DOI issue:
No. 17 (August, 1895)
DOI article:Harper, C. G.: Letters from artists to artists, [9], Shrewsbury as a sketching ground
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17190#0156
Sketching Grounds.—No. IX. Shrewsbury
for its strategic value and its capacities for defence. " Pengwern " was the British descriptive phrase
It stands, therefore, upon a strong position formed for the situation of their settlement, and signified
by a bold bluff round whose sides the Severn bends " Head of the Alderwood," and if we select
in such a manner as to all but convert the town the most likely of the derivations offered by
into an island. Only a very narrow neck of land antiquarians and philologists for the Saxon
remained, in times before the Severn was bridged, " Scrobbesbyrig," we shall find it exactly fit the
by which Shrewsbury might be entered, and this nomenclature of the people they drove away. For
point was defended by the Castle, originally but an "Scrobbesbyrig," translated into modern English,
earthwork, protected by palisades, at the time when means Scrub-bury, the Town in the Bush; and it
Offa drove out the Britons and founded Scrobbes- is singular to remark, even at the present time, the
SHREWSBURY CASTLE, FROM THE STATION YARD
byrig on the ashes of the British Pengwern. This alders and other shrubs that grow so profusely on
British settlement was formed at the destruction of the little islands in mid-stream of the Severn,
Uriconium, when the Picts and Scots descended opposite the town. Other theories take the deri-
upon the Romano-British city and massacred all vation of "Scrobbesbyrig" from the name of a
whom they could find there. The long train of Norman knight who held lands in Shropshire and
fugitives streamed across the country until they Herefordshire in the dim and distant times of
came to this defensible spot on which they sought Edward the Confessor; one Richard FitzScrob,
refuge from the barbarian hordes, and they and their the terrible builder of "Richard's Castle," whose
descendants remained here, continually retrograd- malignant individuality was sufficiently marked to
ing from the state of civilisation in which the confer his name upon his stronghold for all time.
Romans had left them, until the conquering spirit But in the multitudes of plausible origins for the
of the Saxons brought Offa to the Severn and drove names of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and Salop, it is
them backwards upon the rugged and inhospitable impossible to arrive at any positive statement of
hills of Wales. fact. The ingenuity of philologists bent upon dis-
140
for its strategic value and its capacities for defence. " Pengwern " was the British descriptive phrase
It stands, therefore, upon a strong position formed for the situation of their settlement, and signified
by a bold bluff round whose sides the Severn bends " Head of the Alderwood," and if we select
in such a manner as to all but convert the town the most likely of the derivations offered by
into an island. Only a very narrow neck of land antiquarians and philologists for the Saxon
remained, in times before the Severn was bridged, " Scrobbesbyrig," we shall find it exactly fit the
by which Shrewsbury might be entered, and this nomenclature of the people they drove away. For
point was defended by the Castle, originally but an "Scrobbesbyrig," translated into modern English,
earthwork, protected by palisades, at the time when means Scrub-bury, the Town in the Bush; and it
Offa drove out the Britons and founded Scrobbes- is singular to remark, even at the present time, the
SHREWSBURY CASTLE, FROM THE STATION YARD
byrig on the ashes of the British Pengwern. This alders and other shrubs that grow so profusely on
British settlement was formed at the destruction of the little islands in mid-stream of the Severn,
Uriconium, when the Picts and Scots descended opposite the town. Other theories take the deri-
upon the Romano-British city and massacred all vation of "Scrobbesbyrig" from the name of a
whom they could find there. The long train of Norman knight who held lands in Shropshire and
fugitives streamed across the country until they Herefordshire in the dim and distant times of
came to this defensible spot on which they sought Edward the Confessor; one Richard FitzScrob,
refuge from the barbarian hordes, and they and their the terrible builder of "Richard's Castle," whose
descendants remained here, continually retrograd- malignant individuality was sufficiently marked to
ing from the state of civilisation in which the confer his name upon his stronghold for all time.
Romans had left them, until the conquering spirit But in the multitudes of plausible origins for the
of the Saxons brought Offa to the Severn and drove names of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and Salop, it is
them backwards upon the rugged and inhospitable impossible to arrive at any positive statement of
hills of Wales. fact. The ingenuity of philologists bent upon dis-
140