Bad weather was bad news for Shrewsbury

So far this winter has been very mild and is nothing compared to the bad weather of 1836/37.

That year there were exceptionally heavy snowdrifts on the evening of Christmas Day and by December 27, 14 mail coaches were abandoned throughout the country.

The bad weather was bad news for Shrewsbury, The Lion Hotel and the stagecoach industry which brought so much trade and income to the town.

The stagecoaches could not compete with the new railway transport which provided a cheaper, faster and more comfortable journey and the snow focussed everyone’s attention on the disadvantages of the coaches, pictured below.

By 1838 the railways were beginning to expand all over the country, even though the first trains did not reach Shrewsbury until 1848.

A Salopian referred to the town before 1837 as “a little metropolis to which resorted all the County families for public functions of all kind” but “the advent of the railway killed all this gay provincial life.”

And another wrote to a friend in Halifax in January 1838: “Shrewsbury seems to be a declining town.

“There is very little Sociality left… The Manchester and Liverpool Railway to Birmingham has had a very great and disadvantageous effect upon this town, which has almost ceased to be a thoroughfare and it was a great one; consequently many of the coaches have been given up.”

This even caused the population of Shrewsbury to fall, as people moved elsewhere for work with the cutbacks in the coaching industry.

By 1841, there were 18,285 in Shrewsbury compared to 21,297 in 1831.

There’s more about the stagecoaches in Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury.

Signed copies can be obtained for £6 including postage within the UK by emailing John@jbutterworth.plus.com