Ludlow, Shropshire

Clifton-Taylor’s English towns: In the marches

My short armchair travel series concludes for now with another of my favourite English towns – Ludlow – in a further programme from Alec Clifton-Taylor’s 1978 series. He begins with the Norman castle that gave the place its reason for being, and with a wonderful aerial shot of the castle and the town. A helicopter shot really helps one to understand Ludlow – not just the layout of the castle but also the town's grid plan, which is a notable example of medieval town planning.

Further joys unroll thereafter, including Ludlow’s fine parish church (especially its carved misericords) and the carving on the town’s timber-framed houses (the Feathers, above, best of all). If these were built on the prosperity that came from wool, the profits from the new industry of glove-making helped the Georgians improve the town in the 18th century, when it also became a notable social centre. Bigwigs’ mansions and the smaller houses of Georgian merchants offer further delights. The house with eight Venetian windows brought a smile to Clifton-Taylor ’s face, as it did to mine.

Entertaining diversions involve bad graveyard materials (e. g. ’nauseating crème de menthe chips’, luckily absent here) and the ‘de-blacking’ of timber framing. The whole programme is entertaining and an admiring portrait of this lovely town, still one of the gems of the west of England.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Local colour

On a somewhat unproductive day, I thought I'd go through my photographs of some of the places I've visited recently and was quickly reminded of Ludlow. The Feathers, a dazzling timber-framed house turned inn, is a building I've written about before and admired on many occasions. However often I go past, I always take a look at its carved timberwork, but what raised my spirits this time was the display of hanging baskets. I suppose if you'd asked me beforehand, I'd have said that the Feathers, in all its jazzy Jacobean glory, hardly needed baskets of flowers to add to its attractions. Isn't all that carved oak enough on its own? Well, at one level it is, but at another, a few splashes of colour do complement the monochrome patterns of the woodwork. The building's carvings (mustachioed faces, scrolls, leaves, miniature arches), patterned glazing bars, and lozenges of golden glass are set off wonderfully by this floral display.

Ludlow, Shropshire

Dazzler

One of my readers asked me, in response to the previous post about a building in Buckinghamshire, whether I had any thoughts on regional variations in timber-framed buildings. Just a few, so I thought I'd do a group of posts about such structures in different parts of England.

One of the most rewarding places to look at this type of building is in the west Midlands and the counties that mark England's border with Wales. In this area Shropshire and Cheshire in particular stand out: one of the features of the local architecture here is a tendency towards highly ornate timberwork in which the frame is made up of many small square sections, themselves embellished with additional woodwork in the form of a multitude of diagonal braces, quatrefoils, small arches and the like. Carved bargeboards, brackets, and ornamental heads add to the effect on the most elaborate buildings. A town in which all these details can be seen is Ludlow, and perhaps the most magnificent timber-framed building in Ludlow is The Feathers, built in 1619 as a house for a Welsh lawyer, Rees Jones, and as dazzling a display of conspicuous wealth as you'll see on an English street. The building became an inn in about 1670.

This is high-status architecture. There are many buildings in this region with much plainer woodwork. But for rich merchants, lawyers, and landowners who wanted houses that stand out on a crowded street, Shropshire's carpenters had the skill to fit the bill.

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I've posted before about Shropshire's dazzling timberwork here and here.