St Alkmund's, St Mary's and the Railway Station

A letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle.

October 2010.

Re: Restoration projects.

The thoughtful and insightful letter from the Rev Richard Hayes of St Alkmund's (Chronicle, September 30), reminds us that there is a difference between good restoration and bad restoration.

An example of good restoration is that which the people of St Alkmund's have achieved over the past nine years. An example of bad restoration was the scheme from 1910 (outlined in the Rev Hayes' letter) to effectively rip out and replace four beautiful windows dating from 1795; a scheme which thankfully never came to fruition.

But this story reminded me of other acts (and proposals) relating to St Alkmund's, to St Mary's, and (more recently) to our splendid railway station.

As is told in St Alkmund's own leaflet ('A Brief History'), the medieval church of St Alkmund's was a fine one but when Old St Chad's Church collapsed in 1788 there was "a general alarm about the safety of both St Mary's and St Alkmund's".

On the strength of questionable advice, the demolition of St Alkmund's was decided upon and an Act of Parliament was passed dated April 17, 1794, to authorise the taking down and rebuilding of all but the tower and spire.

As if to emphasise just how crazy this move was, the strength of the undecayed walls was such that explosives had to used to destroy them. As the leaflet says: “The authorities realised their folly too late”.

As if that were not enough, the next sentence in the leaflet really blew my socks off: “St Mary's was saved from a similar fate by one vote”.

Well, thank goodness for that one vote!

With thinking like this all down through the centuries it is a miracle that so many wonderful historic buildings have survived at all!

Leaping forward in time the best part of a couple of hundred years, our beautiful railway station was under threat, I believe, in the early 1960s. I am sure I remember reading this somewhere (and perhaps fellow Chronicle readers can help me out here). In an era when many lovely Victorian railway stations up and down the country were swept away in favour of the shoebox designs so fashionable at the time, even our gorgeous station was considered (briefly) as ripe for the bulldozers. Just who are these people who can envisage such appalling vandalism?

Phil Gillam,

Shrewsbury.