Wem to mark town's 40th anniversary of place in Domesday Book history

This Saturday a Shropshire town will be marking the 40th anniversary of its nine-day televised Domesday Festival.

The event, marking the date of the Wem celebration, will be taking place at Wem Town Hall at 6.30pm (June 27) - with a screening of rare footage from the 1986 commemoration.

Organiser Julian Dee, whose mother Pauline Dee BEM was Mayor of Wem and 1986 Domesday Festival Chairman said: “Saturday will be an opportunity to remember an incredible moment when Wem, on BBC1, helped England to look back on its history, through the prism of Wem’s own story as a bustling Shropshire market town.”

As well as the screening of the footage the event will include interviews and the unveiling of a painting.

The original Wem Domesday Festival was a focal point of Professor Michael Wood’s 1986 BBC1 documentary series marking the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book, in which he told millions of viewers: “Wem is small town England personified.”

In 1986, TV cameras and thousands of people dressed in medieval costume-all descended on Wem for the nine-day Festival – with ‘Nine Playlets For Nine Hundred Years’ of local recorded history enacted by a cast of more than a hundred people.

Festival filming and photography also captured ox-roasting, feasting, maypole dancing, medieval market-and-craft stalls, the brass band, and interviews with Wemians young and old.

Organisers of this weekend’s anniversary event are hoping that the night of nostalgia will help inspire more people, including the next generation, to learn about the Shropshire market town’s history - and to get involved in local arts.

Wem’s unique ancient links featured in the launch episode of BBC1’s 1986 ‘Domesday’ series.

BBC historian Michael Wood traced descendants of not only the town’s Norman first Baron, William Pantulf–but also of the Arden family, who owned part of Wem before 1066.

As they unveiled Wem’s 1986 Domesday Festival Plaque in a unique ‘reunion’ at a huge High Street medieval market, Dr George Arden said to Monsieur Pierre de Panthou, from Normandy: “Glad to have met you again after nine hundred years!”

On Wednesday, ahead of Saturday night’s celebration screening, the plaque was garlanded with flowers by floral artist Jackie Parker, accompanied by Mayor of Wem, Cllr Bob Barker, and Honorary Alderman Pauline Dee BEM, who as Wem’s first woman Mayor, also chaired the 1986 Domesday Festival

As part of the celebration the 1986-filmed ‘Nine Playlets For Nine Hundred Years’ are available to watch.

The performances are in rhyming couplet, including the famous story of how ‘The Women of Wem and a few Musketeers, beat Lord Capel and all his Cavaliers!’ –during the Civil War.

Famous Wemians including essayist William Hazlitt and Restoration playwright William Wycherley also feature in the playlets, along with fourteen-year-old Jane Churm, who accidentally started the 1677 Great Fire of Wem.

Nerys Colclough McCabe, a member of Wem Amateur Dramatic & Operatic Society said: “I hope the playlets footage will inspire more people to get involved in amateur dramatics and to explore our local history.”

Nerys and other Wemians will also briefly speak with event organiser Julian Dee about plans to commemorate next year’s 350thanniversary of The Great Fire of Wem.