Our town for more than three centuries possessed almost exclusively the trade with Wales in a coarse kind of cloth called Welsh webs, which were brought from Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire to a market held here weekly. In reference to this, Camden, in his “Britannia,” published in 1586, writes of Shrewsbury—“It is a fine city, well inhabited, and of good commerce; and by the industry of the citizens and their cloth manufacture and their trade with the Welsh, is very rich, for hither the Welsh commodities are brought as to the common mart.”

The termination of this branch of commerce is an event of too much importance to be passed over. It is thus graphically alluded to by Messrs. Owen and Blakeway: “Every Thursday the central parts of the town were all life and bustle; troops of hardy ponies, each with a halter of twisted straw, and laden with two bales of cloth, poured into the Market-place in the morning, driven by stout Welshmen in their country coats of blue cloth and striped linsey waistcoats.”

At two o’clock the drapers, with their clerks and shearmen, assembled under the Market-house, and proceeded up stairs (according to ancient usage) in seniority. The market being over, drays were seen in all directions conveying the cloths to the several warehouses, and more than six hundred pieces of web have been sold in a day. The whole was a ready money business; and as the Welshmen left much of their cash behind them in exchange for malt, groceries, and other shop goods, the loss of such a trade to the town may be easily conceived. This took place about the year 1795, and was occasioned by individuals (not members of the Shrewsbury fraternity of drapers) travelling into those parts where the goods were made, from which the manufacturers soon learnt that they might find a mart for their goods at home without the trouble and expence of a journey to the walls of Amwythig. In March, 1803, the company relinquished the great room over the market-hall, where they had for nearly two centuries transacted their business, and though much traffic in flannels was subsequently carried on in the town, the total extinction of this branch of our local commerce is fast approaching, from the market having diverged to Welshpool, Newtown, and Llanidloes, where the advantages of machinery are now substituted for manual labour in its manufacture.

The cessation of the woollen market in this town has been ascribed to the improvement of the roads in Wales, which opened a more free communication to the interlopers of the Drapers’ company; and this again afforded some compensation to the town for the loss of this branch of its trade. For if Shrewsbury was no longer the emporium of North Wales, it was becoming the centre of communication between London and Dublin; and the agriculture of the neighbourhood and the trade of the town received a new impulse from the vast increase of posting and stage coaches, but far inadequate to the advantage which it derived from its trade in Welsh woollens and the weekly visits of the Cambrian farmers.

That Shrewsbury, however, may reap the full benefit of its central situation as the great thoroughfare from whence all the roads into North Wales diverge, and being also the general market of the surrounding country, acknowledged to be one of the finest agricultural districts in the kingdom, it is highly expedient that our town should possess the advantage of a Railway communicating with the great lines to Birmingham, London, Liverpool, &c.

Prospectuses have been issued showing the eligibility of the plan, and the position in which the trade and general intercourse of the town will be placed if unprovided with those facilities of cheap and expeditious conveyance enjoyed by other large towns; and when it is considered that a great portion of the provisions which supply the thickly-populated neighbourhoods of Wolverhampton, Bilston, Birmingham, &c. are purchased at our weekly markets and monthly fairs, and the deficient and expensive means of transit on this line, a Railway would produce incalculable benefit to the town by an increased traffic, and thereby contribute to reinstate it in that important situation which it once held as the Emporium of North Wales.

The chief manufactories at present are the extensive concern of Messrs. Marshall for thread and linen yarns, three iron foundries, and Messrs. Jones and Pidgeon’s for tobacco and snuff. The vicinity being a good barley country, the malting business is carried on to a considerable extent, and divided among sixty maltsters. Glass-staining has been brought to the highest state of perfection in this town, completely disproving assertions made some few years since that the powers of this ancient science had then extended almost beyond the hope of eventual excellence. The gothic chain, however, which for so long a period had confined the mystery of this beautiful art, once, indeed, considered as entirely lost, has been effectively broken by our townsman, Mr. D. Evans, of whose productions our churches and many other ecclesiastical buildings and noblemen’s mansions in different parts of the kingdom afford specimens, contending in effect with some of the finest works of the ancient masters.

Among the delicacies for which our town is so deservedly celebrated may be mentioned a most delicious Cake, [204] of which but few strangers in passing through fail to partake, especially if they have read the encomium of the poet Shenstone:

“For here each season do these cakes abide,
Whose honoured names th’ inventive city own,
Rend’ring through Britain’s isle Salopia’s praises known.”

Shrewsbury Cakes appear to have been presented to distinguished personages on their visit to this town as early as the reign of Elizabeth; and when their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria arrived here in 1832, they were graciously pleased to accept a box of them from the Mayor.

The Simnel made here is much admired, and great quantities of this kind of cake are prepared about the season of Christmas and Lent. The word is supposed to have been derived from the Latin simila, signifying fine flour; but the common tradition fixes its origin to a dispute between a man named “Simon” and his wife “Nell.” One of them was desirous that the plum pudding should be baked, while the other insisted that it should be boiled: neither party being disposed to yield, it was therefore first boiled and afterwards baked (the processes that it now undergoes), and thus produced Sim-nell. The exterior crust, or shell (enclosing a compound of fruit) is hard, and deeply tinged with saffron.

The Shrewsbury Brawn is unrivalled, and has lately been patronised by His Majesty William the Fourth. Brawn is a Christmas dish of great antiquity, and may be found in most of the ancient bills of fare for coronations and other great feasts. “Brawn, mustard, and malmsey” were directed for breakfast during the reign of Elizabeth; and Dugdale, in his account of the Inner Temple Revels, states the same directions for that society. It is prepared from the flesh of boars fattened for the purpose.

Shrewsbury Ale has been commended from a remote period. Iolo Goch, the bard of Owen Glendower, eulogises the profusion with which “Cwrw Amwythig,” or Shrewsbury Ale, was dispensed in the mansion of his hero at Sycarth, which he seems to have visited previously to the insurrection of 1400.In the last century the properties of this beverage were thus extolled:—

“Hops, Water, and Barley, are here of the best,
Your March and October can well stand the test;
The body is plump, and the visage ne’er pale,
That imbibes, or is painted, with Shrewsbury Ale.”