I Miss Shifnal And Have Very Happy Fond Memories.

A Memory of Shifnal.

I have just gone onto this site. I remember the Goliahs. It was when I was a little girl, Mr Goliah used to regularly visit my dad and I think at one stage he dropped off a load of cattle manure with a horse and cart for our garden.   I can also remember the milkman in the early 1950s delivering milk with the horse and cart. What a memory. My name is Jane, my maiden name was 'Humphries'.  My brother still lives there at Custer Castle in Shaw Lane.  Dad, better known as 'Jack', used to run the bakery in Aston Street with a cake shop in Bradford Street.  We lived over the shop (and a toy shop in the corner).  My father worked for Lloyds the Grocers which was in Park Street (can't remember what the place is now but the building is still there).  There was an abattoir behind the grocery shop and one of my earliest memories was of dad wheeling our bacon pig down from our property in wheelbarrow and me hanging on to its ear.  It was too big to walk down! It would have been about 1956-7.  Dad though wouldn't let me into the abattoir - quite understandably.   My brother and I had ponies, I was 2 and John was 8.  That was our first pony. I can remember when I was a tad older and allowed out on my pony without mum or dad, I would ride the pony (Blackie) up to the sweet shop known as Spencers, which was next to Cheedles the watch maker.  Get my sweets and then ride down to our place again in Aston Street.

There were times when I would also ride down to the Manor pond, see the fishermen there and then do errands for them, riding back into Shifnal and visiting Bromleys the Ironmongers on the corner of Bradford Street and the Square, where the clock stands now, and getting their cigarettes from Spencers - smoking of course was popular then!

I can remember the old jail too, under the town hall. Those were the days. The dances at the town Hall.  I used to sit in the bay window of my parents' bedroom above the cake shop and stare at everyone dancing.  I could see straight into the hall.   

There were the Smith's of Park Lane.  Dick Goliah used to take care of a few acres up Park Lane, about a mile further up the lane from the Smiths.  We used to set up hay bales and jump them on the ponies.  The Smith's were a wonderful family and what a quaint old cottage - which is still there. I can remember visiting with my parents, dad used to go shooting with Henry Smith and Henry's two sisters, Lizzie and Nellie, used to work at the bakery.  Henry's mother would pour me a glass of lemonade and then put sugar into it to make it fizz more!  Hmmmm.

Dad used to come home after hunting around Lodge Hill with Henry and occasionally Dick, with hares, pheasants and rabbits.  The good life!  I could clean and skin a rabbit at 15!  I wonder how many teenagers can do that now.

Dick Goliah helped me school a pony to a trap in the 70's.  That was when I was a bit older of course and he lived on a farm behind the now Golf Course.

When I was working in Newport I visited a second hand shop and in it was an Italian man trying to locate the old prisoner of war camp at Sheriffhales.   I spoke to him and offered him a lift to show him the old camp, which at that stage was still there and not very different from after the war either!   During our conversations he mentioned Dick Goliath, and Henry, Lizzie and Nellie Smith - so I took him on a visit to his old 'friends'.  He worked on that farm behind the golf course during the war when he was a prisoner.  

So many memories, I really must write them down.  The Elizabethan Restaurant was where The Old Nell is now.  When it was converted to a restaurant in around 1970 they found mumified rats from the great fire, they also found measuring weights for when they used to weigh money.

So many old buildings in Shifnal have been taken down in the name of progress. What a pity - memories are now all we have.

Jane Keef (Humphries)
Wellington, New Zealand.