Exploring Shrewsbury's Second-Hand Bookshops

The historic county town of Shrewsbury, capital of the Marches, the English/Welsh border country, is well worth an amble for its historic, half-timbered houses, notable churches, modern market hall clock tower, flights of winding stone steps, and bustling streets, but it has a particular interest since it has no less than four decent second-hand bookshops.

At Second Chapter Books in St Mary’s Place I have found some interesting old monographs on the Roman town of Uriconium, at The Raven Bookshop on the Second Floor of the Market Hall there was once an inexpensive copy of E H Visiak’s Medusa in an early Gollancz edition, and at the Oxfam Bookshop in Dogpole a copy of Dylan Thomas and John Davenport’s poet laureate satire Death of the King’s Canary, complete with errata slip.

But the most unusual and extensive bookshop in the town is the Welsh Bridge bookshop, which also sells vintage curios, such as toys, games, film memorabilia, badges and comics. Books, however, are its main offering and, since it is a labyrinth of unexpected side-rooms, steps and stairs, it requires careful exploration.

On a visit not so long ago I came upon a corner of the room devoted to the esoteric, with a pile of suitable pamphlets. I often find such ephemera may possess unusual interest, so I looked through them carefully. Here I found the second issue of Fate magazine in Britain, worth getting not so much for the syndicated content as for the astrologers’ and fortune-tellers’ advertisements. Seers and visionaries that you would expect only to encounter in Shangri-La, Samarkand or Zerzura are instead to be found in Croydon, Dorking or off the Tottenham Court Road, the brothers and sisters of Madame Sosotris.

The same niche also yielded Did Our Lord Visit Britain As They Say in Cornwall and Somerset? Who could resist such a title? The legend of a holy visit to these shores is celebrated in William Blake’s poem ‘And did those feet . . .’ (known as ‘Jerusalem’), and is alluded to by Tennyson. Paul Ashdown’s study The Lord Was at Glastonbury (2010) has a thorough discussion of the development and elaboration of the idea.

The Revd Mr Dobson had much earlier, while Vicar of St Peter’s, Paddington, published The Story of the Empty Tomb as if told by Joseph of Arimathea (Chas J Thynne, Easter 1920).

Another author, however, later claimed to have more direct information, as the following somewhat unusual British Library catalogue entry indicates: A Personal Narrative by Joseph of Arimathaea, from the time he first met our Lord till he reached Glastonbury (Written through the hand of Mrs. Lilian Randall) (Cheltenham: Norman, Sawyer & Co., printers, 1940). The library attributes the authorship to ‘Joseph, of Arimathea, Saint (Spirit)’. 

 A further study by Mr Dobson was The Mystery of the Fate of the Ark of the Covenant (etc) (Williams & Norgate, 1939), a subject which also interested Arthur Machen, as indicated in his recollections of the mysterious JHVS Syndicate, who went to look for it.

I also found at the Welsh Bridge bookshop some old book catalogues for a few pounds each. These often make for interesting browsing. One, in Cambridge pale blue wrappers, was Second-Hand Books Recently Purchased including Books from An Old Norfolk Library, issued by W. Heffer & Sons Limited, Cambridge, No 616, 1947.

A previous owner has marked his choices in rather fierce blue pencil. He was after, for example, A. Heal’s London Tradesmen’s Cards of the 18^th Century. An account of their origins and use. 1925. £3 10s. Then there is a further set of blue striations under Topography, for Picturesque Antiquities of the County of Hereford by C. Radclyffe, 1840, 15s, The Road and the Inn by J.L. Hussey, 1917, 15s, and J Hassell’s Tour of the Isle of Wight. With Aquatint Engravings by the author, joints cracked, backs faded, 1790, 15s.

But what’s this immediately below, and unmarked? JAMES, M.R. Suffolk and Norfolk: A Perambulation of the Two Counties, with Notices of their History and their Ancient Buildings, 1930, 7s 6d. Cover rather badly damp-stained. Tch, tch – reading in the bath? Or rescued from a library at Dunwich?

This is not quite so ominous as another book, simply described as ‘smoked’. Candle-flame got too close, or singed by fiery demon? Could it possibly have any link to a title offered under ‘Folklore and Books on the Occult’, William Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers; or, the most eminent persons in all ages who have claimed, or to whom has been imputed, the Exercise of Magical Power. 1834, 30s? This sounds just like the theme of a story M R James might have written.

A fifth bookshop in the town, Candle Lane, has now sadly closed, but it was the epitome of the second-hand bookshop in fiction: old, creaky, full of dark nooks, with unsteady stairs leading to a dimly-lit attic room where a few dozen books leant together on low shelves. One of these was The Borgia Pope by Orestes Ferrara, with a highly calligraphic signature in black ink on the front free endpaper, of a former owner, Louis B. Gonzalez. Loosely enclosed was a devotional gift card to him. It is a revisionist account which argues that most of the Borgias’ sinister reputation derives from the calumnies of enemies.

The same room yielded two different editions of the Jezreelite work Extracts from The Fiery Flying Roll. This was the group who were responsible for Jezreel’s Tower, the original of L A Lewis’ ‘The Tower of Moab’. Both this title and the Borgia book looked as though they might have been there for some time: what conversations there must have been between them.  

(Mark Valentine)