Barking mad ideas for Shrewsbury

There have been some barking mad ideas put forward over the years in terms of 'improving' Shrewsbury.

Here's just a few:

Barking mad idea number one: Renaming Shrewsbury as Shrewsbury-upon-Severn. You know? Like Stratford-upon-Avon? This was suggested in the early 1990s. As if centuries of tradition can be overturned on a public relations whim. It would bring in more tourists, they said. Really? Would it really? Happily, the idea was quickly forgotten.

Barking mad idea number two: Sticking a spire on top of the 900-year-old Abbey Church to, er, make it more attractive. No, I'm sure I didn't dream this outlandish suggestion. I recall seeing an artist's impression of this, drawn up about 20 years ago. Who are these people? I mean, really. Who are these people?

Barking Mad idea number three: City status for Shrewsbury. Why? Shrewsbury is a wonderful, beautiful town. What's to be gained by being a city?

Barking Mad idea number four: In the sixites (and, boy, does that decade have a lot to answer for?) someone (around the time of the Beeching axe falling upon our railway network) seriously suggested sweeping away our magnificent Victorian railway station and replacing it with a 'modern' construction of concrete and glass. If that had got the go-ahead, I would have settled for nothing less than the perpetrators being tied to a railway line and run over by a 50-truck freight train - three times!

It's reassuring to know that none of the above ever got beyond the barking mad suggestion stage.

However, plenty of barking mad suggestions DO gain credibility and DO eventually get the go-ahead.

For instance, the highly controversial plan to bring forward the frontages of several shops at Princess House in The Square has brought another barking mad idea to mind.

This current scheme may well be thought of as barking mad in its own right by many a protester (and I myself am not thrilled by the idea), but it is not this plan, in itself, to which I refer.

Bickering about the exact proportions of Princess House seems almost trivial in a sense. Because Princess House should never have been allowed in the first place.

This soulless stack of shoeboxes was parachuted down into Shrewsbury's otherwise gorgeous historic Square in the early seventies, replacing (almost unbelievably) the grand Italian-style Shirehall, designed by Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1837.

Oh, and please don't try telling me, by the way, that the street-level sections of this fine building could not have been tastefully converted into shop units. This kind of thing has been done in plenty of other towns and cities up and down the country. It could have been done in Shrewsbury too.

But no. They had to go and smash the old Shirehall down, didn't they?

Just like they smashed down the Victorian market hall and the Crown Hotel and the Raven Hotel and the George Hotel. 

And then, as if this vandalism were not enough, they thought: Okay, what shall we put in The Square now to replace that old Italian-style place? Oh, I know. How about a building like the ones they have in Milton Keynes? That'll look really good!

And there we have it. My fifth example to add to my list of barking mad ideas.

And now we come to that notion of bringing forward the shop fronts by five feet, a notion that is to go before the Secretary of State in the coming weeks before a final decision is made by the Department of Transport.

The developers who want to extend the shops (thus getting rid of the 'overhang' which currently exists beyond the front doors and above a few feet of pavement space) think this would make the shops more attractive to customers, more visible to shoppers, and a better proposition for traders, changing the minds of those businesses that might otherwise abandon The Square.

The protesters say the move would swallow up much-needed pavement space, especially as there will be (they say) an extra 200,000 visitors each year when the new ShrewsburyMuseum opens at the old Music Hall. It could also, they say, seriously compromise big crowd-pulling events like the Christmas lights switch-on.

I have to say my sympathies are firmly with the protesters on this one.

But, as I say, we should never have ended up with Princess House in the first place.

Meanwhile, for further insights, may I direct readers to Pauline Fisk's excellent blog, My Tonight From Shrewsbury? Visit: http://mytonightfromshrewsbury.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/public-inquiry-stopping-up-overhang-at.html