Shropshire Architecture – Part 1. A Taste of Ludlow

This series of posts all about architecture in Shropshire is in response to a challenge after a fellow blogger’s request for some photos of architecture. So Margie, if no-one likes these it is all your fault! Only joking!

A morning in Ludlow to visit a craft exhibition in which our daughter was showing her silver jewelery (see earlier posting), afforded us a few hours to walk a few of the narrow streets of this South Shropshire market town. This is a taste of some more detailed posts to come both of Ludlow and other towns and villages of our county.

A “taste of Ludlow” means different things to different people. For foodies the first ideas to spring to their minds, or stomachs, will be the number of restaurants with Michelin Stars and Egon Ronay mentions. Ludlow to many is the capital city of food, bettered only by London. But it is only a small market town. To historians and the architecturally minded it would be the buildings that popped up. Ludlow is well-known for ancient buildings going back in history for centuries. The streets boast a juxtaposition of styles and ages. Facades hide older gems.

Ludlow was the UK’s first town ever to be designated a “Slow City”.

Saturday is a busy time for the streets of Ludlow so most of these pics are looking up to avoid traffic and people.

The most important building in Ludlow though is really the Orvis Store where us fishermen can buy our fly fishing gear.

Most streets here are steep, some very steep! It is so lucky that there are lots of coffee shops as well as gourmet restaurants.

Here is a fine example of Ludlow’s hidden gems. This ancient window and patch of wall sits inside a much later building.

To most people especially calendar designers, holiday tour operators, the writers of gazeteers of the towns of England and TV crews, Ludlow is known for this one old building. The Feathers Hotel is featured in so many books and magazines. The path opposite it is worn away by the feet of photographers! It is pretty good but there is so much more!

There is even the odd modern piece of corporate architecture hidden away behind the historic street frontages and away from tourists’ glances. The new library and museum building is impossible to find, signed from nowhere but quite a handsome building of its type.

Ludlow architecture holds little details to delight the photographer’s lens. Just look through open gateways and up alleyways and there they hide.

And so I can only hope this little taster showing the variety that exists within the architecture of Ludlow will leave you wishing for more. If not there is more on its way anyway! I am thinking “Gates, Doors and Windows”, “Little Details”, ……………