A Bit Of A Shrewsbury Whistle-Stop Tour

What haven’t I written about this year that I intended to?  Hmmm Squad’s top of my list, hosted by the indefatigable Pip Bayley, providing Shrewsbury’s answer to the TED talks, tackling every subject from Death to Halloween and back again.  Next year’s talks include February’s on Love & Doing the Right Thing and March’s on Human Rights. Here’s what the group says about itself: 

‘Science, Philosophy and Discussion! Hopefully touching on a variety of subjects, topics and all aspects of 'the Sciences'. Meeting on or around the last Wednesday of every month at Shrewsbury Library. We have been meeting for over two years and have members of all ages and are incredibly welcoming. Possibility of biscuits.’

Network Rail is also up there on my list. Ever since they started wrapping Shrewsbury’s railway bridge  as if they were Christo and it a work of art, I’ve been meaning to get up there amongst those girders spanning the River Severn and see what’s going on. But it hasn’t happened. Work has been going on there for the last six months and still, at the end of the year, I haven’t managed to explore those girders which I populated with homeless children for my novel, Sabrina Fludde, or talk to the people who are restoring this wonderful, iconic old bridge about how work is progressing and when the wraps will be coming off. 

What else? Whilst on the subject of the railway bridge, how about mentioning Shrewsbury station?  I’m told it's one of only three in the world to have platforms built over a river. Don’t know if this is true, but I do know that it’s listed [Grade II], that it was built in 1848, and that its imitation Tudor style, complete with carvings of Tudor style heads around the window frames, came courtesy of architect Thomas Mainwaring Penson who was attempting to match the Tudor style of nearby Shrewsbury School, which is now the Castle Gates Library. 

All year I’ve wanted to get behind those windows and find out more about the building and the life of the station which it houses. However, emailing, phoning, even turning up in person and being passed around from pillar to post has got me nowhere.

Another Grade II Listed building that’s been high on my list all year is the old Granada Cinema, currently housing Gala Bingo. Built for Granada in 1934, its lavish and still largely intact interiors were designed by Russian émigré, Theodore Komisarjevsky. In its day, the stage of the Granada saw many live shows, amongst them a series of pantomimes whose stars included Eddie Calvert, Rosemary Squires, Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, Dick Emery and Sid James.  Some of these pantomimes were presented on ice.  Not on ice, and most definitely not in pantomime, were the Beatles in February 1963 and,  in January 1964, the Rolling Stones.

What are the chances of getting them back for a Golden Jubilee year show? Only joking, of course.

At the end of this post is a recent photograph of the River Severn in flood.  I haven’t written as much about the river as I would have liked, given that it’s an ever present part of town life.  

Here's another picture of the river, this time featuring The Stew [behind trow, on right of picture], whose plight I have written about - but it hasn’t been saved yet. An argument of sorts has been put forward that it played no part in Shrewsbury’s river trade, so it doesn’t matter if it’s knocked down to put up a boutique hotel instead. Outrageous. Un-be-liev-able. The battle to save this fine old building, the last reminder of a history going back to the Wars of the Roses, carries on into the New Year.   

Shrewsbury is almost as rich in charities as it is in old buildings.  One I’ve been intending to feature for months now, based in College Hill, is Village Water, whom I first came across at the Shrewsbury Marathon.  ‘Changing Lives in Africa through safe water and sanitation’ is their byline.  From 2003, when they first set up in rural Zambia, they’ve supported activities in more than 540 villages and twenty schools, reaching approximately 150,000 people. This year has been their tenth anniversary. I’d hate to let it slip by without recognizing their hard work.  

This litany of people, places and activities could go on and on.  Some time over the year I would have written about Hall’s Auction House by the Welsh Bridge if it hadn’t moved out of town, meaning that my days of mooching round its general sales looking for the occasional piano accordion or Polish icon are over for good.

The Wakeman School has gone too – the last state secondary school in Shrewsbury town centre, now replaced by the Art & English departments of Shrewsbury Sixth Form College.  And Jane Dyas has gone. As I write, her shop stands empty in the Square, having graced it for over a hundred years, supplying generations of Shrewsbury ladies with clothes, shoes and underwear [or lingerie, as Jane Dyas would call it].

There are regattas that My Tonight From Shrewsbury hasn’t written about, coracle and dragon boat races, theatre events, concerts, festivals and fairs. There are churches it hasn’t been into, including arguably the most beautiful church in Shrewsbury, the decommissioned St Mary’s, its windows full of jewel-like stained glass.  There's a Museum and Art Gallery that hasn't opened yet, but when it does it'll be another year's good news.  

There are pubs that haven’t been written about, and restaurants like the Drapers Hall and The Golden Cross.  Shrewsbury is full of wine merchants, publicans, market stallholders, shop owners, business people and residents who all have fascinating stories to tell. But the year isn’t over yet.  Some of those stories I still intend to tell.  So stay tuned and see what comes up next.

Candle Lane Books

The name ‘Candle Lane’ harkens back to the days before a certain Princess Victoria visited Shrewsbury, upgrading the street where candles had been made to the more upmarket 'Princess Street'.  Next year will be the fortieth anniversary of Candle Lane Books. Its proprietor, John Thornhill, was a collector long before he opened the shop.  Yesterday morning I met John with his son and business partner, Edward.  Over coffee in Renaissance, they outlined the shop’s history, their lives as hands-on farmers, their years as collectors and their mutual love of books.

For John’s son, Edward, the family’s book business was always a factor in his young life.  At an early age he learned pricing and handling from his dad. Helping out in the shop was a regular occurence. A Shrewsbury schoolboy, Edward was one of a handful who left before their ‘A’ levels - an unusual step, but one that certainly paid off. ‘I always knew I’d be going into the family business,’ Edward said.  ‘I also worked on the farm, and I still do. I did some travelling, visiting almost forty countries, and I worked in the shop.’

For John himself, a long life of collecting began aged eight with ‘The Book of the Farm’. Bought for him by his mother to encourage his love of reading, she could have had no idea that she’d started something that would be part of family life until the present day. ‘It’s a good job we’re farmers too,’ said Edward, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t have the space to keep all Dad’s books.’ ‘We always say no collection too large, no parcel too small,’ added John. ‘Once we purchased 10,000 books in one day.  The staff on the farm became good at handling books.’

Amongst John’s own personal library is the twelve volume classic, Eyton’s History of Shropshire. Only three hundred copies of this book were ever printed, as well as three large paper copies – and at one time John owned all three of them [he now owns only one].

Another treasure is George Garrard’s ‘History of British Livestock’. Edward said it was the only book of which he’d been unable to find another copy on the open market, which, given his contacts, makes it most likely the only of its kind still in existence.  The problem for Garrard’s, he explained, was its fifty-two fantastic hand-colour plates, which over the years had leant themselves to being extracted from the book, which is why a complete copy is now so very rare.  ‘When my father acquired the book,’ Edward said, ‘an article and photograph went up in the Farmers’ Weekly. A lady phoned in wanting to buy it for her husband.  We named a ridiculous sum, saying even if the offering price was that, we wouldn’t part with it.  The lady offered more - but we still said no.’

Candle Lane Books started out as an offshoot of John’s massive collection. ‘I’d bought so many books,’ he said, ‘that I thought I’d better start a shop’.  The shop in question was an old butcher’s shop half the size of the current premises. John filled it with books from country house sales - whole tea-chests full at a time.  A book binder, Mr James, was employed, coming in Saturdays, taking a couple of boxes of books and returning with them bound the following week. For thirty-two years he worked for Candle Lane Books.  Even in his eighties he was still coming in. ‘It was with his help that we saved many of our books,’ John said. ‘The Parish Registers for example – by buying and binding them they were preserved. We have registers for most of Shropshire in the shop.  They’re of particular use to people looking up their family history.’

It didn’t take long for the shop to be in need of expansion. The family bought the shop next door and went up three floors. Now even the furthest corner of Candle Lane Books is stuffed to the gunwales with good reads.  ‘We’ll buy anything we think will sell,’ Edward said.  ‘I tend to focus more on modern publications and my father on the older books.  But Candle Lane Books has no specialism, except of course for local books. We’ll take on any topic, buying what we can sell.’

Over the years, I’ve spent a prince’s ransom on local publications in Candle Lane Books.  I’ve also bought my share of other books that have caught my eye, including a first edition Graham Greene, a signed Malcolm Saville and several books by one of my favourite authors, A.G. Bradley. Candle Lane Books always has something that I want – and more often than not that something is in the window, pleading to be taken away.

John, Edward and Maureen [who’s been employed in the shop for the last twenty-six years, having worked previously at the family’s reproduction furniture shop in what is now Poppy’s tea room] have window-dressing down to a fine art.  They know that showing the right thing, whether or not it’s valuable, will bring in the customers.  They have their regulars, those who come at certain times on certain days of the week.  Many of these aren’t looking for anything other than a good read, but there are others on the lookout for certain books, who are prepared to pay for them, and to pay well.

Candle Lane Books has a ‘Wants List’.  If you’re looking for something special, then John and Edward will look for it too. And once a book’s on the list it doesn’t come off, even years later, if it hasn’t yet been found.

Nowadays John and Edward mostly buy from private collections.  Very often people will come in to them with something they wish to sell. ‘We never buy from auctions for resale in the shop,’ said Edward, ‘but we sometimes do for ourselves. We keep an eye on the auction houses, and if there’s something that we really want going at the right price then we’ll buy.’

‘How do you decide which books are for the shop, and which for your private library?’ I wanted to know. Edward and his father looked at each other. Plainly this wasn’t a simple question to answer.  If a book was rare, or it had a certain something about it, a uniqueness of some sort, they would keep it, they said.  Once they bought seventy tea-chests full of books from a known collector in Japan, mostly books dated before the 1850s.  Every single book was good enough to buy in its own right.  They kept three hundred, but sold the rest in the shop.  It didn’t take long for the word to get round, then they had dealers beating a path to their door.

Another book, too, is worthy of a mention.  ‘Shall I tell her about the…’ said Edward.  The word hung in the air. Again the two of them looked at each other. It was the Vaughan book they were talking about – a book that brings new meaning to the word unique.  Starting with Adam and Eve, the writer of this book had traced his family’s history from the beginning of humankind to his own times in the 19^th century. Every word of this massive tome has been written by hand. To begin with the hand was steady. By the end of the book, though, it was shaky and plainly old.

As soon as I heard about this book, I wanted to see it. For twenty-six years I’d lived out at Worthen in a farmhouse bought from the Vaughan family, for whom it had been home for over a century. They’d even left their names etched in its window glass and graffitied in the soft plaster between its old beams.  ‘Doris Vaughan – a goodish girl’, ‘Maureen Vaughan – a devil’, and so on and so forth. 

Kindly, John and Edward agreed to bring in the book for me to see from John’s library, where it’s one of his treasures. We arranged to meet next day, ie. today.  Then I started asking John about his life as a publisher, which we hadn’t yet talked about.  Three books came out under the imprint ‘John Thornhill, Candle Lane Books’ - Georgina Jackson’s ‘Shropshire Word-Book’, Garbett’s ‘History of Wem’ and ‘Shrewsbury Street Names’.  John would have published Charlotte Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-Lore’ too, but his printer in Yorkshire went out of business and it never happened, which John regrets.

It’s hard to imagine how John has found time for it all, especially with a full-time other business to run as well. His love of books may have been inherited from his mother, but from his father he inherited the family farm. ‘My farm is my life,’ said John. ‘This other thing, books, well it just developed. There was one time, you know, when I worked for three whole years on the farm without coming into town once.’ 

John left school at thirteen.  He broke up for the Christmas holidays, had his thirteenth birthday and never went back.  That was a long time ago now.  Extraordinary changes in farming have happened in John’s lifetime.  He farmed through the Depression and the Second World War, and now his son, Edward, runs the farm. ‘We’re hands-on farmers,’ Edward said.  ‘Everything we have in town, this shop and other properties we own, come from the farm.’ 

The Thornhills have 260 acres and a herd of Pedigree Herefords.  Theirs is an old family farm with a big old manor house and its own church.  John remembers a time when all their staff lived on the farm, but things are different now. A few years ago when two of their workers - John Lewis and Michael Lewis [not related] - retired, the two of them clocked up between them a massive one hundred and five years. For a while Edward was left working the farm alone, but now - eighty-six interviews later – he’s found a replacement in Benjamin Fleming, whom he describes as ‘an old head on young shoulders’, exactly the right person for the job.

‘They’re a wonderful family to work for,’ Maureen told me later, when John and Edward weren’t around. I’ve got the best job in town. I suppose that one day I’ll retire, but definitely not yet.’

The key, Edward told me, was that they as a family had always got on with each other.  ‘In the shop as well,’ he said. ‘There’s been Margaret, my mum, Jane, my sister, Dad and me, all involved in the family businesses.’  I asked John what stood out most in his long life.  I expected the answer to be a book, but I was wrong. ‘It’s the people who’ve worked for us,’ John replied. ‘We’ve had wonderful staff, right down through the years. That’s what stands out. Without them, we couldn’t have done what we’ve done.’

POSTSCRIPT

I wrote that yesterday. This morning I went back to Candle Lane Books to see John’s Vaughan Family History.  The shop had only just opened, lights on and bolts drawn back but no time yet for its table of discount books to go outside.  [‘When we close for lunch we leave it out,’ Edward said. ‘Shrewsbury people can be trusted to pay for their books. It’s nothing to come back and find ten or fifty pence pieces wedged under the door.’]

The Vaughan Family History is the other end of the spectrum to a fifty pence book. It’s folio sized, several inches thick, with craftsman-like penmanship and beautifully bound in leather.  Here, see what I mean. This is the page that links the Vaughans to Brutus, and King Locrinus of Sabrina-spirit-of-the-River-Severn fame. My jaw dropped when Edward opened it up. I can’t imagine what it’s like to own such a thing, let alone to have written it.  What a treasure it must have been to its family in its day.

I left Candle Lane Books in a bit of a blur, though not without spotting something in the window [well, several somethings actually] and coming back.  Then I headed off across the Square, where the stage was going up for carols tonight.  The first of the new shop fronts for Princess House jutted out into the space where, other years, the crowd would have stood.  You’d have thought the least the Princess House people could have done was make their shop fronts blend in with the colours of the Square’s stone flagstones and the Old Market Hall.  But oh no. Had they received planning permission for that clash of colours, I wondered. But that’s another subject. I mustn’t digress.

I went into Starbuck’s for a coffee, paper and cinnamon bun and found it half-empty for a change.  The girl sitting opposite me said she’d got to get home to Montgomery before bad weather broke this afternoon. Storms were on the way, she said. We talked about Montgomery. I’d never met her before, but Shrewsbury’s a town where even strangers will talk to each other.

The girl left, gathering up her bags. I finished my coffee and left too, carrying my brown-paper Candle Lane parcel. Only eleven o’clock. A good start to the day.

 

Two Ancient Shrewsbury Celebration Cakes

Here's a post for all you Shrewsbury Christmas cooks. I first came across the Shrewsbury Simnel years ago in Charlotte Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore. Then recently I came across its recipe on the website of the Foods of England project.  Though several towns had their own regional recipes for simnels, the Shrewsbury Simnel, apparently, was the most popular, and certainly it became the most well known. 

What I'm talking about is a raised cake with a crust of fine flour mixed with water and enough saffron to give the cake a deep yellow colour. Its  interior was filled with a rich plum-cake mix which including plenty of candied lemon peel. According to Chambers Book of Days [published in 1869] the cake would be 'made up very stiff', tied up in a cloth, boiled for several hours, then brushed over with egg and baked. By the time it was ready to eat its crust would be as hard as wood. Yum. 

Hardly surprisingly, various local yarns tell of unfortunate recipients of simnels not knowing what they were and either using them as footstools or boiling them to soften them up [ie. ruining them]. Simnels came in many different sizes. Some of the larger ones sold for as much as a guinea, which was a huge amount back in the day, whilst smaller ones could be bought for half-a-crown. Large or small, however, their appearance was distinctive and they were easily recognisable. 

According to the poet Herrick, it was the custom in the Shropshire/Herefordshire border region for young people in service to take simnels as presents for their mothers on Mothering Sunday. According to the Foods of England website [byline: "Cooking in England, when well done, is superior to that of any other country in the world - Louis Eustache Ude, 'Le Cuisinier Francais'"] they were baked for Christmas, Easter or New Year. The Shrewsbury Simnel, however, was known particularly as a springtime celebration cake. It included the ingredient we associate with simnel cakes today - a central layer of marzipan and another layer on top, with additional icing, marzipan or paste balls or points.  

The Shrewsbury Simnel is reckoned to date back to the 13th century. I've failed to find an original recipe for it [well, there's a surprise] but here is what I have found, from Emily Elizabeth Steele Elliott's 'Copsley Annals Preserved in Proverbs' in case anybody wants to give it a try:

'She who would a simnel make, 

Flour and saffron first must shake, 

Candy, spices, eggs must take, 

Chop and pound till arms do ache : 

Then must boil, and then must bake 

For a crust too hard to break. 

When at Mid-lent thou dost wake, 

To thy mother bear thy cake : 

She will prize it for thy sake.'

Simnels aren't the only cakes associated with Shrewsbury.  Another cake with a slightly more user-friendly recipe was known simply as 'Shrewsbury Cake'. Later it developed into the Shrewsbury biscuit, but in its heyday, immortalized by Mr Palin in what is now the bed shop, Country Linens & Interiors, on Castle Street, it was a sort of very large shortbread flavoured distinctively with rose-water.

I’ve searched for a picture of the old traditional Shrewsbury Cake, but the best that I can find is a Shrewsbury biscuit pic.  I do, however, have an original recipe for Shrewsbury Cake, taken from 'The Complete Cook', compiled in 1658 by an anonymous culinary person known as ‘WM’. I can’t help you on what ‘two races’ of ginger might mean, but for those of you who can navigate the spelling, the rest of the recipe seems fairly straightforward:  

Original Receipt for Shrewsbury Cake:

Take two pound of floure dryed in the Oven and weighed after it is dryed, then put to it one pound of Butter that must be layd an hour or two in Rose-water, so done poure the Water from the Butter, and put the Butter to the flowre with the yolks and whites of five Eggs, two races of Ginger, and three quarters of a pound of Sugar, a little salt, grate your spice, and it well be the better, knead all these together till you may rowle the past, then roule it forth with the top of a bowle, then prick them with a pin made of wood, or if you have a comb that hath not been used, that will do them quickly, and is best to that purpose, so bake them upon Pye plates, but not too much in the Oven, for the heat of the Plates will dry them very much, after they come forth of the Oven, you may cut them without the bowles of what bignesse or what fashion you please.

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?]

Official Winter Starts Here [the Christmas lights have been switched on]

Dog walking this morning to dark sky over the castle, a weird reindeer wire-thing in front of the Darwin Shopping Centre and rain.  Dog walking this evening to an accompaniment of crowds on Pride Hill, balloons for sale, light sabres for sale, Father Christmas in the Square, crowds in the Square, Hilary from Jazz Club [meets monthly at the Hive on Belmont Bank] in the Square, along with her friend Jade, and programmes being handed out for an evening of entertainments to celebrate the switching on of the town's Christmas lights.

On the High Street I find Martin Wood, our Town Cryer.  I also find a Boy Scout drum band and a lantern procession backing up Fish Street. Darting about in a hat with flashing lights is Shrewsbury's chief lantern-workshop person, Maggie Love. The lanterns process along High Street to the Square, following the band. More and more people are packing in all the time. It's hard to imagine how the Square is going to fit them all in, let alone how it will manage this time next year, when the infamous Princess House stopping-up of vital pavement space is complete. 

I pick up my dog. He's had enough of being almost but not quite trampled underfoot. The Mayor is on the podium, presiding over the count down to switching on. '10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1,' we yell, but nothing happens.  Apparently we're not loud enough. We try again.  It works this time. Bingo. Where's the year gone? The Christmas lights are on again. 

Official winter starts here.   

Am I imagining it or does this look like Eric Smith?

Hilary and Jade

Our lovely new about-to-be Museum & Art Gallery

Crowd gathering in the Square

Town cryer with boy scout drummers

Maggie Love in tinsel and flashing hat

The Lantern Procession begins...

...Led by boy drummers

Hand-made lanterns following along behind

---to light up the Square

Crowd packed three-deep in the Princess House overhang

Lights off

Lights on

Butcher Row

Weird reindeer wire thing comes alive