Christmas in Shrewsbury's Indoor Market

Today is slightly better - the sun is shining and the rain's holding off - but yesterday's rain and lashing wind didn't make for happy shoppers. Even in Waitrose and M & S, out of the stormy weather, shoppers failed to look happy.  There was one place in town, however, where the festive spirit was in good supply. Welcome to Shrewsbury's indoor market, one of my favourite places in town.   

Good morning Susan of Pengwern Books, with customer and local resident, Geoff Hardy.  Good to see you looking like you're having fun.

Good morning Carla Risden of Compost & Gooseberry.  Great to see you selling Linda Edwards' lovely cards and prints.

Good morning Birds' Nest Boys - every day of the year your cafe feels like Christmas but now even more so. Thanks for a year of twinkling lights.   

Good morning Ian, of Barkworth's Seafoods.  Your seasonal platters look great. Almost a year ago, Kate Gittings said I should taste your cooked mackerel. You had a real way with mackerel, she said - but I haven't got round to it yet.

Good morning Jean Jones of Antiques & Collectibles. If you're selling a nice piece of Coalport, I'll more than often pick it up, and I've meant to write about you all year long, but it's been a busy year and this, I'm sorry to say, is as close as I've got.

Shrewsbury market has everything from fresh dates to dressed crab, oysters and champagne to coffee and cake, free-from biscuits to home-made chocolates [good morning Julia], books [second hand books and records too], to turkeys, quails [and quail eggs] and even a choice of mobility scooters. You want a new rug? Give the market a try. You need a haircut? Carla's daughter will give you one and she'll give you a shave as well because she runs a proper cut throat barber shop, one of just a handful in the county. And what about Christmas - just about everything you could think of is right here at hand. Shrewsbury's indoor market, with its butchers, greengrocers, florists, fishmonger, pie-men and delicatessen is the place to come.

My Tonight From Shrewsbury could have devoted its entire year to writing about Shrewsbury market, its stallholders and its bustling life.  Every stall has its story. It would have been great to tell them all.  This isn't one of those synthetic pop-up markets you get in city centres with imitation log cabin-type bars with plastic windows, German sausages and beer at £4 a pint. This is a proper market. A market operating at the heart of town life, with a distinguished history and a future too. Happy Christmas, Shrewsbury Market.  Thank you for another great year.

Friday the 13th: One Of Those Days

Today has been One of Those Days.  Mostly I’ve written about Shrewsbury in a positive light, not because I’m trying to paint a false picture, but because it really is a lovely town and living in it is a privilege.  

Today, however, everything has been different.  Turned upside down somehow.  It rained.  So what, I hear you say. But the rain came every time I stepped out of my car, and stopped every time I got into it.  I felt targeted.  It was heavy rain.  Shrewsbury didn’t look so pretty in the heavy rain.  I took no photographs, so you’ll have to trust me on that.

Today was a day of car trips. There were items of furniture that needed moving and cleaning jobs that wouldn’t wait, involving the transporting of vacuum cleaner, mop, bucket, cleaning products and all the rest by car. Behind all this activity was a property to empty out before new tenants moved in. Decorating equipment had to be removed, and all other personal items. Then, when that was finished, Christmas pre-shopping in Morrisons needed to be done, and then a heaving car load of items needed unloading at my house, which involved parking in town and hoping the traffic wardens would recognize [which they don’t always, I’m sorry to say] the difference between a recklessly parked car and one that was part of a loading/unloading process. 

In addition, back and forth a general braving of traffic needed to be done.  Every entrance to the town [and in my travels today I tried them all] was clogged with traffic.  It was One Of Those Days. 

Finally all the contents of my car were stacked up in my hall and kitchen, making it hard to get from one to the other.  I drove my car to its parking place ten minutes’ walk from my house. [You’ll know, if you live in a town centre yourselves, that you rarely can park outside your house.]  I walked home, yes, in the rain.  Shrewsbury did not look beautiful.  I unlocked my front door. My hall did not look beautiful, neither did my kitchen when I staggered through into it. I’ve always thought I live in a rather elegant house, not only a house with a history, but one that’s a delight to live on a daily basis.  But not on this day. 

What would you have done next?  I had two choices, it seemed to me.  Either start unpacking and finding homes for everything – or go to the cinema. And that’s exactly what I did.  It was a f***k it sort of day. Besides, ever since I started writing My Tonight From Shrewsbury I’ve been meaning to write about the town’s third ‘secret’ market hall - and the cinema is it. 

Who’d think that a beautiful old market hall standing in the middle of a medieval square would house a cinema?  It certainly doesn’t look like a cinema until you get close up and see the posters behind the glass. Shrewsbury’s Old Market Hall cinema surely has to be the oldest cinema in the country.  I once visited a cinema in a tithe barn down in Dartington, Devon.  But the Old Market Hall goes back earlier than that.

Enough of history, however.  Today was enough for me – or at least switching off from it.  I stomped down Pride Hill [in the rain], passing the Big Issue girl and the various buskers without a hint of a smile.  The film was going to be half over, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know what film it was, but I didn’t care about that either.  I would care, though, if it was sold out and I had to stomp back up the hill. 

When I arrived, however, to my astonishment, given how late in the afternoon it was, the film was due to start in just five minutes. Not only that, but it was ‘Saving Mr Banks’ with Tom Hanks [never much cared for him] and Emma Thompson – a film I’d already told myself I wanted to see over the Christmas holidays because it was about the children’s writer, P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins.

Was the day turning? And my luck too [not that I've any time for luck]. I thought it just about might be until I sank into my seat and the film began and, just when I should have been relaxing and enjoying myself, the awful thought came to me that I had forgotten something in my diary, which I’d left at home.  A date with somebody.  An interview for My Tonight From Shrewsbury.  Somebody was going to be knocking on my door, or sitting in a pub somewhere, and I had forgotten them.  Not only that, but I’d left blackcurrant sorbet in one of my shopping bags when it should have gone straight into the freezer. When I got home it was going to have melted. How would I explain myself if anybody knew what I'd been up to?  My behaviour today had been nothing short of eccentric. People were going to think [I was thinking] that I must be heading for dementia.

Weirdly, the sorbet worried my every bit as much as the forgotten interviewee.  I hardly took in the film, except to notice that Tom Hanks gave a surprisingly good performance, and to wish I had it in me to be as ascerbic on occasions as Emma Thompson’s P.L. Travers.  It certainly got things done.

After the film, dragging my heels through the Old Market Hall’s lovely bar and coffee shop, then back up Pride Hill in yet another shower of rain, I fretted about arriving home, opening my diary, finding out, shock, horror, what I’d missed. When I did get home, the sorbet, astonishingly, had held its shape.  And the diary was empty - as empty as it had been that morning when I’d checked to see what needed to be done.

I had ruined my cinema trip for nothing.  It was around that time I discovered that this was Friday the 13^th.  I’m not normally a superstitious but I thought of course. Certainly it raised the second smile of the day.

The first smile, however - and the bigger one, came when I hit Castle Street and found that a new Shrewsbury Ark charity shop would soon be opening in one of the empty units just past H & M.  I went into the Ark earlier this year and interviewed its manager, Tim Compton, for My Tonight From Shrewsbury.  The work they’re doing there amongst the homeless and more vulnerable people in our town is second to none.  I was thrilled to see the big empty shop with a Shrewsbury Ark sign up, and a Christmas tree in the window and a board telling me to watch this space.  I would, I thought. Not only that, but I had a few spare belongings that I just might pass their way.

Shopping

The sausages are on. The sandwich boxes are open on the work surface under the crystal chandeliers. The rolls are being buttered. The porridge should be in the oven for the B & B guests, but it isn’t yet.  Mae appears and collects her box.  She pulls on her blue duffle coat, dons her helmet, gets on her bike and sets off for school.  Charlie’s still in pyjamas, sneaking back to bed with a slice of toast for a bit more telly before he officially gets up.  Bethan will appear later, but she doesn’t have to be up as early as the other two, or as early as their mum, Sarah Hopper of Ferndell B & B.

Ferndell sits on the corner of Underdale Road, looking across the park towards the river, with the spires and towers of Shrewsbury town rising up in the middle distance.  It’s a fine old house with a lovely view, a light and airy kitchen and a lovely old Aga that, though this house doesn't need it, add that extra bit of 'heart'. 

I’m sitting tucked away in one of the window seats - a breakfast guest who’s trying to pretend that she's awake.  Sarah, on the other hand, is really awake. She has work surfaces cleared, table laid,  porridge now on, bacon on, and washing up packed away in the dish-washer. ‘Because these particular guests have been here so many times,' she says, 'it’s easy to slip into the habit of thinking it doesn’t matter because they’re friends. But it does matter.  Every single time it matters.’

As if the mention of guests has called them forth, suddenly we hear voices on the stairs.  The girls, as Sarah calls them, are talking to Sarah's oldest daughter, sixteen-year-old Bethan. Sarah slides the kettle onto the hob. The porridge comes out of the oven in its cast-iron pot. The bacon is cooked. The eggs are at the ready. The door opens and into the kitchen come sisters, Diane and Sandy, followed by Bethan who is ready to leave for college.  ‘Don’t you talk to boys.  They’re dangerous,’ says Diane.  ‘I don’t talk to boys. I’ve got a boyfriend,’ Bethan replies.  ‘Well, don’t talk to boys who aren’t your boyfriend,’ Diane jokes.

Diane knows what she's talking about, I'm guessing. She should do, she’s a mum herself.  No sooner have she and Sandy settled at the breakfast table, then daughter, Sarah [yes, another Sarah] comes through the door. On crutches.  Daughter Sarah has broken her leg. She fell downstairs [no, not at Ferndell], her leg’s in a brace and in a couple of weeks time it might need operating on. Even so, nothing is going to come between her - or indeed her mother and aunt - and shopping.

Shopping's what Ferndell's latest guests are here to do.   Christmas is only a month away. They live out in Wales where there's little access to shops.  They've left partners at home and taken  time off work to come to Shrewsbury in Sandy's van, which by tonight they will have packed.

Breakfast arrives at the table, along with tea and coffee. The food looks good, but whilst we're all eating the chatter scarcely stops.  Sandy laments the loss of Woolworths.  She’s been shopping in Shrewsbury for years and knows exactly what’s where, what's changed and what's new.  Diane and Daughter Sarah live in Denbigh, but Sandy lives out in wild Wales and it's these occasional shopping trips that keep her, Diane and Sarah in touch.  

Coming here on trips to Shrewsbury is a real treat for them.  It’s not just about the shopping.  It’s their chance to meet up, have a laugh and a bit of fun. ‘We do the same at Chatsworth,’ Sandy says.  ‘Three days at the County Fair. It's great. Life's so busy, we’d hardly see each other otherwise.'  

Once the Denbigh Three used to stay at the Shrewsbury Hotel, but since they’ve found Ferndell there's no way they'll go anywhere else.  ‘We love it here,’ says Diane.  ‘Can’t praise it highly enough.  We’re made to feel so welcome and at home.’

Ferndell Sarah beams. Plainly she's pleased to hear them say that.  She hovers in the background making toast, scrambling eggs, refilling tea and coffee pots.  You hardly notice what she’s doing, but it never stops.  I wish I could be that energetic first thing in the morning.  The Denbigh Three seem pretty energetic too – and that’s despite their big day yesterday.   ‘Do you know,’ announces Diane proudly, ‘We shopped for thirteen hours solid and only went round five shops.’

The Range at Harlscott is a big favourite of the Denbigh Three, and whilst they're out that way Tesco gets a look in too. Then, in the Darwin Centre [Shrewsbury town centre's biggest shopping mall], Poundland and Home Bargains are both a hit.  Best of all, however, down below the Darwin Centre in the multi-storey car park is Shopmobililty, where yesterday Sarah abandoned her crutches for a mobility scooter, which enabled her to shop all over the town centre.

‘It was wonderful down there,’ she says.  ‘The people were so helpful and all the scooters had names.  They sat me on them until I found one that felt right.  They’re a charity-based company, you know.  You pay just a small fee for a whole day out, and add whatever else you feel like as a donation.  You can even park your car down there.  Shopping with a broken leg couldn’t be made easier.’

Today the Denbigh Three are planning to hit Shrewsbury’s little shops.  They’ve done the Darwin Centre and the out-of-town retail units.  Now they’re looking forward to going up and down the passageways and alleys and visiting all the little independents for which Shrewsbury town centre is so well known.  Then tonight, when they’re all shopped out, they’ll head off to the cinema on Old Pott’s Way and enjoy a meal together too.

‘We do the same sort of thing every year,’ says Sandy.  ‘Last year we had a Chinese, but this year we're going to the Pizza Hut next to Sainsbury's. We hear good things about them in there.  I’m vegan, and not easy to feed.  But we hear they're good at talking through vegan options, so we'll give them a go.' 

Sandy is vegan for ethical reasons.  She has a great love of animals, as witnessed by her seven cats and six dogs.  Many of the dogs come from a rescue home in Cyprus.  Anybody else would return from their holiday weighed down with excess baggage, but Sandy came home from Cyprus with excess dogs.  Three of them, to be precise, signed for and due to be sent to her home address  over the following few months - not to say anything of another one who arrived later as a ‘present’ from the refuge.

Sandy works for a local authority.  Diane manages the agency European Lifestyle, which also comes under the auspices of the local authority, and supports individuals living in their own homes with mental health issues.

Daughter Sarah works in the same agency.  As a support care worker she goes into college with clients and gets involved in their interests and activities, including music and drama. This year she’ll be a fairy in the pantomime, so has just gone out and bought some fairy-lights. Next September she’ll be going to college to study to become a primary school teacher. I can just see her as a primary school teacher.

Daughter Sarah’s also a musician, singing, playing the guitar, writing her own material, loving the blues and jazz.  I can just see her doing that too.  There’s something about her – you can tell she’s got a great voice. Sometimes she performs with her dad, who’s a comedian and entertainer, well-known across Denbighshire.  Next week the two of them are putting on a gig to raise funds for the typhoon-struck Philippines. 

All too quickly the plates empty and the coffee and tea cups are drained.  It's been a great breakfast, but for the Denbigh Three, shopping lies ahead.  They get to their feet. Hats off to Daughter Sarah for facing the challenge.  I’ve been on crutches myself, and know how tricky having a broken leg can be.  

Hats off to all of them, facing the biggest shop of the year, Christmas done and dusted all in one go. And hats off to Ferndell Sarah too, who's quietly clearing up. Suddenly her guests are about to depart.  I take one last photograph and then that’s it, except that Diane pauses to stress that it’s not just Shrewsbury that brings them back, but Ferndell Sarah and her family.  ‘We could have ended up doing shopping trips in any one of a number of town,’ says Diane, ‘but Sarah, Stuart and their children make us feel like family. And Shrewsbury people in general are so friendly. When we come here we just feel at home.’

They’re gone. Front door shut. Revving of engine as van pulls away. Suddenly it’s quiet in the kitchen. Time for a fresh coffee.  Cake in the oven.  Breakfast cleared up. Sarah shows no sign of slowing down.  I’ve met her before on the river path on her bike. I know what a powerhouse of energy she can be. 

It's time to go as well, but before I do there are a couple of questions I want to ask, first of which is how Sarah got into the B & B business in the first place. Stuart’s parents ran one, she says. Then, one time when Stu's father became ill, she, Stuart and his sister stepped in to hold the fort.  It was a bit of a battle in the kitchen over who did what.  Sarah put herself front of house, talking to the guests, making them comfortable, taking their money when they left.  She was good at it. Being nice to people and making sure they had a good meal was right up her street.

Sarah understood what was needed. A house with kerb appeal helped.  So, she reckoned, did having one big table for all her guests to sit round rather than little tables dotted about.  ‘I sat like that once,’ she said. ‘It was at a B & B down in Bath.  There were US businessmen at that table, families with young kids and me, all round the one table.  It made for a lovely atmosphere.’

I want to know about the art classes that Ferndell’s been hosting recently.  Back in the summer Sarah invited two local painters, Roger Keeling and Louise Diggle, to put on an Open Studio.  Since then Louise has been running once-a-month beginner’s watercolour classes.  Every month the best work is framed and put up for sale amongst the other paintings round the house.  Any that sell go fifty percent to the artist, fifty percent to the Shrewsbury Hospice.  

‘People love it,’ Sarah says.  ‘We do it in the kitchen because it has such good light. The next one is tomorrow, December 5^th. I’ve made some gift vouchers for the sessions next year.  The whole thing is light-hearted, simple and basic.  It’s a relaxed fun day.’

In addition, Sarah’s preparing for a wreath-making workshop with Joyce of Lulu Flowers.  From the end of November, things go quiet on the B & B front. Over the winter Sarah does what she can to use Ferndell in other ways.

Anything else, I wonder, before I leave.  There's the new website.  Sarah says, which has only been up and running for the last couple of weeks. Paul at Virtual Shropshire did it for Ferndell for at an astonishingly competitive price.  Sarah says she’d like to put out an occasional newsletter too, so that all her visitors and enquirers know how things are going at Ferndell and any changes that are taking place.

I get up to take a few photographs.  There’s a lot of stained glass in Sarah’s house, and some lovely gothic doors, lovingly stripped by Stuart, who stripped the beautiful oak staircase too.

I could ramble all over the house taking pictures of pictures, or of all the little nooks and crannies.  But Sarah's expecting the arrival of another visitor soon, and though she says to stay I’m fortified by coffee now, my energy levels are up and I’m ready to face the day.  

Thanks for breakfast, Sarah. That was great.  Thanks, too, for all the encouragement you’ve given me over the year.  A whole host of people have followed this blog, and told me they love it and encouraged me.  But you, tweeting as @ferndell-b&b, along with our mutual pal @shroppiemon have been the icing on my Shrewsbury cake.

 [Which reminds me - note to self – wasn’t I going to do a post on the recipe for the famous Shrewsbury Cake?]

Shrewsbury Antiques Market

It turns out it's not the Shrewsbury Antiques Market after all. All these years that's what I've been calling it, but if you look on the door it's the Shrewsbury Antiques Centre. Even so, I'll always think of it as one of three hidden markets in Shrewsbury.  If you don't know what you're looking for you could easily miss it. Its entrance is tucked round the back of Princess House, almost opposite to Candle Lane Books, virtually out of sight behind the Jobs Centre.  A veritable treasure house lies underground, but all that hints to it is a pair of glazed doors and steps leading down. Go down those steps, however, and you'll find yourself in a vast underground cavern with antiques and bric-a-brac stretching away in every direction – a cornucopia of collectibles, with always more to rummage through and something new to find. 

I know what I’m talking about here. I’ve been mooching about in the Shrewsbury Antiques Centre for the past thirty years, which makes me almost a lifelong customer because next year SAC will be celebrating its 30th anniversary. The Antique Centre was set up in 1984 by John Lanford, assisted by Matt Smith who, after John died, took up the reins. For those who knew it was there, it proved to be a magnet. Over the years that number has grown too, and now, especially with the current interest in all things nostalgic, the Antiques Centre is a significant part of the town’s tourist trail.  

You’ll find everything down there from fine Coalport cups to costume jewellery, Victoriana - including household items and old toys - to military memorabilia, vintage clothing to furniture. Paintings. Prints. Old cutlery. Old rugs. China. Glass. Kitchen ware. Fishing gear. I could go on.

Some people reckon the basement was originally used as holding cells by the police – that it’s a massive underground dungeon where rumours of ghosts abound.  I was talking about this the other day to John Allen, and he said in all his time down there, both as stall-holder and helping to run the place, he’d seen no ghosts. He had heard, though, that the basement was once conceived as a nightclub, and could well believe that this was true. Structurally, however, the place was much the same today it had been thirty years ago when John Lanford first opened up.   

Currently there are one hundred stall-holders occupying twenty stalls and a variety of cabinets.  For many years those stall-holders remained unchanged. You’d always know what you’d find when you went into the Antique Centre – here vintage clothes, there  furniture, there coins and silverware, here tin biscuit boxes, prints, etc.  Now, however, a wind of change is blowing through the place, with older stall-holders stepping down - some moving on to opening their own shops - and new stall-holders trying their hand. 

The key to becoming a successful collector, according to John Allen, is to always buy quality. And the key to becoming a successful seller is to find things that people didn't have but would like to, given the chance.  ‘If it’s quirky, different and priced well, it will sell,’ John said. 

John Allen knows what he’s talking about. On the one hand he’s a collector with an interest in fine art, especially that of northern artists. On the other hand he’s a stall-holder who has come to selling for 'a bit of fun' after a life in business. It takes a while to get the hang of running a stall, he said. You need to give yourself time once you've set up. Time to find our what sells, and at what price.  You need to understand your market.  You can’t just sell at Miller catalogue prices. It doesn’t work like that. And you have to expect people to try their hand at haggling too.  The deferential ‘Antiques Roadshow’ attitude to pricing is over.  'It’s all 'Bargain Hunt’ nowadays,' said John.  'It’s all what’s the best price you can do? and I’ll give your £2.50 for that. People will haggle over pennies.'

I wanted to know if theft was a problem in SAC. If it was a Birmingham antiques centre, John said, there would be a security guard on the door. But a far larger problem in Shrewsbury came from people picking things up on one stall and discarding them on another when they changed their mind.  ‘Mostly when things go missing, that’s the reason why,’ John said.

Currently the Shrewbury Antiques Centre sees about five hundred customers a day – not bad for an outlet without a shop front. I was interested to know what difference eBay had made to customer figures.  John reckoned its effect was minimal. ‘Ebay provides our customers with an instant price list,’ he said. ‘There’s that. But it can’t compete in terms of seeing items and actually handling them. That’s something the internet can never match.  There are some things you’ll get online that we don’t sell much of – gold, for example – but, when it comes to customer service, a real antiques market rather than a virtual one is hard to beat.’

If there’s something that you want, the Shrewsbury Antiques Centre will put it into their ‘wanted’ book and look out for it on your behalf. They'd found some fascinating items over the years. People’s choices were often inexplicable, John said. There was the young collector of vinyl, he remembered, who couldn’t begin to explain why he wanted a record by the West Midlands Police Choir, and a student looking for a costume for a party who’d no idea what the letters SS stood for.

There have been some amusing moments over the years, and some famous faces browsing quietly amongst the stalls. One night, shortly after Matt had switched off the lights and set the alarm for the evening, a shriek was heard from the bowels of the building and it became apparent that Matt was about to lock in no less than the musical icon that is Jules Holland. Plainly this is a business where you never know what - or who - will happen next.. 

And it's a good business to get into. John said that with interest rates low, along with the current price of antiques, now was a good time for young people to start in the business of buying and selling. The Antiques Centre charges £28 per week per stall and £9.50 per week for a cabinet, which is nothing compared to the risk of taking on a shop. ‘Just a shelf in a cabinet is a good first move,’ John said.  ‘There’s a quiet evolution taking place in the Shrewsbury Antiques Centre at the moment, with room for fresh faces and fresh ideas.’

The Shrewsbury Antiques Centre is big enough to lose yourself in, to know you won’t be jumped on or ‘talked’ into a purchase, yet intimate enough to know the help is there if you want it.  Donna’s great in that respect. Then there’s Sandra or John, Matt or Damon. The faces behind the desk remain more or less unchanged.  Raisa the dog has gone, sadly, but Mavis has come in her place.  Raisa's paws have been hard to fill, but Mavis is doggedly giving it all she's got. She's the Antique Centre's much loved - if not notorious - mascot, who has her own fan club and receives mail from as far afield as the US. 

Mavis is currently awaiting puppies, due on Armistice Day.  Perhaps a post on that grand occasion wouldn't go amiss - especially as My Tonight From Shrewsbury's 'Great Dogs of Shrewsbury' series is looking woefully thin.

Next year, as part of their 30^th anniversary celebration, Shrewsbury Antiques Centre will be fund-raising for a cause of value to us all here in Shropshire - the Air Ambulance Service.  This December, for the first time, it’ll be open on Wednesday evenings for late-night Christmas shopping. If you’ve never taken a trip in time through its doors and down its steps, this could be your chance. 

PS. If you want to know about the other hidden markets I mentioned above, one is the indoor market upstairs in the 1960's market hall, which I’ve already written about on this blog, and will again, I’m sure, because Christmas in that market is a wonder to behold. The other is the Old Market Hall in the Square, which is as unlikely a setting for a cinema as you could hope to find, and I'll be writing  about that too,  later this month.

C.R. Birch & Son

I’ve been shopping in Birch’s since the week I first became a home owner.  I’d bought a cottage out at Worthen in need of repair, with a large, sprawling garden. It was to Birch's I came for hammers, nails, buckets, brooms, paraffin and garden tools. I was a young woman then, without any children, and now I’m a grandmother. It’s thirty-seven since I first shopped in Birch’s, and to me it hasn’t changed a bit. But that’s not how Margaruite Birch tells it. 

‘The day the cattle market closed,’ she said, ‘everything changed, the whole town - and that included Birch’s. Tuesday was always the big day. The highlight of the week. There’d be coach loads of people coming in from the country. The town would be heaving. We had the exit to the market opposite our shop. The farmers wives would come in and leave their baskets with us, then go off up Pride Hill to enjoy themselves. At the end of the day, they’d collect their baskets and go round the back of the Raven Hotel to be meet up with their husbands and get a lift back home.'

Back in those days, C.R. Birch & Son primarily served the farming community. It sold TVO [tractor vaporizing oil, to you and me], diesel and paraffin. Its tanker went around the farms. In the shop at the bottom of Roushill, it sold hay forks, pig troughs, soft soap in buckets, mothballs [for keeping mice out of the combine harvesters and protecting the leather seats of vintage cars] brummocks [look ‘em up on Google if you don’t know] and thistle podgers.  It also sold leather horse gear and saddlery.

Charlie Birch bred champion trotting horses. In the Birch’s inner sanctum, at the back of the shop, the walls are dotted with photographs of Charlie and his horses.  His favourite, Countess Dewey, became Champion of Great Britain for three years, 1933-35, and over twenty years later, in 1957, Charlie won the GB championship with Miss Azoff on a trotting race-course near Edinburgh. For many years, the magnificent silver cup he brought home with him resided in the front of the shop for Birch’s customers to see.

Charlie, known in the family as Pop, started C.R. Birch & Son in 1909 – in other words a staggering 104 years ago - renting what had been the blacksmith’s business of Messrs John and Thomas Jones [which in its turn went back to the early 1800s at least] and turning it into a shop.  Interestingly, the shop stands on the site of the old town wall, one half on what would have been one side of the wall, the other half of the shop on the other.  

By 1922, so successful was Charlie’s business that he was able to buy the property outright, and it’s remained in the family ever since. His sons Richard and Gordon joined him in the business. When Charlie died in 1959, Gordon continued with it until his own unexpected death, at the age of 52, in 1972.

‘Charlie was my father-in-law,’ Margaruite said.  ‘I married into the family and Gordon and I had two sons, Peter and Christopher. Gordon ran the business with the help of Arthur Dixon, Pop’s half brother, who had worked alongside him for many years. The business didn’t feature domestic hardwear and garden products, like it does now, until the Sixties when the cattle market and auction yard moved to their new site at Harlescott, taking the farming community with it.  Gordon was a wonderful man. Wonderful. After he’d gone I took over the business.’

Gordon would be proud of what Margaruite has achieved, still working in the shop forty-one years later, and so would Pop.  Margaruite said that, at first, working in Birch’s was a matter of being thrown in at the deep end.  ‘There I was with Peter and Christopher,’ she said,  ‘knowing next to nothing about running a business.  But the boys came in with me as they finished college, first Peter and then Christopher. And the customers were wonderful.  I don’t know what I would have done without them. Particularly the old farmers - they knew where everything was, and they told me. And then, of course, there was Freda.’

According to Margaruite, Freda Middle is an ‘honourary Birch’.  She came straight from school in Bishop’s Castle in 1960, and works in Birch’s to this day.  There was a sense of harmony about the business, she, Freda and Peter all agreed, and it was to do with how well they all knew each other, and knew the business.

‘We have some wonderful memories,’ said Margaruite.  ‘Like the time a pig got out of the market and came rushing through the shop.  It crossed Smithfield Road, leapt into the river, swam across it - which is how I know that pigs can swim - and tried to get away across the grazing fields of Frankwell.  I’ll never forget the drovers chasing after it.  There was no footbridge then, so they had to go round by the Welsh Bridge.  That wasn’t the only time, either, that we had animals in the shop.  It happened a number of times.’

While Margaruite was talking, a little man came into the shop and asked for a glass of water. Peter fetched him one.  They shared a few words about the weather. The man drained his glass. ‘Do you feel better for that?’ Peter said.  The man nodded and left, Peter extracting the glass from him on the way out.  ‘He comes in sometimes for chocolates,’ Margaruite said. ‘I don’t think he has a clue where he is. But then over the years we’ve seen so many funny people. Only the other week we had a man come in asking for a chamber pot.  We didn’t have one, and he’d already tried Rackhams with no success.  His bladder was weak, he said, and his feet didn’t work, so we sold him a bucket with a lid.  It would hold more than a chamber pot, we said.’

Margaruite’s a great mimic.  When she tells a story, you can hear the voices as she remembers them.  Like the man who had a mouse come for breakfast every day, grapes and digestive biscuits.  He was a very nice mouse, the man said, but now he was bringing his family with him and plainly the man couldn’t feed them all. They had to go. Could Birch’s help?

Margaruite has a stack of mouse stories. They all seem to involve people of kind disposition towards the little creatures cosied up in their homes. Take Mr Kershaw of School Gardens, who couldn’t bear to kill the mouse that visited his balcony, so wanted a trap to catch it humanely.  Every day he caught it, removed it as far as the greenery and tipped it out, but then next day there would be another mouse until finally, he admitted to Freda, he was overrun. ‘Have you considered that it might be the same mouse?’ suggested Freda.  The man hadn’t, but next time he caught a mouse he branded it with a dash of paint.  The next time they saw him, he was in a real temper. 'That mouse!  I've caught it forty-five times!' he said.

Then there was the lady, very Welsh, who rang up with a problem.  ‘Oh, Mr Birch,  have you got a piece of wood, 36” x 4”, for the bottom of my bedroom door?’ ‘Do you want a draught excluder?’ asked Christopher. ‘No,’ said she. ‘I’ll tell you what it is.  I was in bed and I felt a wriggling on my back.  I turned over, and it was still there. I got out of bed, and a mouse shot out of my nightie.  Well, I don’t want to kill it.  It has a right to life.  That’s why I want the wood.  To stop it coming back.’  Result:  Christopher drove out to nail wood to bottom of bedroom door.

Driving out to attend to people’s needs seemed to be part and parcel of Birch’s service to its customers.  ‘There was an old couple by the name of Minshall,’ Margaruite said. ‘He was blind and she was dizzy, but they mostly got along all right.'  One time, though, they phoned the shop in a bit of a state. Where’s the lad, they wanted to know.  'We need him, see.' Why did they need him, Margaruite asked. They were locked out of their house, they said.  They wanted him to break in.  But he mustn’t break the glass. And he didn’t. ‘The lad’ undid a latch and squeezed in through a window. All part of the Birch’s service.

‘We miss the old farmers,’ Margaruite said.  ‘For a few years after the market closed, the wives still came in leaving their baskets at the shop. This continued until the older generation had gone. We miss the equine business too. When Pop started Birch’s he used to make cart greases, and embrocation for the horses.  You’d see him in the shop cleaning harnesses. We sold all sorts of riding equipment, both for working horses and leisure ones. Pop’s red, white and blue halters were for full-sized horses, red striped ones for cobs and blue ones for ponies. Some of them are still hanging up in the back of the shop to this day, but the riding schools started selling cheaper gear from India and China and mostly we gave up.’

Back in those days, the area up from Birches towards the Mardol and Pride Hill was a buzzing hive of activity. Next door to Birches, where the new flats are now, stood a maltings. Then there was the Queen’s Hotel, whose large car park was packed on market days. Then up Roushill Bank was Mr Ryden, the saddler. Then there was the brush factory, then the corn people selling seed to the farmers.  Then there were the two pubs, the Sun and the Horshoes on opposite corners. The actors from the theatre [now the Granada Bingo] used to stay at the Horseshoes. Their shows were wonderful, Margaruite said, and the theatre had a wonderful restaurant. But now all of that was gone. So much was gone, she said.

‘I remember the blind man who used to sit outside the row of cottages up Roushill,’ Margaruite said, ‘making wicker baskets. Back in those days, I remember Bythell’s Passage coming out on Pride Hill next to Mac Fisheries.  That got knocked down, like the Old Mint.  And I remember standing on Pride Hill, looking all the way down the Seventy Steps towards the river at the bottom. Then, with the building of the Darwin Shopping Centre, the Seventy Steps went too.’

We both agreed that nobody in their right mind would want to go down the current covered walkway with its nasty blind corners, that replaced the Seventy Steps. ‘I’ll tell you one thing that hasn’t changed though,’ Margaruite said, ‘and that’s the river. It still floods.’

C.R. Birch & Son sits right in the middle of what was once flood plain marshland. Today there are flood defenses guarding Frankwell Quay, but none on the town side of the river. ‘Everything has to go upstairs,’ Margaruite said. ‘It’s a tried and tested routine. We hose the place down afterwards and wait for it to dry, then everything comes down again.’

When Gordon died, he left behind a file on flooding compiled by Pop, detailing the best procedure for avoiding damage.  This perfectly highlights the continuity that is one of Birch’s great strengths.  When Margaruite and her boys took on the business, they found cupboards and files full of fastidious notes, including Pop’s accounting system, which was easy to pick up.

What did Birch’s have to offer that its modern out-of-town superstore competitors couldn’t provide? That’s what I asked Margaruite, and for a moment she seemed stumped. ‘Nothing really,’ she said at first.  Then, haltingly, ‘Well, it’s probably us.  The service we give.  People come to Birch’s because we offer service.  They come because of us.’

I’ve got to tell you something about Margaruite. A few years ago, on a research trip to Belize, I visited the indigenous Kekchi-Mayan people and stayed in one of their villages. One memorable night, the Alcalde [village elder] came visiting, and by candle-light, with the jungle croaking and whistling outside, I heard the story of how he’d founded the village.

That man had the demeanour of royalty. You listened to what he said, and gave him respect.  Nowhere else had I come across a person who ever made me feel quite like that.  But sitting in Birch’s inner sanctum, listening to Margaruite Birch’s account of the long history of Birch’s, and her life in Shrewsbury and all the changes she has seen, I felt it again.  Would it be stretching a point too far to say that this quiet, friendly, smiling lady is Shrewsbury royalty?  I think not.