Qualla: Shrewsbury Castle

Shrewsbury Castle: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. There is only one way into Shrewsbury that does not require crossing a bridge - a thin neck of high ground at the top of the meander, where the Severn comes within a few hundred metres of meeting itself. The Normans saw the obvious. In about 1067, William the Conqueror's men ordered a castle on that hill. By 1074 Roger de Montgomery, the new Earl of Shrewsbury, was building in earnest, demolishing fifty-one homes to clear the ground. The result was a red sandstone gate-stop, an administrative seat, and a launching pad for raids into Wales - all in one bristling package. Nearly a thousand years later, it still does the job of dominating the skyline above the railway station.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Shrewsbury Castle: A Hill That Chose Itself

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ceridwen, CC BY-SA 2.0. Recent excavations funded by the Castle Studies Trust have uncovered something the Normans probably already knew: this hill was fortified before they got there. The 2019 dig revealed the massive defensive ditch around the original motte of about 1067, along with medieval pottery ...

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Image: ceridwen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shrewsbury Castle: Hanging from the Battlements

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtticTapestry, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1138, with England torn between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, William FitzAlan held the castle for Matilda. Stephen besieged it. The siege was not long - chroniclers call it short - but its ending was a study in twelfth-century mercy. Stephen took the castle, and then he h...

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Image: AtticTapestry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shrewsbury Castle: Laura's Tower and a Horticultural Society

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thomas Telford - the great Scottish engineer who would later route his London-to-Holyhead road through Shrewsbury - converted the castle into a private house in the 1780s. He built Laura's Tower, a small folly named for the daughter of his client Sir William Pulteney, on the bail...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shrewsbury Castle: Soldiers of Shropshire

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marion Dutcher, CC BY-SA 2.0. The castle is now the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum, renamed in 2019 from its earlier title of Shropshire Regimental Museum. Inside are the combined collections of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry and the Shropshire Yeomanry, including three Victoria Crosses - those of Captai...

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Image: Marion Dutcher | CC BY-SA 2.0

Shrewsbury Castle: The View from the Walk

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Climb up to Laura's Tower at dusk, when the trains slide in and out of Shrewsbury station directly below, and the castle's whole reason for existing becomes clear in a single sweep. The Severn loops away on three sides, glinting between the Welsh Bridge and the English Bridge. Lo...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0