Shrawardine is a small village in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

of Montford. It is outside

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

, the

county town In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county and the place where the county's members of Parliament are elect ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

, England.Raven, M. ''A Guide to Shropshire'', 2005, p.178

Etymology

Its name is locally pronounced ''Shray-den'', and was often spelt "Shraydon" in old documents;Vale, Edmund (1949) ''Shropshire'', London: Robert Hale, p.73 it is otherwise pronounced ''Shray-war-dine''. The placename originates from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''worðign'' "enclosed settlement" combined with either ''scraef'' "cave" or ''screawa'' "shrew", the latter used as a

byname An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

for an individual.Gelling, M. (2006) ''The Place-names of Shropshire, Part Five: The hundreds of Pimhill and Bradford North'', EPNS, p.112

Landmarks

The village's landmarks include Shrawardine Castle and St Mary's Church. The castle, known as Castell Isabella by the

Anglo-Normans The Anglo-Normans ( nrf, Anglo-Normaunds, ang, Engel-Norðmandisca) were the medieval ruling class in England, composed mainly of a combination of ethnic Normans, French, Anglo-Saxons, Flemings and Bretons, following the Norman conquest. A sm ...

, was built in the reign of

Henry I of England Henry I (c. 1068 – 1 December 1135), also known as Henry Beauclerc, was King of England from 1100 to his death in 1135. He was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and was educated in Latin and the liberal arts. On William's death in ...

, and dismantled during the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

in 1645. It had been held since 1644 by the Royalist commander Sir William Vaughan, whose aggressive tactics earned him the nickname "the Devil of Shrawardine".Mangianello, S. ''The concise encyclopedia of the revolutions and wars of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1639-1660'', Scarecrow, 2004, p.491

Little Shrawardine

The

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

passes to the west of the village. On the other side of the river is a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

called Little Shrawardine. It lies mainly within the civil parish of Montford.

Notable residents

*Rev Dr

Nevil Maskelyne Nevil Maskelyne (; 6 October 1732 – 9 February 1811) was the fifth British Astronomer Royal. He held the office from 1765 to 1811. He was the first person to scientifically measure the mass of the planet Earth. He created the ''British Nau ...

FRS FRSE , the fifth

Astronomer Royal Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The post ...

, was Rector of the parish 1775 to 1782. *

Jane Gray (stained glass artist) Jane Gray (born 1931) is a British stained glass artist. She trained at the Kingston School of Arts from 1949 to 1951, where she specialised in weaving and stained glass, and then studied at the Royal College of Art until 1955. She worked as an a ...

has had a workshop in Shrawardine since 1992.Report on forthcoming auction of some of Gray's work.

References

External links