The Country Houses of Shropshire

This beautifully presented volume is an account of a unique building – the last survivor of Ludlow’s medieval town gates which forms a distinctive feature at one end of Broad Street. Considerably extended in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its core comprises a pair of D-shaped stone towers either side the gateway, part of a circuit of town walls built at the end of the thirteenth century to protect the townsfolk from the Welsh. As the gate’s military function declined, Ludlow Corporation was faced with finding new uses. For a time, the space above the gate was let as a school and other parts for storage, but it was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the property was converted into a house. This volume traces the post-medieval history of the Broad Gate through to modern times. The stories of the families who have occupied the building – the Steads, Sprotts, Kinnersleys, Lloyds and Richardsons – reveal a succession of doctors, lawyers and bankers who initially leased and eventually acquired the freehold of the building. The occupants belonged to long established gentry families in the Midlands and Wales and, like others, chose to settle in Ludlow in the eighteenth century bringing ‘a more sophisticated world to provincial Shropshire.’ Valerie Thomas skilfully identifies the common themes that link these families, the source of their wealth, social status, ambition, and contribution to the structural history of the Broad Gate. Between these family stories are chapters on eighteenthand nineteenth-century Ludlow which provide a wider context to the social changes which led to the creation of an urban elite. Ludlow offered a short but fashionable season, having the essential elements to attract visitors – a theatre, racecourse and assemblies, only lacking curative waters of a spa. A hallmark of this study is the author’s adept inter-disciplinary approach bringing together all kinds of written evidence – especially deeds, family papers, diaries, and probate material – with the physical evidence of the building and material possessions. The description of the built-in eighteenth-century bureau in a first-floor closet, a room she tells us was ‘more likely to have been a private space belonging to the mistress of the house’ is enhanced by her quotes from literary references. During the house’s restoration when various small ovens in the kitchen walls were uncovered, Peter Brears, an authority on the history of cookery, advised on their significance. His carefully drawn watercolours show how these features worked. Ludlow has been well served by historians and building experts, both nationally and locally, especially the Ludlow Historical Research Group whose publication on the houses of Broad Street set new standards in presenting the results of the study of whole streets. Thomas shows how its occupants created a fashionable miniature country estate in an urban setting. The inter-disciplinary approach, combined with the author’s expertise in setting her findings in a wider context, results in a major contribution to the social history of provincial town life.