Tile Gazetteer - Shropshire

ACTON BURNELL

St Mary’s Church stands close to the romantic ruins of Acton Burnell Castle, a fortified house dating from the thirteenth century. The north transept of the church is paved with about 900 four-inch square fourteenth century tiles, mainly line-impressed and counter-relief with a few inlaid. A nice range of motifs includes oak leaves, a hunter blowing his horn, and a griffin, the latter design being quite common in this area. In addition, the sanctuary has a Victorian dust-pressed encaustic tile pavement. Just over a mile south of the village, in the tiny hamlet of Langley, is Langley Chapel (EH) with a complete set of early seventeenth century fittings and furniture. At its east end are some thirteenth or fourteenth century tiles which were laid in their present positions during the seventeenth century.

BATCHCOTT

All Saints Church, in the hamlet of Batchcott, is set high above the village to which it belongs, Richards Castle, which lies across the county border in Herefordshire. It was designed by Richard Norman Shaw and built in 1890-3. The interior has relatively little decoration, but there is a good opus sectile figure of Christ, the Light of the World, designed by James Hogan (1883-1948) in 1924 and supplied by Powell’s of Whitefriars at a cost of £130; Hogan was the firm’s principal in-house designer. The panel is a memorial to Richard Betton Betton-Foster of nearby Overton Grange.

BATTLEFIELD

The medieval Church of St Mary Magdalene at Battlefield, out in the countryside on the northern fringe of Shrewbury, was in the ownership of the Corbet family of now-demolished Sundorne Castle (just over a mile to the south-east of the church) from 1638. The church was restored at the family’s expense in 1861, their architect being Samuel Pountney Smith (1812-83) of Shrewsbury. An elaborate encaustic pavement, including tiles by Maw & Co and Minton, runs throughout the church, with eighteen royal coats of arms on the chancel floor and an extraordinary coffin-shaped arrangement by Maw’s in the Corbet family chapel (Fig 227). Altogether, with its Corbet symbols and several splendidly large Maw trade tiles, this is a church floor to rival any in Britain. St Mary Magdalene is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

BENTHALL

St Bartholomew’s Church, Benthall (a mile west of Broseley) was damaged during the Civil War and rebuilt in 1667. Thirteenth century tiles from the original church survive in the sanctuary and near the font; the latter, lozenge-shaped tiles are very similar to those displayed in the porch of neighbouring Benthall Hall (NT). The Hall, which dates from the sixteenth century, was leased by the brothers George and Arthur Maw (of Maw’s Benthall tileworks) from 1853 to 1886; initially the house was divided into two dwellings, but later Arthur moved to a neighbouring house to make room for their growing families. In 1859 the flagstones of Benthall Hall’s entrance hall were repaced by a colourful Maw’s geometric and encaustic pavement, probably designed by George Maw himself. Although the tiles were covered by an oak floor in 1918, a trapdoor ensures that a small section of this attractive pavement can still be seen.

BROSELEY

In King Street, right in the middle of Broseley, is an astonishing former butcher’s shop completely tiled inside and out with products from the Maw’s factory, only a mile or so away beside the Severn at Jackfield (Fig 228). The shop’s owner was Matthew Davis, whose name appears on the facade; he emigrated to South America in the 1890s but returned shortly afterwards and purchased the little shop, which he enlarged. He then bought a substantial number of tiles from Maw’s, perhaps getting them at a good price as they were taken from a pile stored outside the factory, and hired a local man (who had a reputation as something of a drunkard) as a tile fixer.[1] The result is happily eccentric.

BUILDWAS

There are several areas of medieval tiling visible amongst the ruins of the Cistercian foundation Buildwas Abbey (EH), which lies on the south bank of the Severn opposite the village; some of the best are in the chapter house, where there are relaid tiles from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Fig 229).

CARDINGTON

The east wall of St James Church is faced with decorative tiling which reaches up to the lower edge of the east window. Its main features are four pictorial panels depicting biblical figures, and the lettering ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ above the altar. This colourful scheme, with its chevron-style arrangement of tiles, probably dates from restoration work carried out during the 1860s; the maker is unknown. The church also displays a ceramic panel made by local people and installed in 2000; it shows St James at the centre of the community.

CHETWYND

The Church of St Michael and All Angels (1865-7, architect Benjamin Ferrey) stands about two miles north-west of Newport, not far from Chetwynd Hall. Most of the east wall tiling dates from 1867, although the majolica reredos was installed in 1880; it shows the Symbols of the Passion in rich colours and is probably by the Campbell Brick & Tile Company.

CHIRBURY

There are some relaid medieval floor tiles in the south aisle of St Michael’s Church, which was restored in 1871-2. The Powell’s opus sectile reredos, which includes a pair of kneeling angels, dates from 1878 and is one of the earliest designs attributable to Suter, a Powell’s cartoonist.[2]

IRONBRIDGE

The Valley Hotel, Buildwas Road is a Georgian building previously known as Severn House when it was the home of Arthur Maw, the tile manufacturer. Its ceramic decoration, much of which can be seen in the hotel’s reception area and main staircase, includes a Maw’s geometric and encaustic pavement, a tiled dado and a high-relief majolica-tiled archway. Beside the hotel is a cottage with unusual diaper patterned polychrome roof tiling.

JACKFIELD

St Mary’s Church (architect Arthur Blomfield, 1863), its exterior an essay in the use of polychromatic brick, predates the two tile factories which now dominate the visitor’s impression of Jackfield (Fig 231). It was built from ‘Broseley’ bricks, made from high-quality local clay, their colours ranging through two shades of red to yellow and blue. The bricks and roofing tiles were made at the works in Calcutts Road, Jackfield established by Theophilus Doughty in 1840, and are reputed to have been supplied free of charge.[3] Inside, the encaustic and geometric tile pavement is by Maw & Co, in muted colours but with some interesting motifs; the Maw’s wall tiling around the apsidal east end is in the same vein.[4] The pictorial tiled reredos, a colourful triptych of the crucifixion, is by Craven Dunnill, and stood for many years in their works showroom before being presented to the church in the early 1950s when the firm left Jackfield.

Round the corner from the church is the Jackfield Tile Museum, formerly Craven Dunnill’s factory, designed by the architect Charles Lynam and built in 1871-4. The Jackfield Encaustic Tile Works was the second tileworks to be designed by Lynam, the first having just been completed for Michael Daintry Hollins in Stoke-on-Trent. For Craven Dunnill, a firm which had been in existence in the Severn valley from the 1860s, Lynam supplied a model tile factory in which the production processes were logically arranged and the neighbouring railway line was used for the import of raw materials and the export of finished tiles. Aside from its spire, exterior decoration was far from lavish, being restricted to decorative panels of unglazed geometric tiles above the windows, in a similar manner to the earlier Minton Hollins factory; inside, an original tiled washroom remains on the first floor. Tile manufacture ceased in the early 1950s and the works was bought by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in 1983.

A few hundred yards east along the valley is Maw’s Craft Centre, housed in what remains of Maw & Co’s Benthall Works, which opened in 1883 and was the largest tileworks in the world by the turn of the century; it was Charles Lynam’s third tile factory design (Fig 230).[5] The long, narrow complex of buildings stood beside the railway line, with a row of bottle kilns at one end. The factory closed in 1970, and two-thirds of the site was demolished during the 1970s before conversion of some of the remaining buildings into flats, small business units and shops in the early 1980s; Maw’s Craft Centre opened in 1988. As with Lynam’s previous two tileworks, there was not a great deal of external decoration, although the broad tile panel above the main entrance, which records key dates in the firm’s history, is still extant. In the courtyard is a small tile pavement including oddments of letter tiles, and a wall tile panel shows a hand pointing to the foreman’s office. Rather more lavish is the entrance and stairs which originally led to the showrooms, with a good mosaic floor, a large ceramic First World War memorial plaque and a tile dado including panels of classical figures. Restoration work on the hallway tiling was carried out by Lesley Durbin and Su Turner of the Jackfield Conservation Studio around 1991.

KEMBERTON

St Andrew’s Church, High Street, stands on a medieval site although the church itself mostly dates from 1882; the architect was Joseph Farmer of Kemberton. Only the nave of the church is dedicated to St Andrew; the chancel dedication is to St John the Baptist. The Craven Dunnill encaustic pavement in the chancel includes tiles depicting hunting scenes, the designs being derived from fourteenth century tiles, examples of which can still be seen at Neath Abbey (Neath Port Talbot, Wales).[6]

LLANYMYNECH

Llanymynech is a village of two halves, with the border between England and Wales (Powys) running for about half a mile along its main street. St Agatha’s Church, designed by the architect Thomas Penson of Oswestry and built in 1844-5, lies on the Shropshire side of the divide. It is one of five churches built in the borders (the other four are in Powys) during the 1840s in which yellow terracotta or ‘firebrick’ was used in combination with buff brick to give rich decorative features at a lower cost than carved stone. Penson was responsible for three of these churches, his first being at Welshpool (1839-44), where brick and terracotta were used only on the inside of the building. At St Agatha, his second church of this group, he added elaborate external terracotta in the neo-norman style with zigzag patterning and many modelled heads. Penson’s third terracotta church - St David, Newtown (1843-7) - took the use of this material to its logical end point, with brick and terracotta completely replacing stone. The source of the Llanymynech terracotta was probably the firebrick works at Trefonen, four miles to the north.

The Lancashire ‘pot churches’ designed by the architect Edmund Sharpe were being put up at the same time as these Welsh border churches, although Sharpe’s use of terracotta was rather more innovative in structural terms. His Holy Trinity (1845-6), Rusholme, Manchester used a higher percentage of hollow blocks than his first terracotta church, St Stephen (1844-5), Lever Bridge, Bolton. As far as the critics of The Ecclesiologist were concerned, however, any use of terracotta in church architecture was beyond the pale. They felt its only theoretically sound use would be for building in the classical idiom, with which Coade stone had been associated, but clearly this would be unacceptable for the gothic revival churches being promoted by the Camden Society. Terracotta ornament was seen as second rate and unworthy, lacking the authenticity bestowed upon stone by medieval churches. Sharpe was pleased to find that visitors to Lever Bridge had not realised they were looking at terracotta, mistaking it for stone; Penson, on the other hand, may have been more concerned with originality than imitation. In any case, the use of terracotta in church construction had reached a dead end with these 1840s buildings; it was to be a generation before ecclesiastical architects were again prepared to experiment with the material.[7]

St Agatha’s Church was listed grade II in 1987. Echoing Lever Bridge, it is interesting to note that despite Michael Stratton’s comments in The Terracotta Revival that these Welsh border churches incorporate ‘dressings of ‘firebrick’, large blocks too yellow in colour to be mistaken for stone’, the lengthy list description does not mention terracotta, instead referring to ‘yellow sandstone’!

LUDLOW

In the Cotswold fashion shop on Church Street, formerly a Maypole Dairy, is a pretty pictorial panel showing a rural scene with a maypole; it is part of a larger decorative scheme, the rest of which is now hidden. Most of these Maypole panels were produced around 1920-30 by Pilkington’s, and may have been painted by the artist T. F. Evans, who joined the firm in 1894and remained with them until his death in 1935.[8] However, the Ludlow panel, which could well have been transfer printed then hand-coloured, is not in Pilkington’s style and was probably made by another firm; the Maypole chain is known to have commissioned many panels of differing designs.[9]

MUCH WENLOCK

There are medieval tiles in the scriptorium and south aisle of Wenlock Priory (EH), a large Cluniac property; these are mainly fourteenth century tiles relaid in the twentieth century. There is also a recent replica medieval floor by tilemaker Diana Hall. In the town itself, the font (1874) of Holy Trinity Church is ornamented with four large hand-painted tiles.

SHREWSBURY

Begin at the neo-tudor Railway Station (1849, 1855 and 1903) on Castle Gates; its 1985-6 renovation included the removal of the Craven Dunnill encaustic and geometric tile pavement from the refreshment room and its reinstatement (in part) in the ticket office, where a trade tile can be seen on the far left as one enters from the street. There is also a small but well-preserved tile pavement in the gentlemen’s toilet on the island platform.

From the station, turn left and climb Castle Street; at the junction with pedestrianised Pride Hill, go left into St Mary’s Street to find St Mary’s Church. This superb medieval church offers an insight into early Victorian encaustic tile design, with contrasting pavements by Minton’s, Godwin and Maw & Co, as well as a reredos of Powell’s opus sectile work (Fig 232). Beneath a roof in which timber angels hover, tiles occupy almost the whole of the floor area, the grid-patterned pavement in the nave (1864) being by Minton and the font dais by Godwin. The chancel and sanctuary tiling, also Godwin and dating from around 1868, has a wide variety of designs including symbols of St Mary and the four evangelists. To the south is the Trinity Chapel, where rebuilding was completed in 1888. Its tile pavement is by Maw while the reredos, with two delicate blue angels in opus sectile work and much subtly-patterned red glass tiling, was supplied by Powell’s in 1908. There is still more: the most unusual pavement in the church is that of St Catherine’s Chapel, north of the choir. This tiny area, which functions as a foyer for the well-hidden café to the rear, has an excellent display of Minton tiling laid during the 1840s (relaid 1865), including many of the designs from the Earliest Pattern Book which just pre-dated the firm’s first printed catalogue of 1842. St Mary’s Church has been in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust since 1987, and the entire floor of their ‘cathedral’ was cleaned and restored in 1998; this involved the replacement of around 120 tiles with copies produced by H. & R. Johnson’s.[10]

Just south of the church in St Mary’s Place is the Elizabethan Drapers Hall (now a restaurant), where a medieval tile floor was relaid after its removal from Shrewsbury Abbey in the sixteenth century; there are also three fireplaces surrounded with eighteenth century delft tiles. Continue down Dogpole and turn left into Wyle Cop, heading for the Abbey. In St Julian Friars, on the right just before the bridge, is the Hop and Friar pub, with a colourful modern tile panel of ‘olde worlde’ figures inside the entrance. It is good to see a revival of this traditional form of tied estate branding.

After crossing the Severn, Shrewsbury Abbey lies ahead on Abbey Foregate. There are groups of medieval tiles near the south porch (relaid) and in the adjacent vestry (a framed panel), but the Abbey’s most important medieval tiles are in a small relaid pavement, low down on the north side of the chancel; it is here that the famous St Agatha tile can be found. Its inscription, given in the lesson for St Agatha’s Feast, was used as a charm to protect against fever and fire. The Abbey’s tiles, a mixture of line-impressed, counter-relief and inlaid designs, date from the thirteenth to late fifteenth century and may have been made at a local kiln. In addition, on the north wall of the Abbey’s nave, towards its east end, is a highly glazed lozenge-shaped memorial tile bearing the date 1887.

Now for the long trudge up Abbey Foregate, which culminates in Lord Hill’s Column, reputed to be the tallest Doric column in the world at 133’ 6” (Fig 233). This monumental column was put up in 1814-16 to commemorate the soldier Viscount Rowland Hill (1772-1842), whose 17’ 6” Coade stone statue looks out over Shrewsbury from its top.[11] The Viscount fought at Waterloo in 1815, and the column was unveiled on the first anniversary of the battle. Joseph Panzetta modelled the statue, which was put on show at Coade’s Lambeth Manufactory in August 1816; it is said to be the largest Coade stone statue in the world. It has, however, proved troublesome. Frost caused parts to fall off in 1879, an arm fell in 1945, and in 1967 its complete replacement by a fibreglass replica was proposed. Instead the hollow figure was filled with cement, but in the 1970s a concrete replica was substituted for the right leg, while wood was used for the right hand. Finally, in 1994-5 the statue was lowered to the ground, repaired and restored.

Just beyond Lord Hill’s Column in Wenlock Road is the the Peacock public house, its facade displaying a highly glazed ceramic panel of a peacock, mostly in attractive shades of blue and green. This dates from 1980 and is by Lee Cox of Liverpool. To return to the Railway Station simply reverse the route, although a diversion via Murivance (take Beeches Lane on the left soon after the bridge, then continue around Town Walls) will allow an inspection of the fine red brick and terracotta facade of the former Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (1879-81, architect C. O. Ellison of Liverpool). The brick and terracotta, which includes some good figurative work, came from the Ruabon works of J. C. Edwards.[12] The entrance hall decoration included three panels of twelve six-inch tiles depicting female figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity. These were drawn by one Mr Weatherstone for Maw & Co, who originally intended to use the finished panels in a church reredos. However, the drawings were later modified by the artist Charles Henry Temple (1857-1940), who worked for Maw’s during 1887-1907.[13] Temple then painted the underglaze panels, which - following the closure of the old hospital in the late 1990s - were moved to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, Mytton Oak Road, on the western edge of Shrewsbury, where they are now on display in the foyer of the Head and Neck Unit. From Murivance, return to the centre of Shrewsbury via St John’s Hill.

STOWE

St Michael’s Church has a beautiful setting, in the remote hills of south Shropshire looking across the River Teme into Wales. Its chancel decoration is mostly by Powell’s, with a red glass tile dado, an opus sectile figure of Faith (1913) on the north wall, complementing Faith and Charity in the south windows, and an elaborate reredos (1902) in marble, copper and mother of pearl including opus sectile figures of St Michael and St George.

TELFORD

Inside the Telford Shopping Centre, dominating Sherwood Square, is the Telford Time Machine, a massive novelty clock topped by a huge green frog. Designed by Kit Williams and unveiled in 1996, the casing of the intricate machine is faced with colourful hand-made tiles produced by the Decorative Tile Works at nearby Jackfield. There is another ceramic surprise to be found in a business park well away from the new town’s centre, in the form of the ENTA office building in Stafford Park. This 1990s pagoda-style structure has an astonishing display of Chinese ceramics including dragons and other deeply-moulded forms.

On a rather larger scale, over 2,000 square metres of a retaining wall alongside the road at Nabb Hill were faced with bands of coloured tiles during its construction in 1982-3. The effect is akin to geological strata, faults and all, and twenty-two tilers were needed to fix the Shaws of Darwen tiles in place. The project designer was Kenneth Budd for the Telford Development Corporation.

Wellington

Sunnycroft (NT), 200 Holyhead Road, Wellington is that rare survivor, an almost unaltered example of a late Victorian suburban villa, in its own spacious grounds and complete with most of its contents. It has Maw & Co tiled floors and tiled Coalbrookdale fireplaces.

Wrockwardine Wood

The Bull’s Head pub has a good Maw’s glazed brick and tile facade dating from around 1904, as well as an interior tile scheme. The faience and tiled chancel walls of Holy Trinity Church, Church Road, were shown in a Craven Dunnill catalogue dating from around 1890.

WHITCHURCH

There are several minor ceramic locations in Whitchurch, notably four tiled street names: Bargate, Highgate, High St and Church St. These name panels, which are made from very early Minton letter tiles, probably dating from the late 1830s or early 1840s, were restored in 1995 by Lesley Durbin of the Jackfield Conservation Studio. Many of the High Street shops have tiling below or around their windows, although most are overpainted. Inside the former butcher’s at 31 High Street is a good blue and white bull’s head frieze, while the interior of Bradbury Brothers butcher’s at 42 High Street was retiled in 1999 (covering 1928 tilework) with a scheme incorporating historic photographic images.

Shropshire Roundup

There is a complete set of original fittings, which included an encaustic tile pavement, in Holy Trinity Church (1885-7), Bicton, about four miles north-west of Shrewsbury. The extensive encaustic tile pavement at St Leonard’s Church (1860-2), Bridgnorth is by Maw & Co; the church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.[14] There are several fourteenth century line-impressed tiles on the floor of the bell tower at St Peter’s Church, Cound. St Peter’s Church, Diddlebury has several groups of memorial tiles set in a Godwin encaustic tiled pavement; these Victorian tiles are a memorial for an earlier death and include dates involving the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which took place in September 1752. There is a good set of late fourteenth century line-impressed tiles at the Church of St John the Baptist, Hughley. Adcote (1879, Richard Norman Shaw), the country house (now a school) built about a mile east of Little Ness for the Darbys of Coalbrookdale, has two large fireplaces with tiles by William De Morgan. There is pleasant art deco inter-war tiling in the ladies’ toilets on Church Street, Market Drayton. Most of the fittings inside Holy Trinity Church (1843), Middleton (near Chirbury), including the mosaic altar, are by the Revd. Waldegrave Brewster, vicar 1872-1901. In the side chapel of St Bartholomew’s Church, Moreton Corbet, is a cast iron fireplace lined with tiles from the Minton China Works ‘Old Testament’ series designed by John Moyr Smith and produced from the early 1870s. The original chancel decoration of the Church of King Charles the Martyr (1869-70), Newtown, included a Maw encaustic pavement and a majolica and enamelled tile reredos.[15] A tile above the south doorway of St Chad’s Church, Prees records its ‘re-edifying’ (restoration) in 1864. St Andrew’s Church, Shifnal, restored in 1876-9 by Sir George Gilbert Scott, has a good Craven Dunnill tile scheme including a ceramic reredos. In St Bartholomew’s Church, Tong is a Coade stone coat of arms of King George III, dating from 1814. Holy Trinity Church (1856, S. Pountney Smith), Uffington has a Maw’s sanctuary pavement with Chamberlain tiles around its ceramic font. The chancel of the Church of St John the Baptist, Whittington dates from 1861, although much of its interior decoration - which includes a tile panel showing Christ with three saints - dates from 1894, when the entire building was restored by the architect Eustace Frere, who added much red terracotta to the exterior.

References

1.^         Information from the Michael Stratton Archive.
2.^         Dennis W. Hadley, James Powell & Sons: A listing of opus sectile, 1847-1973, (2001).
3.^         A. J. Mugridge, The Broseley Heavy Clay Industry (Mugridge, Telford, 2001).
4.^         The Builder, 5th September 1863, vol 21.
5.^         Geoffrey Kay, 'Charles Lynam - an Architect of Tile Factories', Journal of the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society, 4 (1992), pp21-28.
6.^         Tony Herbert and Kathryn Huggins, The Decorative Tile in Architecture and Interiors (Phaidon Press, London, 1995), p28. Craven Dunnill mentioned their Kemberton Church tiling in a catalogue dating from around 1892 which is held by Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury (F. C. Howells, M77, acc 5724).
7.^         Michael Stratton, The Terracotta Revival (Victor Gollancz, London, 1993), pp50-1.
8.^         A. J. Cross, Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian Pottery and Tiles (Richard Dennis, London, 1980).
9.^         'Tiles - John Eyre - Pilkington Designer?' Newsletter of Pilkington's Lancastrian Pottery Society, 3 (2003) June, pp105-8.
10.^       Peter Williams, 'Floor tiling in Saint Mary's Church, Shrewsbury', TACS Journal, 8 (2000), pp16-25. Williams suggests (p16) that the floor tiles in St Catherine’s Chapel were donated by Herbert Minton, but this seems unlikely as there is no mention of such a gift in the list of Minton’s tile donations to churches which was published in the Annals of the Diocese of Lichfield in 1859, and reprinted in Glazed Expressions 32, Spring 1996, pp3-6. See Lynn F. Pearson, Minton Tiles in the Churches of Staffordshire (TACS, 2000) for further discussion of Minton’s donations.
11.^       Alison Kelly, Mrs Coade's Stone (Self Publishing Association, Upton-upon-Severn, 1990).
12.^       The Builder, 20th September 1879, vol 37, p1050.
13.^       The Builder, 10th February 1894, vol 66.
14.^       The Builder, 29th November 1862, vol 20.
15.^       The Builder, 24th April 1869, vol 27, p332.