Poll names town's ugliest sites

One of Shrewsbury's most well-used buildings has been named as the ugliest in the town centre in an online poll.

The Market Hall, in Claremont Street, which opened in 196, was highlighted as the worst building in the town by subscribers to shrewsburyforum.co.uk, where it was also described as dingy and uninspiring and criticised for being impractical for its lack of easy access to the first floor.

The hall is home to many traders, offering fruit and vegetables, fish, books, china, antiques, crafts and much more.

But while its own publicity proclaims to be "a fantastic mix of old and new", visitors to the town disagreed.

One visitor who posted a comment under the name of Jonesy55 said the main problem with the market hall was that it was impractical.

"The problem is that Shrewsbury doesn't exactly have a wealth of good buildings from the past 50 years," he said.

"The Market Hall is a terrible design, shoving all those stalls on the first floor so that they get ignored by most people and grannies can't get to them.

"The offices are also unused because nobody wants to be located there and the exterior of the building is nothing special."

But one voter, Lemon Squeezer, came out in support of the building, claiming that all buildings go through phases of being unpopular.

"The 1960s market hall has a lot of integrity the shape is balanced and the detailing links with the historic buildings around it. The interior needs updating with new lifts and not being cosmetically Victorianised," he said.

No-one was available for comment from the Market Hall.

Other buildings to be nominated included the Raven Meadows multi-storey car park and Princess House on The Square.

And the BT tower in Smithfield Road along with the multi-storey car park in Lower Claremont Bank, which have both been demolished, were described as having been the "worst ever buildings in the history of Shrewsbury".

By Pam Griffin