I'm in the process of doing a one place study of Clun Shropshire. My father was raised in Clun and was at one time a local milkman. He is helping me with the names and occupations of the people who lived there during his time. We have started with the part of town where he lived, St. Georges Place, it's a small estate on the outskirts of the town, a group of 16 houses. One thing we seem to be stuck on is when was St. Georges Place built. Any Ideas how I can find out?
What dates are you sure about, Chimp? Have you tried looking at directories like Kelly's, the Post Office, Pigots etc at all?
I know the estate was there in 1935 because that's when my dad's family moved in but apart from that I'm at a blank. I am useless at dating buildings but to me they look post 1900.
Have you contacted the local council planning department? They should know when the houses were built. Also, the local archives should have maps of the area.
We are popping over there next weekend so we can walk the streets and dad can tell me who lived where and the names of shops. They have a museum so will pop in there. Thanks for your suggestions Batty , if the museum doesn't know anything I will contact the council planning department. Been to the archives before and they don't have much on Clun.
The houses look to have been built in the 1920s - just had a squizz on google maps. Ooh! Try newspapers as well, to see if there were any official openings of the road.
There may well be useful material among the large quantity of Clun Rural District Council papers at the Shropshire Archives. Have a look here: http://search. shropshirehistory.org.uk/collections/getrecord/CCA_XDA19/ Under the heading 'Catalogue', click on the little + sign just to the left of 'XDA19' to expand the list of records. (There are rate books here, for example, and all sorts of other stuff.) Note that these records are kept in an out store, so you will probably need to give the archivists advance warning of what you want to see.
I can't help with your question. But I spent some time looking at Clun -- apparently it's one of the most tranquil places in England. How nice. But I suppose they weren't saying that when Owen Glendower was there!
Have you tried your local library - ours has books on surrounding areas within the borough and often come with many photos of the town. Worth a look
Memories of "A Shropshire Lad", it seems: My own experience is a bit different. Way back in the 1970s I was staying near Clun on holiday with my parents and we went into a tearoom there, which turned out to be anything but quiet. An argument erupted between one of the waitresses and her boss, with shouting, clattering, slamming of doors and so on - if memory serves, I think the girl stormed out, and presumably ceased to work there. I mentioned this later to a university friend who lived nearby, who was mildly amused, but said it was nothing. A few months earlier, he told me, someone had burst into church during evensong and threatened the vicar with a shotgun. However tranquil a place may appear to a visitor, I suspect that below the surface there are always tensions and undercurrents that the locals are only too aware of. And in a small community where it can be harder to escape the people you find difficult, these things sometimes explode into the open. I wonder if this might help to explain why some of our ancestors moved tens, hundreds, thousands of miles from their places of origin?
I don't know if you have looked at http://www. geograph.org.uk/ Enter Clun into the search box and it returns 2,607 images and some are dated. Dad also might enjoy looking at the photos which may trigger a few memories.
Actually Mutters to quote from 'virtual-shropshire' I think when they say it was built in 1932 they mean it was refurbished.
