Phil Gillam: The market hall? It's a matter of taste

I'm talking about Shrewsbury's huge market hall which dominates the Shoplatch and Claremont Street area like a giant space ship that's plonked itself down there because it ran out of fuel on its way to another solar system.

Of course the option to knock it all down and replace it with something more tasteful and more in-keeping with our historic town seems to recede with each passing year.

The conversion of Mardol House (the large and stocky appendage to the Starship Market Hall) into student accommodation is the latest move which will make any wishful thoughts of demolition somewhat redundant.

As reported in this newspaper last week, hundreds of doors and windows, miles of cabling and thousands of litres of paint are being used to help breathe new life into this structure.

Funny how things turn out.

Not so very long ago (okay, it might have been a decade ago actually, the years go so quickly) I was having a coffee and a very pleasant chat with a leading Shrewsbury councillor in The Bellstone Restaurant. The two of us looked out of the window at the market hall, and the councillor said to me: "That'll be next."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He was cock-a-hoop that the ugly and unloved St Austin's Street multi-storey car park near the Sixth Form College had recently been demolished. And he seemed convinced that the market hall (presumably including Mardol House) would be the next to fall victim to the bulldozers.

I couldn't say where this notion had come from - except that there has been a feeling in the town in recent years that the market hall simply doesn't fit in.

Plenty of people (myself included) feel it was an enormous mistake to have knocked down the Victorian market hall that had stood on that spot for a hundred years. No matter how smelly and run-down it might have become, surely it could have been throughly cleaned and tastefully redeveloped. Ah, well.

There's little point in dwelling upon what might have been.

What is going on right now is that the redundant office block that is Mardol House is being converted into a modern hall of residence for 86 students in readiness for the first intake of undergraduate students at the new University Centre Shrewsbury in the autumn.

The construction work is progressing as planned, says the contractor Willmott Dixon, the same company that built Theatre Severn six years ago.

Willmott Dixon site manager Richard Williams, said the company was proud to be part of the team bringing a university to Shrewsbury.

"It has been a challenge, but we will endeavour to deliver and return Mardol House back to a usable building," he said.

Work began on the project on March 16 and is on target to be completed mid-September.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I have no argument with Mardol House being used for student accommodation. And, as I have said many times before in this column, I really have no problem with the exciting vibe that can now be enjoyed inside the market hall on its busier days.

It's just that nothing will ever convince me that the massive market hall complex that sits in the heart of the town was the right thing - architecturally - for Shrewsbury.

* Phil Gillam's gentle novel of family life, Shrewsbury Station Just After Six, is available from Pengwern Books, Fish Street, Shrewsbury, and from amazon.co.uk