The riverside at Castlefields

The riverside at Castlefields

Sunday 19 September 2010

The Mystery of the Bowling Green Pub

A letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle.
August 2010.
Re: The Bowling Green Pub at Meole Village.

People always used to believe that The Wrekin was an extinct volcano. I'm quite sure that for years even geography teachers used to pass on this misinformation to their pupils. Funny how these myths can solidify into 'facts'.
By the same token, an article in your Home and Property supplement about an absolutely gorgeous (wish I could afford it) townhouse on Hereford Road, may have contained a tiny myth.
It suggested Brook House was at one time a public house by the name of The Bowling Green Inn. This sounded a bit unlikely. I looked up The Bowling Green in Derek Row's painstakingly researched book, Shrewsbury: A Heritage of Old Inns and Taverns.
Mr Row gives the address of the pub as Hereford Road, Meole Brace, but other information recorded here suggests that the townhouse currently for sale and the Bowling Green Inn are not one and the same place. Firstly, Mr Row's book has it that the pub was rebuilt about 1850 (much too late to be the elegant Georgian building now on the market). The book also says the pub was between Meole Road and the Rea Brook in Meole Village. Well, Brook House may well be near the Rea Brook but it certainly isn't in Meole Village. Mr Row goes on to say that the inn stood on the site where the Leagrove House is now (which must mean that the building that was the inn no longer exists).
Can anyone out there shed any light on this?

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