Shelton is a suburb located in the west of the town of

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, described by the

Pevsner Architectural Guides The ''Pevsner Architectural Guides'' are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. ''The Buildings of England'' series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes pu ...

as "Shrewsbury's principal

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

suburb." It was once a village of its own, but the town of Shrewsbury has grown steadily in the area since the 1950s. It has a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

parish church, Christ Church (built 1854) which serves a parish formally known as Shelton and Oxon.

History

Possible Roman Road

The 1861 six-inch OS map shows a footpath just south of the lunatic asylum as "site of Roman road". On later OS maps the marking was dropped from this location.

Domesday Book

Shelton appears in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

as ‘Saltone’, with 4 households.

The Shelton Oak

The Shelton Oak (see watercolour ) was a long lived oak tree which, by tradition,

Owain Glyndŵr Owain ap Gruffydd (28 May 135420 September 1415), commonly known as Owain Glyndŵr (Glyn Dŵr, , anglicised as Owen Glendower) was a Welsh people, Welsh leader, soldier and military commander in the Wales in the late Middle Ages, late Middle ...

climbed to view the

Battle of Shrewsbury The Battle of Shrewsbury was fought on 21 July 1403, waged between an army led by the Lancastrian King Henry IV and a rebel army led by Henry "Harry Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland. The battle, the first in which English archers fought ea ...

in 1403. An oak tree which died in the 1940s (see photograph ), and the remnants of which were removed for road widening in the 1950s, was said to be the Shelton Oak. In the 1880s an acorn from the Shelton Oak was planted in the Dingle in The Quarry, the main park in Shrewsbury.

Shropshire Council Shropshire Council, known between 1980 and 2009 as Shropshire County Council and prior to 1980 as Salop County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Shropshire (district), Shropshire in t ...

planted an acorn from that tree on opening the nearby Mytton Oak Remembrance Park in 2014. A young oak tree located by the side of the modern junction, where the footpath from the end of Merlin Road emerges onto the main road, has a plaque at its base which reads: The Battle of Shrewsbury date is erroneous, it should read "21st July 1403".

The Oak, Shelton (inn)

An inn called The Oak (see photograph) formerly stood between the Mount and Shelton Road where the two roads meet. It was constructed in 1939 and demolished 60 years later.Trinder, Barrie "Beyond the Bridges" There is now a monument at the junction where the two roads meet, with a relief featuring the story of the Shelton Oak.

Vicarage

The modern day pub called Oxon Priory, belonging to the 'Hungry Horse' chain, occupies the listed former vicarage for Oxon and Shelton parish.

Prince of Wales visits Rossall, 1806

On 9 September 1806 George, Prince of Wales stayed at Rossall just north of Shelton. The following morning he was attended by the Mayor of Shrewsbury and others who conferred on His Royal Highness the freedom of the borough.The History and Antiquities of Shrewsbury: From Its First Foundation to the Present Time, comprising a Recital of Occurrences and Remarkable Events, for Above Twelve Hundred Years, Volume 1 : Thomas Phillips, James Bowen, Charles Hulbert editor (1837)
/ref>

Toll House

Following the Act of Union in 1801 there was a move to enable Irish MPs to make easier journeys to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

in London.

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well ...

was Director of the Holyhead Road Commission between 1815 and 1830 and made many improvements to the Holyhead Road. A

Toll house A tollhouse or toll house is a building with accommodation for a toll collector, beside a tollgate on a toll road, canal, or toll bridge. History Many tollhouses were built by turnpike trusts in England, Wales and Scotland during the 18th and ...

was built by Telford in 1829 on the Holyhead Road at Shelton. It was situated at the junction with Featherbed Lane. To allow for road widening in the early 1970s, it was dismantled and re-erected at

Blists Hill Victorian Town Blists Hill Victorian Town is an open-air museum built on a former industrial complex located in Madeley, Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire, England. The museum attempts to recreate the sights, sounds and smells of a Victorian Shropshire town i ...

Bypass

In 1933 the (now "old") Shrewsbury bypass was opened with Shelton at its western end. The section from Shelton to Porthill island is called Shelton Road. 1992 saw the opening of today's A5 bypass further out from Shrewsbury.

Shelton Hospital

Shelton Hospital Shelton Hospital was a mental health facility in Shelton, Shropshire, England. The main building survives and it is a Grade II listed building. History The hospital, which was designed by George Gilbert Scott and William Bonython Moffatt using a ...

was a hospital specialising in mental health, located in Shelton. After services transferred to a modern facility known as the Redwoods Centre, it closed in 2012.

Severn Trent Water Site

Severn Trent Water Severn Trent plc is a water company based in Coventry, England. It supplies 4.6 million households and business across the Midlands and Wales. It is traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Severn Trent, the ...

has a major site on Welshpool Road in Shelton, consisting of offices and a

water treatment works Water treatment is any process that improves the quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation or many other uses, inc ...

Cricket

Shelton has a cricket club whose ground is adjacent to the former Shelton Hospital (see above), with which the club has strong historic associations.Phil Gillam - Shelton Hospital shows how attitudes have changed
/ref> The team played in the

Shropshire Premier Cricket League The Shropshire Premier Cricket League (1970–2011) was the highest level club cricket competition in Shropshire. It was one step above the Shropshire Cricket League, and acted as a feeder league to the Birmingham and District Premier League, whi ...

until the league was wound up after the 2011 season. In 2012 Shelton played in the Premier Division of the newly formed

Shropshire County Cricket League The Shropshire County Cricket League is a league cricket competition based in the county of Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county ...

but were relegated to Division One at the end of that season. In 2015 Shelton finished second in Division One, gaining promotion to the Premier Division and ending a spell of three years outside the top division. However at the end of the 2016 season they finished bottom of the Premier Division and were relegated back to Division One for the 2017 season.Shrewsbury Chronicle p102, 20 September 2016 In 2019 Shelton won the Division One title by 43 points promoting them back to the Shropshire Premier Division. They have remained in the division since then finishing 9th in 2021 and 8th in 2022.

References

{{reflist Suburbs of Shrewsbury Populated places on the River Severn