Shropshire Magazine

Books are ever-popular Christmas presents and it’s amazing how many are published each year which have a direct relevance to Shropshire. Here are a few titles with county connections well worth considering as presents

• Goodbye Gay Meadow (Matthew Ashton, £24.99) celebrates more than 90 years of history at Shrewsbury Town Football Club’s historic old stadium.

Goodbye Gay Meadow (Matthew Ashton, £24.99)

Photographer Matthew Ashton, a supporter since childhood, said he had always wanted to produce a book on the old riverside ground – and now he has. The hardback book contains a fantastic array of pictures and fans’ anecdotes over 256 pages.

“Once the go-ahead was given for the new stadium I focused my attention on compiling pictures and getting fans to submit articles of their memories of Gay Meadow,” explains Matthew. “People can say what they want about the pictures in there, but to me they mean nothing without the excellent tales and thoughts submitted.”

Staff at Pengwern Books in Shrewsbury say that this is the fastest-selling book, bar Harry Potter, that they have stocked.

To order online visit www.goodbyegaymeadow.com.

• Shropshire’s Oddities (GET Publishing, £12.99) shines a spotlight on some of the weird and wonderful features of Shropshire which are staring locals in the face but which are rarely noticed by them. It has been written and compiled by Dorothy Nicolle, a professional Blue Badge guide for the Heart of England region who specialises in tours in and around the county and lectures on a wide range of subjects.

And in spotting the odd and unusual in the county she has had the advantage of having the eyes of an incomer – and so noticing things with which Salopians are so familiar or blasé that they fail to “see” them themselves. As for her own favourite oddities, she particularly likes quirky tombstones.

“There’s one, although not in the book, for a butcher in Cardington whose name is Mr Pig. I ask you. You would not dare invent that. Some of them are obvious things, like fire marks on a building. And then you find something different about a building which makes you wonder why, where, when, how – all these questions.”

And now, some of the answers!

• Shropshire Since 1900: A year by year news review (Langrish Caiger Publications, £19.99) brings the county’s more recent history vividly to life.

Shropshire Since 1900 by Toby Neal

By dipping into contemporary newspaper accounts, journalist Toby Neal has recaptured the drama and immediacy of the ‘big news’ of yesteryear, and right up to the present.

The result is a gripping year-by-year history which is fascinating, surprising and sometimes tragic – but never dull. It includes a full chronology which will be invaluable for local historians. And there are special sections detailing every parliamentary election result, highlighting some of the major demolitions which have reshaped the landscape, a list of the principal royal visits – even a list of all the Miss Shropshires!

This is history as news. Read all about it!

• From heart-stopping accounts of poltergeists to first-hand encounters with ghouls, Haunted Shrewsbury (Tempus Publishing Ltd, £9.99) by Shrewsbury’s town crier Martin Wood will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Shrewsbury’s mysterious history.

Drawing on historical and contemporary sources, this collection of tales contains a chilling range of ghostly goings-on. Discover the headless apparition at the castle gates, ghostly monks from the Abbey church and a whole family of spirits in Milk Street. The phenomenal gathering of spooks in Shrewsbury will captivate anyone interested in supernatural history.

• For fans of the great outdoors, Wild Mynd (Hobby Publications, £14.99) by Leo Smith, Peter Carty and Caroline Uff is illustrated with nearly 200 colour photographs and line drawings and has been published on behalf of the National Trust.

National Trust spokesman Tom Warren said: “It also includes wildlife walks and the best places to spot the unique combinations of flora and fauna which thrive on the Long Mynd. Interesting wild flowers and other plants which grow on the hillsides, including rare Rock Stonecrop, are also included.”

The book also reveals that otters are believed to have returned to the Long Mynd after evidence was found earlier this year outside an artificial holt created to lure them back.

• The Wrekin Hill in Shropshire is not just any hill, nor simply the county’s most famous landmark. It is a hill steeped in legend which over the millennia has formed the shoreline to an Ice Age lake and offered refuge to settlers from the Bronze Age onwards until the Roman invasion. But, perhaps above all other aspects, it was, and still is, a playground for people. Historian Allan Frost’s The Wrekin Hill (NPI, £12.99) covers all aspects of the Wrekin’s history including archaeology, social history and recreational uses of the site.

• The result of many years’ research, Martin Speight’s Diddlebury: The history of a Corvedale parish (Logaston Press, £9.95) looks at land ownership and use to provide a localised picture of agriculture, wealth and poverty, movements of people, and the scale of estates and their management. The scope of the book is such that it brings to life the parish of Diddlebury from Saxon times in a most interesting and readable style.

• Past and Presents (Hot Air Publishers, £7.99) is author Dave Armitage’s follow-up to his extremely successful debut novel, Born To Be Mild. Past and Presents follows the lives of two pals from a fictional Shropshire village whose paths develop in very different ways.

The Fight for Fordhall Farm (Hodder and Stoughton, £16.99)

• A heart-warming tale of success against the odds is related in The Fight for Fordhall Farm (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99). Ben and Charlotte Hollins inherited the farm tenancy at Market Drayton from their father, Arthur Hollins, an organic pioneer.

But on taking over in 2004, they lived under a threat from the landowner to break up the farm and sell it to developers.

This book tells the story of how they raised the money to secure the farm’s future, recruiting the support of celebrities and gaining worldwide publicity.

• Sally Tonge, well-known Shropshire storyteller, retells some of the county’s best ghost stories in Shropshire Ghost Stories (NPI, £9.99).

From the ‘Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope’ to the ‘Bagbury Bull’ and from the murderous ‘Bloody Jack of Shrewsbury’ to the eerie ‘White Lady of Longnor’ there is something here to frighten everyone.

The fascinating introduction discusses and explains the recurring motifs in the tales, such as bottled ghosts, white ladies and encounters with the Devil, and considers these stories’ basis in historical fact. This book is illustrated with a selection of drawings and atmospheric photographs.