Shropshire in the Sixteenth Century

Surviving buildings in Shrewsbury, England, and the surrounding Shropshire countryside tell us much about the area in the sixteenth century. The most important cash commodity of the time was wool. Wool production had hitherto been concentrated on the great monastic estates, but when these were divided up and sold during the Reformation, it was lawyers and merchants who had the ready money to buy them. Local merchants with London and Welsh links took over the marketing of wool and cloth after the break with Rome and the departure of the Italian bankers. The ownership, the materials, the function and the style of the buildings they put up or adapted were all influenced by the social, political and economic changes of the time.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.