Shropshire Magazine

Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, is home to a ‘Shropshire Curiosity Shop’

Ben Bentley compares and contrasts some of our county towns with their namesakes overseas.

Sound familiar? Being stuck in traffic in the heart of Shrewsbury? This time the location of street snarl-ups and frustrating delays is along two of Shrewsbury’s less-known streets – Centech Boulevard and Green Street.

Centech Boulevard? Green Street?

Same old story. Completely different Shrewsbury. A quick look at the welcome sign tells you that you are entering Shrewsbury . . . Massachusetts.

Flying the flag for Shrewsbury, USA

Despite superficial similarities, however, other aspects do differ. Shrewsbury, MA, has its own public access TV station, showing parochial programmes such as Butterfly Migration. Shropshire’s Shrewsbury may be the original but like many of our county towns and villages, it has spawned more than a few imitators.

We should take it as high praise that there are other Shrewsburys, Telfords, and Ludlows around the globe. But what are they like? What goes on there?

The website for Ludlow, Vermont, in the US, carries the motto: “A good place to work, a great place to live, a wonderful place to play.”

Again, sound familiar? The namesake shares breathtaking views not dissimilar to those of Ludlow in Shropshire. Our neighbourly villagers over the pond are proud types, too, and hit the streets each May to pick up litter.

Apparently this Ludlow is prone to hurricanes and floods. Snap. It gets chillier in winter though, and the village even has its own ‘weigher of coal’ official.

Telford exists in more than one form, though. Telford in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, has a population of approximately 4,600. Telford GB, by contrast has a population of around 180,000, meaning the Shropshire original houses 40 times as many people.

On standards of living – on paper at least – our Pennsylvanian cousins seem to be walking on slightly thicker carpets, with estimated house prices for pretty upmarket homes in 2005 set at $216,200 – around £108,000.

This Telford appears to be the original, though, after the North Pennsylvanian Railroad Company named a station in a region called Hendrick’s Blacksmith after the engineer Thomas Telford. That was in 1857, a good 120 years before Telford UK was born and named after the same pioneer.

Shropshire’s Wellington, aged 1,400, has 24 imitators around the world. The historic market town we know and love has namesakes in New Zealand, the United States, South Africa, Canada . . . and even in England, in Somerset.

Ludlow, Vermont: Windier and wetter than its Shropshire counterpart

The one in Palm Beach, Florida, is Wellington-on-Sea, having some upmarket accommodation within surfing distance.

It is popular too. More than 55,000 people live there, but not everything is equal here – recent figures show that men have an average income of $53,244 versus $33,088 for females, the equivalent of around £26,500 and £16,500 respectively.

Wellington, New Zealand, is also the capital of a country often described as being like Britain in the 1950s. It still has a population of just over 160,000 and even though Wellington in Shropshire has its fair share of food-and-drink outlets, the one Down Under has more bars and restaurants per capita than New York.

Public transport here is exemplary too, with 28 per cent of the population relying upon it.

Newport has many namesakes: Australia, Rhode Island USA, and of course South Wales. Stapleton village near Dorrington just south of Shrewsbury has a few namesakes, one of them in Denver, Colorado, which is a town made up of new houses and described in estate agent-speak as ‘a tapestry of homes, shops, offices, parks, and schools in a walkable community of classic city architecture’.

But one Stapleton blogger writes on CityData.com: “If you want new, affordable and instant community, Stapleton is a great place. Just don’t expect custom homes!”

To most Salopians, Nash is a picturesque village between Cleobury Mortimer and Tenbury Wells. But it also a small village of around 200 people in Oklahoma where a quarter of all males make a living through fishing or agriculture, and where the percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree is lower than the state average. Its claim to fame – if you can call it that – is that it’s 176 times more prone to tornados than the US average.

Of course, towns and villages might share names but no two places are the same.

Wem in North Shrophire even appears to be inimitable, seemingly having no copycat towns anywhere on the planet. Wigwig near Much Wenlock seems to be stand-alone too, as do Pant and Shelve near Bishop’s Castle.

Shropshire – beware of pale imitations.

Telford, Pennsylvania, is part of the country’s industrial belt