St. Julian’s Church
of whose early foundation in the Saxon times, we possess no particulars. According to Domesday, it held before the Conquest half a hide of land in the city. It was a rectory and royal free chapel with a peculiar jurisdiction, and appears to have been annexed, at a very early period, to the chapel of St. Michael, in the castle. In 1410 the rectory was granted, amongst other things, by Henry IV., to augment his new foundation of Battlefield College, and thenceforth this living became a mere stipendiary curacy. On the dissolution of that college, St. Julian’s was granted by the crown, in 3rd Edward VI. to John Capper and Richard Trevor, and after numerous subsequent transfers, passed into the family of Prince, from whom it has descended to the present patron, the Earl of Tankerville.
The parish comprehends the Wyle, the Wyle Cop, and under the Wyle, and considerable disjointed portions extending wide into the country.
The present church, erected in 1749, on the site of an ancient irregular structure which had become ruinous, is an oblong Grecian building of brick and stone. The interior is handsome and conveniently fitted up. Four Doric pillars on each side of the nave support the ceiling, which is curved and decorated with considerable effect with carved foliated bosses, preserved from the beams of the old church. Over the side aisles, and at the west end, are commodious galleries, in the latter of which is an organ by Fleetwood and Bucer, erected by subscription in 1834. In the central light of the large Venetian window in the chancel, is a figure of St. James in ancient stained glass; and in the side lights are the royal arms, and those of Lichfield and Coventry impaling Cornwallis. The galleries on the north and south are lighted by large circular-headed windows, containing the arms of Queen Elizabeth, the town, and the families of Bowdler, Prynce, and Bennett.
The only existing portion of the old church is the slender square tower at the west end. The basement is of red stone, and has on its eastern side a remarkably acute and lofty arch opening to the nave. From this rises a superstructure of grey stone in the style of the 16th century; the upper chamber of which is lighted on every side by a broad short pointed mullioned window. Above is a frieze of quatrefoil pannels, with grotesque water-spouts projecting from the angles. An embattled parapet, enriched with eight crocketed pinnacles, crowns the summit. In the tower are six bells.
On the exterior of the south wall of the tower is a sculptured stone from the old church, representing St. Juliana within a foliated tabernacle.
The south side of the church was, in 1846, stuccoed over, stone pillars inserted between the windows, and surmounted with a cornice and stone parapet.
The church-yard next the street was also enclosed by a pierced parapet stone wall, and the entire structure substantially repaired at the expense partly of the parish and of the late Rev. R. Scott.
The edifice contains only one monument of any antiquity; a coarse marble slab, inscribed in Longo-bardic capitals, to a member of the family of Trumwin, of Cannock, in Staffordshire.
The modern memorials most worthy of remark, as recording men “useful in their generation,” are those to Mr. John Allatt, the beneficent founder of Allatt’s School; Mr. Robert Lawrence, the public-spirited coach proprietor, to whose exertions we owe the great Holyhead Road, and the establishment of the first mail coach to this town;—and to the elegant-minded Hugh Owen, Archdeacon of Salop, one of the learned authors of the “History of Shrewsbury.”
We now reach