Cop." Shrewsbury is second to no other town in England in the interest
of its ancient domestic buildings. There is the gatehouse of the old
Council House, bearing the date 1620, with its high gable and carved
barge-boards, its panelled front, the square spaces between the
upright and horizontal timbers being ornamented with cut timber. The
old buildings of the famous Shrewsbury School are now used as a Free
Library and Museum and abound in interest. The house remains in which
Prince Rupert stayed during his sojourn in 1644, then owned by "Master
Jones the lawyer," at the west end of St. Mary's Church, with its fine
old staircase. Whitehall, a fine mansion of red sandstone, was built
by Richard Prince, a lawyer, in 1578-82, "to his great chardge with
fame to hym and hys posterite for ever." The Old Market Hall in the
Renaissance style, with its mixture of debased Gothic and classic
details, is worthy of study. Even in Shrewsbury we have to record the
work of the demon of destruction. The erection of the New Market Hall
entailed the disappearance of several old picturesque houses.
Bellstone House, erected in 1582, is incorporated in the National
Provincial Bank. The old mansion known as Vaughan's Place is swallowed
up by the music-hall, though part of the ancient dwelling-place
remains. St. Peter's Abbey Church in the commencement of the
nineteenth century had an extraordinary annexe of timber and plaster,
probably used at one time as parsonage house, which, with several
buttressed remains of the adjacent conventual buildings, have long ago
been squared up and "improved" out of existence. Rowley's mansion, in
Hill's Lane, built of brick in 1618 by William Rowley, is now a
warehouse. Butcher Row has some old houses with projecting storeys,
including a fine specimen of a medieval shop. Some of the houses in
Grope Lane lean together from opposite sides of the road, so that
people in the highest storey can almost shake hands with their
neighbours across the way. You can see the "Olde House" in which Mary