For many local historians, an absorbing interest often stems from an attack of overwhelming curiosity.  And so it was with me.

Wandering the old town of Shrewsbury, I couldn’t help but notice a three-felines-faces symbol; it was almost everywhere I looked. (In fact, there are around 100 instances of it, of all sorts, from carvings to stained-glass, within just a half-mile square area!).

What exactly did the symbol indicate?  What was its story? And why was it so ubiquitous?

The feline faces turned out to be six hundred years old and are most probably the faces of leopards, though there is controversy about that. They originated as, and still are, the arms of the town corporation, but over the centuries also came simply to represent Shrewsbury, which is why they appear in so many guises, even into the present.  Local people even give them a nickname - “the loggerheads” – a term which is unique to the district, its etymology having nothing to do with any other dictionary loggerheads.

However, to my utter surprise, there was next to nothing in the history books about them.  Despite their ubiquity, and popularity, their story was a hidden one.  The definitive history of the town, published 1808, doesn’t even mention them.  Inevitably, my historian’s curiosity kicked in.

The trouble was that each day of research in the Shropshire Archives just turned up mystery after mystery.  (Perhaps that was the reason why the leading historians of the area had shied away from writing about them ...?)  For example: the most famous and most prominent of the loggerheads in the town are the Golden Loggerheads, which are on the side of a 16th century hall, so you’d think they’d be simple to research. Sadly, no. Modern researchers can’t even agree on a date for them. Because they look so odd, design historians were consulted, but they only speculated that they might be of the late 18th century ‘Hindoo’ style.  There was no indication who created them, put them up, or what was the point of them.  In other words, a complete mystery.

And so it went on. The colours of the loggerheads, blue & gold, were thought to have been inherited from the arms of the first Norman overlord of the town – but it turned out that Earl William probably did not bear arms at all.  Even the species of the felines is questioned: people still argue that the loggerheads are really lions, not leopards, saying that an heraldic confusion led to the mistake.
The term ‘loggerheads’ also causes argument: even official town guides are puzzled, saying that it could refer to a medieval battering ram, or maybe an Eastern word brought back by Crusaders, or even that it comes from Norman French. In fact, none of these is likely.

The unravelling of such mysteries however is the stuff of history, and can be quite exciting.  As other local historians will know, a new find, especially one that provides an extra piece to the jigsaw, gives one a real fillip.  To discover that JMW Turner, arguably Britain’s greatest artist, had painted a scene of Shrewsbury in which can be seen an ancient loggerheads carving was exhilarating – not to mention that the date of the painting confirmed a theory about the carving.

It was also strange to find the loggerheads the focus of a political struggle.  For centuries the loggerheads had represented both the county of Shropshire and the town of Shrewsbury. However, in the 1890s the newly-formed Shropshire County Council re-versioned the loggerheads in a new design, particular to itself and distinct to Shrewsbury’s. Recently, the county even dropped the traditional colours.  Reading between the lines, the moves demonstrate that the county no longer wanted to take the lead from its influential capital town, and, by continuing to re-version the loggerheads to its own purpose, makes clear statements of that intent.  The story also seems to show how an ancient symbol can still be very meaningful.

The loggerheads’ popularity is undeniable.  Local businesses adopt it, as do sporting clubs, and local residents put metalwork copies on their walls.  You can even buy souvenir pins with the loggerheads on. A show of loggerheads expresses a form of local loyalty.

This interpretation of the loggerheads might explain why one of the town’s great stained-glass artists used it so often.  David Evans worked in the mid nineteenth-century and liked to leave loggerheads in his windows. 

The oddest instance of this is in St Mary’s, the town’s main church.  One of Evans’ specialities was in being able to copy and reproduce ancient Flemish windows, which he did for St Mary’s.  Yet, at the top of one such huge copy by him, sits, proudly, a set of loggerheads!  It has been impossible to find out what Evans’ motives were for inserting it into what is otherwise a perfect copy of a very old window.  Speculation says that Evans was very publicly reinforcing his attachment to the town of Shrewsbury – but who knows?

In the end, I decided to bring out an introduction to the subject: a book called, appropriately, ‘The Mysteries of The Loggerheads’.  The mysteries of the loggerheads are outlined in the book, and (thanks to those years of research in the Shropshire Archives!) many of the answers to those mysteries too.  My hope is that it will prove the starting point of a fruitful area of research for other local historians.     

(And, in case you are wondering: the term loggerheads probably comes from the Welsh. But that opens another can of worms…)

For more details on Mark’s book, please go to https://salop-loggerheads.blogspot.com

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