Sights in Shropshire
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Castle
The town's crowning jewel is its splendid Castle, which snags an ideal defensive location atop a cliff above the river's elbow. One of a line of fortifications built along the Marches to ward off the marauding Welsh, it is now a great castle for hide-and-seek, with myriad nooks, ruined rooms and mysterious stairwells. The sturdy Norman keep was built around 1090 and has wonderful views.
The castle was transformed into a 14th-century palace by the notorious Roger Mortimer, who was instrumental in the grisly death of Edward II. The round chapel in the inner bailey was built in 1120 and is one of few surviving.
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Blists Hill Victorian Town
Set at the top of the Hay Inclined Plane (a cable lift that once transported coal barges uphill from the Shropshire Canal), Blists Hill is a lovingly restored Victorian village that has been repopulated with townsfolk in period costume, carrying out day-to-day activities like washing clothes, mending hobnail boots and working the village iron foundry. Some buildings are original, while others have been convincingly re-created or moved here from other villages. There's even a bank, where you can exchange your modern pounds for shillings to use at the village shops.
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Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron
Set in the brooding buildings of Abraham Darby's original iron foundry, the Museum of Iron contains some excellent interactive exhibits. As well as producing the girders for the Ironbridge, the factory became famous for heavy machinery and extravagant ornamental castings, including the gates for London's Hyde Park. Combined tickets with Darby Houses also available.
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Broseley Pipeworks
This was once the biggest clay tobacco pipe-maker in the country, but the industry took a nose-dive after the introduction of pre-rolled cigarettes in the 1880s, and the factory was preserved much as the last worker left it when the doors finally closed in 1957. The pipeworks is a 1-mile walk south of the river, on a winding lane that passes the old workers' cottages (ask the tourist office for the Jitties leaflet).
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Shrewsbury Abbey
Famous as the setting for Ellis Peters' Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, the lovely red-sandstone Shrewsbury Abbey is all that remains of a vast, cruciform Benedictine monastery founded in 1083. Twice the setting for meetings of the English parliament, the Abbey church lost its spire and two wings when the monastery was dissolved in 1540. It sustained further damage in 1826 when engineer Thomas Telford ran the London–Holyhead road right through the grounds. Nevertheless, you can still see some impressive Norman, Early English and Victorian features, including an exceptional 14th-century west window.
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Darby Houses
Just uphill from the Museum of Iron are these beautifully restored 18th-century homes, which housed generations of the Darby family in gracious but modest Quaker comfort.
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Iron Bridge & Tollhouse
The flamboyant, arching Iron Bridge that gives the area its name was constructed to flaunt the new technology invented by the inventive Darby family. At the time of its construction in 1779, nobody could believe that anything so large could be built from cast iron without collapsing under its own weight. There's a small exhibition on the bridge's history at the former tollhouse.
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Enginuity
If the kids are tired of fusty historical displays, recharge their batteries at this levers-and-pulleys science centre beside the Museum of Iron, where you can control robots, move a steam locomotive with your bare hands (and a little engineering know-how) and power up a vacuum cleaner with self- generated electricity.
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Museum of the Gorge
Kick off your visit at the Museum of the Gorge, which offers an overview of the World Heritage Site using film, photos and 3-D models. Housed in a Gothic warehouse by the river, it's filled with entertaining, hands-on exhibits.
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Coalport China Museum
When ironmaking moved elsewhere, Coalport china slowed the region's decline and the restored works now house an absorbing China Museum tracing the region's glory days as a manufacturer of elaborate pottery and crockery. Craftspeople demonstrate china-making techniques and two enormous bottle kilns are guaranteed to awe even if the gaudily glazed chinaware leaves you cold.
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Jackfield Tile Museum
Once the largest tile factory in the world, Jackfield was famous for its encaustic tiles, with ornate designs produced using layers of different coloured clay (the tiles are still produced here today for period restorations). Gas-lit galleries re-create ornately tiled rooms from past centuries, from Victorian public conveniences to fairy-tale friezes from children's hospital wards. The museum is on the south bank of the Severn, near the footbridge to the Coalport China Museum.
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Henry Tudor House
Follow Mary's St into Dogpole and turn right into Wyle Cop, Welsh for 'hilltop'. Henry VII stayed in the seriously overhanging Henry Tudor House before the Battle of Bosworth. At the bottom of Wyle Cop, Welsh for 'hilltop', is the graceful 18th-century English Bridge, which takes you across to Shrewsbury Abbey (E of Town Centre).
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Church of St Laurence
One of the largest parish churches in Britain, the church of St Laurence contains grand Elizabethan alabaster tombs and some delightfully cheeky medieval misericords carved into its medieval choir stalls, including a beer-swilling chap raiding his barrel. Climb the tower (£3) for stunning views of town and countryside.
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Tar Tunnel
A short ramble along the canal brings you to the 200-year-old Tar Tunnel, dug as a water-supply channel but halted abruptly when natural bitumen unexpectedly started trickling treacle-like from its walls. You can still don a hard hat and stoop in deep enough to see the black stuff ooze.
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Market Hall
The mellow-stone building balancing on chunky legs opposite the tourist office is Shrewsbury's 16th-century Market Hall, hub of the historic wool trade. A few pillars are still dented by rows of holes used to count how many fleeces were sold.
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Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery
The stunning timber-framed Tudor merchant's mansion and warehouse in which Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery is housed are as much of an attraction as its exhibits, which range from Roman finds to Darwin's times.
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Bear Steps Hall
From the atmospheric Fish Street, steps lead to the 14th-century Bear Steps Hall, now home to a small exhibition space. On the hall's other side is Butcher Row, home to more half-timbered lovelies.
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Council House Gatehouse & Old Council House
Near the entrance of Shrewsbury Castle is Jacobean-style Council House Gatehouse, dating from 1620, and Old Council House, where the Council of the Welsh Marches used to meet.
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St Mary's Church
Peek inside medieval St Mary's Church, which has one of the highest spires in England and the astonishingly vivid Jesse window of rare mid-14th-century glass.
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Shrewsbury Library
Opposite Shrewsbury Castle is the rather ostentatious Shrewsbury Library, with a statue of Shrewsbury's most famous son, Charles Darwin.
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Grope Lane
The charmingly named and almost claustrophobically narrow Grope Lane features overhanging storeys that seem to close in around you.
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Shrewsbury Castle & Shropshire Regimental Museum
Terracotta-coloured Shrewsbury Castle houses the stiff-upper-lip Shropshire Regimental Museum and has wonderful views.
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St Chad's
Listen to the cacophonous bells of odd 18th-century round church St Chad's, which dominates the top of Quarry Park.
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Ireland's Mansion
The lordly timber-framed Ireland's Mansion is one of Shrewsbury's most magnificent black-and-white beauties.
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St Mary's Cottage
Take a peek at the tilted 17th-century St Mary's Cottage on your way to Shrewsbury Castle.
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