A little over 60 years ago, Shrewsbury said farewell to Nearwell, a building sacrificed to clear the way for the new Shirehall on the edge of town.

"It was criminal of them to knock it down," said Michael York, for whom fond memories of the old place were brought back by the Star's recent feature remembering that part of the county town before the Shirehall was built.

Today the 1960s Shirehall lies empty, and potentially faces a day of destiny with the bulldozers if a campaign to save it is unsuccessful.

Mr York, who is 86, recalls Nearwell from his days boarding there from 1952 to 1954 when he attended Shrewsbury Technical College.

"It was wonderful. It was like an old house which homed about 20 to 30 children, as we were then. It was run by Mr and Mrs Jones. Mr Jones was a teacher at Shrewsbury Technical College. They were in charge and we used to be delegated certain jobs and then after every week we used to change them over. 

"We had anthracite stoves in different rooms and had to look after those ourselves. We had to lay it for evening meals and do the washing up. The chores didn't faze us at all."

He started there aged 13.

"That was the age we could go there, basically because if you couldn't get to Shrewsbury Technical College for 9 o'clock you either could not go, or you had to board, which I did. 

"I lived at Wootton, near Quatt, and my parents hadn't got a car, so I could not otherwise have got there."

A landmark feature on the doorstep was The Column, and Mr York, who lives now in Alveley, said there were no restrictions back then in going up it, something he and his fellow boarders would do regularly.

"We had a full-sized tennis court which we used every day in the summer. There was a driveway and the walkway up to Nearwell from the main road was like a wonderful winding footpath with rhododendron trees either side. What a wonderful setting. To think everything has been pulled up and everything knocked down to put the blessed Shirehall there."

The youngsters could go home at weekends if they wished. Nearwell was for boys, with boarding girls housed separately not far away at The Elms. 

"We weren't allowed to go to the girls' place and they weren't allowed to go to ours."

On Sunday mornings they were supposed to go to church, but Mr York recalls one occasion he instead went on a furtive expedition.

"This Sunday morning we had been told there was a big fish which had been more or less washed up on the bank by the river. Instead of going to church three or four of us absconded and went down to the river and picked this fish up.

"We brought it back to Nearwell in a wheelbarrow, took it upstairs into the bathroom, filled the bath with water and put the salmon in there. We told Mr and Mrs Jones.

"It was the full length of the bath. We had a job to pick it up. That was our evening meal for the next three or four nights."

Nearwell seems to have been demolished in August 1963.

"I would have stopped them if I had been there," he said.

It was when he came to Shrewsbury for jury service that he saw what had happened.

"I was very upset. When I arrived there I couldn't believe what they had done. They had flattened it completely."