Another Memory

A Memory of Shifnal.

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?
 

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