It was an overnight success and during nearly 50 years has become one of the most enduring TV programmes of all time.

Shropshire has featured many times over those years with its town and country churches. Now, the BBC’s much loved Songs of Praise is back in the county in a big way.

Because this week’s recordings are extra special – indeed unique – in the history of the hymn and congregation-based Sunday evening slot.

For the first time – tomorrow, Thursday and Friday – cameras, lights and star presenters will be in action at Shrewsbury’s St Chad’s Church recording three separate programmes.

Songs of Praise has never done that from any parish church before. In cathedrals, programme makers have taken advantage of the immense task of setting up lighting and sound in massive, medieval or even more ancient buildings and done enough filming for a number of TV screenings.

But this week’s bonanza is a first for both the county and the programme itself.

What’s more, all the recordings are destined to go out on high prestige viewing days.

The first is next month on Remembrance Sunday, then there will be carols from Shrewsbury on the Sunday before Christmas and the third programme is planned on the county town itself and will coincide with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in November next year.

So how did our lovely town, county and St Chad’s church come to receive this accolade?

Producer Rowan Morton-Gledhill who is also directing some of the filming, explains: “I’d been a local radio producer and presenter for many years before becoming a researcher for Songs of Praise.

“The person before me had lots of guide books which I went through. There was something on Shrewsbury, which I didn’t know at all, and St Chad’s seemed to spring out at me as a beautiful church. That was in 1999, so that’s how long I have held that thought in my head.

“When I was asked to come up with a church to do both remembrance and carols from, this seemed to be the moment. I had to bring a lighting director to look at the possibilities because of the shape of St Chad’s, and he said yes, it was possible to light it.

“I think it is going to be a great success and it’s also a lot cheaper, the expense of lighting outweighs everything else we do. So three consecutive nights saves money but also enables us to show the church at different times of the year.

“But I’m very keen to keep the integrity in style of worship used in the churches we visit.”

Rowan has interviewed Poet Laureate Andrew Motion for a spot, actor and presenter Robert Hardy will be reading from Shrewsbury’s St Mary’s Church and Much-Wenlock-based actress Gabrielle Drake is also taking part.

Popular presenter and singer Aled Jones will front the first two programmes – it was Rowan who first suggested Aled for Songs of Praise. He is well known not only to audiences but also for his charity work, including being patron of Hope House children’s respite hospice.

And so the scene is set. But what of this TV phenomenon which has survived so many changes?

In 1961 there were only two TV Channels, the BBC, funded by licence payers and ITV, funded by advertisers. Sunday evenings had religious programmes on both, often studio debates with occasional films and a couple of times a year, hymn-singing was broadcast from a studio.

Then one Sunday lunchtime, Donald Baverstock, producer on the news magazine Tonight, watched a test transmission of an outside broadcast of hymn-singing and worship from a Welsh chapel.

He instantly spotted the potential in the magnetic experience, the panorama of a beautiful chapel and close-up shots of faces in the congregation, and suggested that the BBC might consider a similar programme in English.

The head of religious broadcasting would have thrown it out with the bath water but he was over-ruled and a short series was scheduled from the evening of the first Sunday in October, 1961.

It was, however, back to Wales for the first programme which came from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cardiff. After that, the now legendary Songs of Praise was off on its travels, first to churches and chapels all over Britain and later jetting off to all parts of the world including Moscow, Peking, The Falkland Islands, Australia and New Zealand.

And so early doubts of the merits of a programme like Songs of Praise were swept away, on some Sundays an incredible 12 million viewers tuned in. It can still pull up to four million, a figure which grows at times of national celebration or sadness.

Now, Shrewsbury and Shropshire are set to take centre stage with a trio of programmes from one of our best known churches which will reach out to all parts of the country and beyond. Thanks to the producer who as a fascinated researcher went leafing through an old guide book!