Wem
Wem is a market town in the civil parish of Wem Urban, in Shropshire, England, north of Shrewsbury and south of Whitchurch.
The name is derived from the Old English term Wiktionary:wamm, meaning "marsh".
As a caput of a barony and a large manor and parish Wem was a centre for justice and local government for centuries, and the headquarters of the North Shropshire District Council until Shropshire became a unitary authority. From the 12th century revisions to the hundreds of Shropshire, Wem was within the North Division of Bradford Hundred until the end of the 19th century.
It is considered that the landscape around the town may be the inspiration for Shakespeare's play As You Like It, a belief reflected in cultural programming in the town.
History
Prehistory and Roman era
The area now known as Wem is believed to have been settled prior to the Roman Conquest of Britain, by the Cornovii, Celtic Iron Age settlers: there is an Iron Age hillfort at nearby Bury Walls occupied over into the Roman period, and the Roman Road from Uriconium to Deva Victrix ran close by to the east at Soulton.It is understood a lost Roman camp may have been in the area, called Rutunium.
Post-Roman period
The Wem Hoard, a collection of coins deposited in the post-Roman period, was found in land in the Wem area in 2019.The Arden family owned the manor of Wem prior to the Conquest.
Norman and late medieval periods
Weme was an Anglo-Saxon estate, which transitioned into a planned Norman castle-town established after the conquest, with motte-and-bailey castle, parish church and burgage plots. The town is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as consisting of four manors in the hundred of Hodnet.At Domesday the town comprised:
- Households: 4 villagers. 8 smallholders. 2 slaves.
- Land and resources: ploughland: 8 ploughlands. 1 lord's plough teams. 1 men's plough teams.
- Other resources: woodland 100 pigs.
The Domesday Book records that Wem was held by William Pantulf and is its first known Lord. Orderic Vitalis described Pantulf as:
kind to the poor, to whom he was liberal in alms, he was firm in prosperity and adversity, put down all his enemies, and exercised great power through his wealth and possessions.
Pantulf fought at the Battle of Hastings under his superior lord Earl Roger. Stafford Castle and Wem was granted to him with a further 28 manors in the area bounded by Clive, Ellesmere, Tilley and Cresswell, with some of the manors within this area belonging to other lords.
Pantulf refused to participate in an 1102 rebellion against King Henry I led by Robert de Belesme and assisted the crown defeating it, by marching with the king on Shrewsbury, during which the roads in the area were found to be bad, thickly wooded, providing cover for archers: 6000 foot soldiers cut down the woods and opened up the roads. Hugo Pantulf, a descendant of William, was Baron of Wem in the mid 1100s: he attended the court of Richard the Lion Heart, was Sheriff of Shropshire, and likely attended the Crusades with the king, certainly paying scutage to towards his ransom.In 1986, the BBC's national celebrations for the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book focused on the town of Wem. This was because Wem was unique in having direct, unbroken male-line descendants of both its pre- and post-Conquest Manorial Lords: Pierre de Panthou and Dr. George Arden. The respective heirs were brought to the town for a special event, which was recorded for television and presented by historian Michael Wood.
The Norman town was probably enclosed by an earthwork: there is a record from the lord's steward of repairs to the town's enclosure in 1410, in which year the town had been "totally burnt and wasted by the Welsh rebels". There is some speculation that the town had walls by the 1400s, as Samuel Garbet recorded an annotation to Fabyan's Chronicle that Wem "was totally burnt to the ground, with its walls and castle" in the reign of Henry VI.
The supposed route of the walls or earthworks follows Noble Street, Wem Brook, the Roden and crossing the High Street between Leek Street and Chapel Street.
There were bars at the three entrances to the town, and a 1514 record exists of four men being employed to keep the bars on market days.
There is some thought that a market was held from the days of Pantuf, but King John certainly granted a charter in 1202. Initially, the permission was for a Sunday market. This was subsequently revised, in 1351, to a Thursday: this followed a decree of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Islip in the reign of Edward III that Sunday markets were banned. Wem's market day remains Thursday to this day.
The manor was held by some of the great baronial families: including the Earls of Arundel, and the Lords Dacre, Bradford and Barnard and, after the 14th century the lord of the manor was not resident.
During the course of 1483, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was engaged in rebellion against Richard III with Henry Tudor. By October of that year Buckingham's army were in the Hereford area, and fighting for survival and the campaign was unravelling in deteriorating weather; Buckingham's army deserted. Disguised as a simple labourer he fled north to Shropshire and went into hiding at Lacon Hall, the house of a local retainer, Ralph Bannister who betrayed him for £1000.
An account of the capture of the Duke is as follows:
"he was disguised and digging a ditch at the time of his arrest; and on the approach of Thomas Mytton the sheriff, who came to apprehend him, he knelt down in the orchard wherein he was taken, and solemnly imprecated vengeance upon the traitor and his posterity, which curses are said to have been signally fulfilled...shortlie after had betrayed the duke his master, his sonne and heyre waxed mad, and so dyed in a bore's stye: his eldest daughter, of excellent beautie, was sodainly stricken with a foule leperye; his second sonne very marvellously deformed of his limmes and made decrepit; his younger sonne in a small puddel was strangled and drowned; and he, being of extreme age, arraigned and found gyltie of a murder, and by his clergye saved: And as for his thousand pounds, kyng Richard gave him not one farthing, howbeit some say he had a small office or a ferme to stop his mouth."
Buckingham was subsequently tried, convicted and executed for treason at Salisbury.
This incident is referred to by William Shakespeare in the play Richard III, in Act IV, scene iv:
Third Messenger
The news I have to tell your majestyKING RICHARD III
Is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters,
Buckingham's army is dispersed and scatter'd;
And he himself wander'd away alone,
No man knows whither.
I cry thee mercy:
There is my purse to cure that blow of thine.
Hath any well-advised friend proclaim'd
Reward to him that brings the traitor in?
Large common fields farmed in strips lay outside the town walls: Pool Meadows ; Cross Field ; Middle Field ; and Chapel Field. There was a Manorial Court House at Wem in which a twice yearly Court leet with the grim privilege of a gallows, hearing pleas including hue-and-cry, bloodshed.
Tudor period
In Henry VIII's reign Lord Dacre began to fell Northwood, a task completed by the Countess of Arundel, his grand-daughter. Dacre also drained the Old Pool, work again completed by his grand-daughter.During the 1550s Sir Rowland Hill publisher of the Geneva Bible, built a headquarters at Soulton Hall, ranging over to Hawkstone Follies where his activities are thought to have provided some of the inspiration for Shakespeare's play As You Like It. Certainly, "Old Sir Rowland" bought both of those manors from Sir Thomas Lodge, father of Thomas Lodge, the acknowledged author of the source text.
Another important connection of antiquarian note is that the Cotton family, who came to hold the Cotton Library originated in the Wem area and by the sixteenth century had the manor at Alkington nearby, members of this family were early patrons of Inigo Jones at Norton-in-Hales.
By 1561 the former castle enclosure was held at will by the rector, John Dacre. Manor perquisites noted in 1589 show that there were two annual fairs where the lord took a toll on all goods worth above 12d. sold by strangers and tenants and the profits of the courts. In 1579 the lord's steward ruled that there should not be more than five alehouses in the township; however, unlicensed brewers were not prevented and were fined in number at each court leet.
1600s
Civil war
In early 1642 Royalists were staying in Wem.In September 1642, during the English Civil War Charles I passed close by Wem en route from Chester to Shrewsbury at the invitation of the corporation of the latter town where he made a temporary capital, taking the route via Soulton and Lee Brockhurst which corresponds to the old Roman Road.
However, in September 1643, the town was planted with a Parliamentarian garrison.
Under the supervision of Sir William Brereton a broad ditch four yards deep and wide and rampart, strengthened by a palisade made from timber cut from a felled 50 acre wood at Loppington was thrown up around the town to fortify it. The route of this fortification was as follows: it began at a wooden tower on Soulton Road, just beyond the present station, from there it ran to "Shrewsbury Gate" crossing Well Walk and the bottom of Roden House garden; it than ran to the "Ellesmere Gate" where the stream crossed road; the earthworks continued along the back of Noble Street to "Whitchurch Gate"; on from there to "Drayton Gate" at 18 Aston Street and then back to the wooden tower. Many of the buildings beyond this rampart were destroyed in fortifying the town, to prevent them being of use to attackers.
In October, 1643 Lord Capell, was dispatched by the Royalists to the area to seek to retake Wem. H. Pickering writing to the Duchess of Beaufort sets out the engagement as follows:
3 cannon, 2 drakes, one great mortarpiece that carried a 30ln. bullet, had 120 odd wagons and carriages laden with bread, biskett, bare and other provisions and theire armye being formydable as consistynge of neer 5,000.
Wem was not ready for the attack: the walls were not finished, the gates were not hinged, some of the guns on the ramparts were wooden dummies and the defending force consisted of only 40 male Parliamentarians; but then the local women rallied round positioning themselves in red coats in well chosen spots to mislead the Royalists.
On 17–18 October 1643 Royalist attackers formed up on one side, approaching Wem only from Soulton Road. The commander, Lord Capel, lightheartedly smoking his pipe half a mile from the town on that road. The town was not taken and the manoeuvre lasted less than a day resulting in this couplet:
The women of Wem and a few musketeers.
Beat the Lord Capel and all his Cavaliers.
It has been suggested that Sir Rowland Hill's statecraft involved the accumulation of state papers and culturally important texts at Soulton, which then passed, via the Alkington Cottons into the Cotton Library, which includes the Beowulf manuscript and copies of Magna Carta, and this offers a potential explanation for the battle of Wem in the English Civil War during which Soulton was ransacked. After this incident it is further recorded the houses of the neighbouring seat of the Royalist Hill family, at Soulton and possibly Hawkstone " pillaged, and ransacked by the rebel ", and after this that family had to go into hiding in the Hawkstone landscape and caves.
Brereton's report claimed Royalist losses in the Wem engagement were heavy.
Prince Rupert came to the district on 18 February 1644, was welcomed by Shrewsbury's aldermen and made Shrewsbury his headquarters. Shortly afterwards he passed by Wem to the west and remarked of it:
It was a crow's nest that would not afford each of his men a piece of bread.
Prince Rupert also mustered troops a short distance to the east at nearby Prees Heath.
Wem was the seat of the Shropshire Committee until the fall of Royalist Shrewsbury in 1645.
The sword of a Cromwellian trooper was dug up at Wem in 1923, and a cannonball of the same period was found during construction work at the Grammar School.