Coffee shop chat highlights rich history of Shrewsbury

Oh, and before anyone points out that Ashleys must surely take an apostrophe, it doesn't on its own website and so I'm going to go with that. Okay?

Anyway, chatting to the owner (yes, that's right, Ashley) it occurred to me we have something very much in common: a deep love of Shrewsbury and a real passion for the town's wonderful old buildings.

We chatted about the rich history of this town, about how so many people, at some point in their lives, may have to leave it for career reasons or because of changes in circumstance, but so often they return because there's nowhere else quite like it.

We talked about tourism, how Shrewsbury still doesn't seem to sell itself quite as well as, say, Chester or Stratford Upon Avon.

And we talked about Charles Darwin, the castle, the amazing range of historic structures within the loop of the river.

And it occurred to me that Ashley and I were actually in a rather lovely old building all the time we were chatting, because the coffee shop, bar and restaurant, are housed in a quaint little place on a corner bang in the middle of the town centre, a corner which must have seen so much life over several centuries even if the building itself is no more than a couple of hundred years old.

Compared to some of its much older neighbours, the Ashleys building may be a mere youngster, but I have no doubt at all it could tell a story or two.

A little later that day I found a nice old photograph of what is now Ashleys, a picture from around 1950, I would guess, and one of the many, many fantastic old pictures collected into a dozen or so books by local historian David Trumper.

In the photograph, the building is home to a florists and has the words 'Dalley's Seeds' across the frontage.

This is in an age when both men and women often wore hats. A gentleman in a flat cap is crossing the road, wheeling a bicycle beside him. Another man, with a small suitcase, appears to be wearing a trilby.

A woman in a hat and coat and carrying a shopping bag is rounding the corner just outside what today is Ashleys.

A motor car is entering the picture from the right from the direction of St John's Hill. Of course, cars nowadays are not allowed to travel that way because Shoplatch is one-way.

Dominating this photograph is The George Hotel.

It really was an imposing building and seeing it now in this photograph makes me sad that is was one of those places lost to us in the sixties.

Historically, this rather fine looking hotel had served carriers to Knockin, Myddle Westbury and Worthen. And by 1851, even though by this time the railways were starting to make their mark on the town, The George was used as the Shrewsbury terminus of the Prince of Wales stagecoach to Aberystwyth and also the Victoria coach to Hereford.

Sadly, this proud hotel was demolished in 1963 and was replaced by Shrewsbury's very first supermarket, a Tesco store. It was a relatively modest supermarket when compared to the giant stores of today, but it proved enormously popular. I have extremely fond memories of going there with Mum and Dad and my younger brother in the 1960s and early 1970s on a Saturday afternoon before catching the S12 bus from the Barker Street bus station back home to Castlefields.

And how strange how one memory leads to another and another. I have just thought for the first time in years about Avenue Records. This was Tesco's very own record label in the early seventies. You could buy an Avenue records EP with six songs on it. They were much cheaper than other records because of course they did not feature the original artists, but studio musicians doing copycat versions of the big hits of the day.

So you would have Neil Diamond's Cracklin Rosie or Gilbert O'Sullivan's Nothing Rhymed or hits by T.Rex or Rod Stewart or Status Quo, but they would be hopelessly tame versions by unknowns.

The inferior quality didn't put us off of course. I suppose we couldn't afford the real thing and were quite happy with these cheap imitations.

Mmmmmmm.

And now I'm left thinking: How did I get from Ashleys coffee shop and bar to cheap imitations of T.Rex records via The George Hotel and Shrewsbury's first supermarket?

Well, that's the kind of thing that happens when you let your mind wander.

Phil Gillam's novel, Shrewsbury Station Just After Six, is now available.