Happy Xmas loggerheads!

Yes, you can't even keep the loggerheads out of Christmas. Any self-respecting Shrewsbury Town Football Club fans would have this bauble front & centre on their Christmas trees.

Happy Christmas-time!

Wellington's market cat

 The indoor-outdoor market in Wellington (near Telford) is open for Christmas thank goodness.

The cheerful leopard in its logo is interesting though: is it a loggerhead missing its two mates... or not?  What's its story?

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Corporation leopards

 

We found this version of the loggerheads on the cover of 'Shrewsbury Illustrated' a Shrewsbury Corporation booklet dated 1933.  This rather arty version was the standard logo for the corporation at the time.

(Though, the three leopards all seem to be disturbed by something they can see to the left of them...)

The booklet is a guide to the town, and also has a fascinating article about the famous Morris's Emporium in the centre of town, which comprised a grocer's & tea-shop & gents' smoking-room & ballroom (they didn't do half-measures in those days!)

We found the publication in Candle Lane Books, which is an old-fashioned second-hand bookshop - and an absolute trap for anyone interested in bibliophile researching.  Three hours could happily go by as you browse - and you'd never know...

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Rolled out the barrel - and away

This photo of the Loggerheads Pub in Shrewsbury centre was taken in 1999.  The barrel sign was rather well-known; as you can see, it shows the loggerheads on it, painted in gold.

However, sometime over the last twenty years, it was taken down and no one seems to know where it is now - if it exists any longer at all.

Does anyone know anything about it - or what happened to it?  The present owners are unaware of its history.
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Warding off evil (possibly)

 

These characters are definitely three in number and probably leopards - but are they loggerheads?
They are to be found inside Morville Church in eastern Shropshire, just across from Morville Hall, the National Trust property - but no one at the church seems to know their history. The guess is that they are a little more than 300 years old.
You'll find them over the door to the tower, which is often where such 'grotesques' were placed, as a charm against outside spirits, but whether this is what these ones are up to is open to question.
Anyone got any ideas?... Use the comments field just down this page.

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Loggerheads in glass

 

This is one of the least known examples of loggerheads in Shrewsbury even though many tourists pass it ever year.
The reason is: this particular set is featured in a stained-glass panel very high up at the top of a window in the Trinity Chapel in St Mary’s Church. You need binoculars to see them clearly.
When you do see them, you'll notice they have no lolling tongues like the standrd loggerheads.

The tracery around it is clearly of ancient fragments of glass, but it’s doubtful that the loggerheads work is as old.  
Why are they up there anyway?  The rest of the window has nothing to do with Shrewsbury.
Anyone want to try a guess?

They are so high that no-one has been able to get up there to check what age the glass is; and there seems to be no record of its installation. 
The last mystery is that, if you look carefully, there are little white circles over the centre of the loggerheads' mouths.  What are they?  A glazier's mark, or something more significant?  

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

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Shropshire blue

 

Shropshire, as a county, picked up on the loggerheads as a symbol only recently (if you think the end of the nineteenth century is recent...). 

But… why is the arrangement in blue & white colours (the one that we see here in the main picture) the one that the county most displays on its buildings?  

As we all know, the dominant colours of the device are traditionally blue & gold, or blue & amber, and, yes, the county emblem is officially in those colours (see pic right).

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