Some Bridgnorth Connections

If we were in Italy Bridgnorth might be described as a “picturesque, fortified hilltop town”.  In 1641 King Charles, walking the castle terrace with his two young sons, declared it to be “the finest view in my kingdom”, -but that was before they built the outskirts of Low Town with its flood plain estates and aluminium factory. The royal party stayed in the Governor’s House, then new and still standing, where the boys’ tutor was one William Harvev, –  he who is said to have later discovered the circulation of blood. Four years on, when the Civil War was at its most furious , the besieged royalist garrison inside the castle tried to break out by lobbing fire-bombs at St Leonards church where barrels of  Roundhead gunpowder were known to be stored.  The consequent  explosion shattered the church and much of the area around the High Street. In retaliation the besieging Parliamentarian forces led by Colonel Lavington began to tunnel under the castle, into the soft blood red sandstone which characterises the town and seems to invite being carved into. Hearing and fearing the scritch-scratching of shovels approaching from beneath, the royalist garrison quickly surrendered, but the roundhead engineers blew up what they could of the old Norman castle anyway. At the Restoration Richard Baxter, ex-puritan polemicist and cleric of St Leonards, petitioned Charles II for funds to help rebuild much of High Town. He described the people of Bridgnorth as being notably hard-hearted, “incorrigible and insensible to my preaching”.  Today the solicitors, doctors, retired businessmen and clergy of West Castle Street still look down, literally if not figuratively, on the trading estates, new housing, supermarkets, all-day drinking pubs and bail hostel of Low Town. “Fidelitas Urbis Salus Regis” (“In the town’s loyalty lies the King’s safety”) urges Bridgnorth’s debatable motto. The remains of the blown-up castle (“more leaning than the Tower of Pisa” boasts the town’s tourist brochure) still stands like the stump of a worrisome old tooth on the cliff top where the last absolute monarch of Britain once posed to admire the view.