Hi Guys
I've been away from the site for what seems like ages. will have to catch up with lurking the posts.
Anyway, just wondered if anyone knew anything about the new houisng development The Limes , on Poutney Gardens Belle Vue. 4 houses and 1 show home is all i know, any one know anything else about it? What sized houses are they???
Thanks
Lisa
7 bedroom houses! Blimey! :o
(I've moved this thread into the main forum, as it has to do with Shrewsbury.)
Pountney Gardens was named after the architect,Pountney Smith, who lived and worked at the Limes.
the Limes and its gardens had lots of various stonework that he "acquired" from the buildings he restored.
see quote below:
"Pountney Smith was a notable Shrewsbury architect who did a good deal of restoration of historic churches in Shropshire, Herefordshire and the March in the 1850s, 60s and 70s. But, styles of Victorian restoration differed markedly from each other. Pountney Smith’s work embodied several common elements. At three churches he retained a medieval west tower whilst virtually rebuilding the remainder, at St Mary, Harley, in 1846, at Battlefield in 1860-62, and at Knighton in 1875-7. There is other of his work at Hope Bowdler, Leaton, Preston Gubbals, Downton on the Rock and, in Shrewsbury, at St Giles in Wenlock Road and Holy Cross in Abbey Foregate. His reputation is somewhat mixed. Of the church at pool Quay near Welshpool, Goodhart Rendell noted ‘A most peculiar church – ambitious, odd and very badly detailed although with a certain competence …. Proportions bad everywhere but a lot of money spent.’
Well, what of his work at Battlefield? The hammerbeam roof is his, so too the east window, the gargoyles and the heraldry. The problem with the latter is that little evidence survives to suggest the original scheme, and, as we have seen, that of the mid-fifteenth century celebrated a different context for the battle. And quality is always an issue. John Betjeman long ago satirised architectural writing. The hammerbeam roof is, in the church guide of 1986, ‘the handsome hammerbeam roof’. The current online version of the redundant churches trust has ‘the magnificent hammerbeam roof’. All very well, but Pountney Smith clearly liked his hammerbeam roofs, and he included others in churches which he restored. At
the church of St Edward at Knighton (Radnorshire) which he rebuilt in 1875-7, again preserving a medieval west tower, it is, in the words of Richard Haslam, ‘a fussy hammerbeam roof’. Fussy, handsome or magnificent, the problem is that it isn’t medieval, and that Pountney had little evidence on which to base his ‘reconstruction’.
The same is sadly true of Battlefield’s most engaging features, the run of figurative gargoyles which decorate the exterior and include, amongst other things, medieval cannon. In 1875-7 Pountney Smith rebuilt the church at Llandrillo near Bala in Wales, to complement the recently completed home of the railway magnate, Henry Robertson, Pale Hall. The latter includes an entrance porch in the medieval style, complete with stone carvings of a steam locomotive, and a profile of Henry Robertson, the owner. Unlike careful Victorian restorers like Gilbert Scott, Pountney Smith was, sadly, a moderniser. Battlefield church in many of its external characteristics belongs to the same context as its immediate neighbour, the London and North western railway which skirts the battlefield as it passes from Shrewsbury to the north."
s.g.d.
Hi
Thank You for all the information. its graet to get to know the history of the town. i find it all facinating. (lived here all my life and still have loads to find out!)
The link was great, thanks.
Lisa