The Music Hall and a Ghost Tour of Shrewsbury

Like Scrooge, I too have been visited by three spirits. Although, in my case, they were the Ghost of Shrewsbury Past, the Ghost of Shrewsbury Present, and the Ghost of Shrewsbury Yet To Come. 

These experiences were visited upon me during two very different tours in the town centre last week.

There was a spooky ghost tour around the streets, shuts and passages on a particularly pitch-black and freezing evening – illuminated only by the lantern of our guide and (in the main shopping streets) the Christmas lights. And then there was a most wonderful tour around the Music Hall complex. Let's start with the Music Hall first.

Shropshire Council's museum's service have been arranging trips for parties of around 20 to step inside what is still very much a building site, albeit one of the most fascinating building sites you're ever likely to see.

Exposed masonry, scaffolding, and dust from bricks, wooden beams and concrete are among the main characteristics of this tour, but look beyond all that and witness centuries of history revealing themselves.

What we all refer to as the Music Hall project actually encompasses much more than the Victorian theatre, taking in within this mish-mash of structures the Grade II* listed 13th century Vaughan's Mansion, one of only a handful of early medieval defensive houses remaining in the UK. This was the home of wool merchant William Vaughan and dates from the 1290s.

Then we have of course the much-loved Music Hall and Assembly Rooms with that gorgeous facade, designed by Edward Haycock in 1835 and listed as Grade II. For goodness sake, the Music Hall alone has enough history to fill a book in its own right. Charles Dickens performed here. The Beatles performed here.

Then (running between what was Oscar's cafe and the tourist information office) we have a medieval passageway between the remains of two Georgian houses. This is the bit you would have used (just a few years ago) to walk up to the boxing office and book your tickets for the panto.

And then, to top it all, you have a nuclear bunker from the days of the Cold War. You couldn't make it up.

The scheme to turn all this into a fantastic museum and art gallery for Shrewsbury and Shropshire may well be behind schedule (which is, by the way, completely understandable when you see the scale of the job being undertaken), but, as we were assured by our guide, it is still within budget.

Among the many wonders which we saw on the tour were wooden roof trusses in the west wing of Vaughan's Mansion tree-ring dated to 1623; this in a roof wrongly believed to have been completely destroyed by a fire in 1917. Much of this incredible area is to be restored to its Jacobean splendour.

The £10 million project will also see Vaughan's Mansion become the medieval gallery of the new museum while the main auditorium of the Music Hall will become the principal gallery.

We also saw how massive new beams have had to be introduced to hold up a ceiling which had been in danger of collapsing in the area which in recent years (just prior to the opening of the OMH across the road) had been used as the Cinema In The Square.

Our guide told us of the many engineering headaches that had been encountered along the way because all these very different buildings somehow being merged into one big mess: two Georgian houses, a medieval mansion, a Victorian theatre and a nuclear bunker actually amounted to “the worst Lego kit in history.”

It's a truly splendid little tour and if you get the chance to join a future one, make sure you get on it.

As for the project itself. Well, everyone involved in it deserves our congratulations for what has been achieved so far. And I can't wait for the new museum and art gallery to open – hopefully next summer.

Meanwhile, the ghost tour of Shrewsbury is great fun.

Our guide for this one (dressed as a Victorian undertaker with a big black top hat and flickering lantern) met us outside the Old Market Hall in The Square and took us on a journey which encompassed Grope Lane, Butcher Row, Pride Hill, the old police station just off Castle Street, Traitors' Gate, The Castle, the old Royal Salop Infirmary (now The Parade of shops), the Nags Head on Wyle Cop.

Of course there is the lovely Appleyards delicatessen at the top of the Cop which, on this evening of supernatural tales, reminded me of an old joke. Where do ghosts like to shop? At the ghostery store.

Then we moved on to Barracks Passage, the Lion Hotel, Old St Chad's and the Golden Cross, each one of which had ghost stories aplenty attached to them.

The presentation was suitably tongue-in-cheek, but pleasing to believers and sceptics alike.  At the end of it all, in the dark and the cold and with an eerie moon high above, you were left asking yourself: Are these streets really haunted?

I don't know. I always thought a ghost's favourite street was a dead-end.