck for the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Shrewsbury, which was fought on a site just outside the town, now aptly known as Battlefield.  In the battle (made famous in Shakespeare) King Henry IV’s forces defeated the rebel army of Harry Hotspur and his allies.  The medal shows the church put up on the site by Henry VII as an act of gratitude toward God.

On the obverse of the medal can be seen the arms of Shrewsbury and Shropshire with their loggerheads. The other two shields of arms are the Royal Arms and one other which I can’t identify. It might be the arms of the Earl Of Powis, the Lord-Lieutenant of the county at the time.  Can anyone identify it?

Interestingly, one of the most famous mayors of Shrewsbury, Herbert Southam, was in office at the time, and he has somehow wangled it that this name is on this medal too (in the rim), though there is no real reason why it should be there.  Politicians don’t change….!

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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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