For the barbican’s massy and high,
Bloudie Jacke! 
And the oak-door is heavy and brown;
And with iron it’s plated and machicolated,
To pour boiling oil and lead down;
How you’d frown
Should a ladle-full fall on your crown!

The rock that it stands on is steep,
Bloudie Jacke! 
To gain it one’s forced for to creep;
The Portcullis is strong, and the Drawbridge is long,
And the water runs all round the Keep;
At a peep
You can see that the moat’s very deep!

So rhymed the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, when in his “Legend of Shropshire” he described the red stone fortress that towers over the loop of the Severn enclosing the picturesque old town of Shrewsbury.  The castle, or rather its keep, for the outworks have disappeared, has been modernized past antiquarian value now.  Memories of its importance as the key of the Northern Marches, and of the ancient custom of girding the knights of the shire with their swords by the sheriffs on the grass plot of its inner court, still remain.  The town now stands on a peninsula girt by the Severn.  On the high ground between the narrow neck stood the castle, and under its shelter most of the houses of the inhabitants.  Around this was erected the first wall.  The latest historian of Shrewsbury[8] tells us that it started from the gate of the castle, passed along the ridge at the back of Pride Hill, at the bottom of which it turned along the line of High Street, past St. Julian’s Church which overhung it, to the top of Wyle Cop, when it followed the ridge back to the castle.  Of the part extending from Pride Hill to Wyle Cop only scant traces exist at the back of more modern buildings.

  [8] The Rev. T. Auden, Shrewsbury (Methuen and Co.).

The town continued to grow and more extensive defences were needed, and in the time of Henry III, Mr. Auden states that this followed the old line at the back of Pride Hill, but as the ground began to slope downwards, another wall branched from it in the direction of Roushill and extended to the Welsh Bridge.  This became the main defence, leaving the old wall as an inner rampart.  From the Welsh Bridge the new wall turned up Claremont Bank to where St. Chad’s Church now stands, and where one of the original towers stood.  Then it passed along Murivance, where the only existing tower is to be seen, and so along the still remaining portion of the wall to English Bridge, where it turned up the hill at the back of what is now Dogpole, and passing the Watergate, again joined the fortifications of the castle.[9] The castle itself was reconstructed by Prince Edward, the son of Henry III, at the end of the thirteenth century, and is of the Edwardian type of concentric castle.  The Norman keep was incorporated within a larger circle of tower and wall, forming an inner bailey; besides this there was formerly an outer bailey, in which were various buildings, including the chapel of St. Nicholas.  Only part of the buildings on one side of the inner bailey remains in its original form, but the massive character of the whole may be judged from the fragments now visible.