Memories of Shifnal
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Shifnal, the Broadway c1965
Ref: S117027
does anyone remember Alice Amy Robinson
Does anyone remember Alice Amy Robinson or any of the Robinsons, who lived at 33 Broadway Shifnal during the war? I would love any memories of them. Thankyou, Barbara Madeline de Havilland (formerly known as Margaret Robinson)
Shared on Monday, July 13, 2009
Shifnal, the White Hart 1898
Ref: 41829
Do you have any photos of the Womens Land Army Hostel in 1946?
Shared on Sunday, April 05, 2009
This is a follow on from my earlier memory - Christmas in Shifnal. What a wonderful time. I can remember it snowing at Christmas time as a child, and sitting in the bay window of our flat above the cakeshop and toyshop at 4 Bradford Street watching the carol singers sitting on the back of a truck travelling along Bradford Street to wherever they would stop and sing carols.
I can remember the Mason's, they were butchers at No 2 Bradford Street. I played there quite a lot as a child. One day David Mason (the same age as myself) and I played (in the very early 1950s) in the storeroom and thought it a great hoot to tip cornflakes all over the floor and jump on them so they crunched! Boy, were we in trouble! I don't know where David is now but would love to catch up. My dad used to cook ham and beef for the Mason's to sell in their butcher's shop, which was also a sort of deli. The meat would be cooked in the bakery ovens.
The ovens at the bakery were coalfired with coke. I saw that the bakery building is still there when I visited last year - needless to say though it is not a bakery any more. When Lloyd's shut up shop in about the late 1960s the bakery was no more! Above the ovens and coke store was the salt store. This is where dad used to cure the hams - yes, we kept pigs on the premises. This oould perhaps not be considered hygenic now, but the pigs were at the end of the garden, which is where the car park is now by the village hall. It was a very big garden. At that time all food scraps fed to pigs had to be cooked, and we had a large (can't remember what they are called) copper that dad used to cook the left-over cakes etc in for the pigs.
Our flat above the cake shop was a large 3 bedroomed flat. No 4 Bradford Street was 3 storeys high (including ground floor). The top storey was closed off as my parents felt it was unsafe for us kids. However, because we were told it was unsafe, we would always try and get up there when our parents weren't watching. What an amazing place it was. The attic, as we called it, housed pigeons during the war and the pigeon-holes were still there, I can remember them clearly. On my bedroom door there was an embossed sign reading 'Quartermaster'. We were quite sure there was a ghost living in the attic as we heard someone walking around up there quite often. As to whether this is true or not I don't know. But when they knocked the place down in the late 1960s my father said "Well, that's got rid of the ghost for good". The story is that a man jumped out of the top storey window to his death, breaking his neck. Is it true? - I have no idea.
Has anyone managed to find the hollow stone in the church wall in Church Street? As children walking home from the Innage School we used to knock the stone to hear the hollow sound. We dreamed of hidden treasures - hmmm! The stone is still there. I knocked it myself a couple of years ago!
What about the supposed hidden passage that went from The Jerningham Arms to the church and then on to the Manor House? Was that ever true? I heard that a passage was found at the Jerningham Arms and that it had been blocked up. I know nothing else but would love to know more. Does anyone know more?
Whatever happened to the dig that went on in the field behind The Vicarage where the Manor Estate is now. The dig was circular and if you stood in the vicarage garden and faced outwards across the paddock the dig would have been set at around 2 o'clock. I can remember a set of sandstone steps that were found leading to nowhere. Around this dig there was certainly a large ditch, certainly it looked like a moat. All this gone, is there any record anywhere?
At the end of the drive that leads to The Manor, there is a semi. It is surrounded by trees, but years ago when I was a little girl there were lots of trees and amongst these trees there was an air-raid shelter. I used to play in the shelter. It was doug into the ground and had corrugated sheeting over the top. It was dark, damp and very smelly. Does anyone else remember that?
Small memories and questions unanswered - can anyone help?
Shared on Monday, March 16, 2009
Shifnal, the Broadway c1965
Ref: S117027
I miss Shifnal and have very happy fond memories.
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.
Shared on Friday, February 27, 2009
Shifnal, the Broadway c1965
Ref: S117027
My Grandmother Mrs E M Goliah had a general stores on Broadway I believe it was sold circa 1956 due to ill health, I believe it was an Elizabethan style property, and was next door to Cheadles, the 'clock' shop. The property no longer exists due to 'redevelopment'
Shared on Tuesday, November 07, 2006
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