History
Click here to read about the Armoury floods
The Armoury is quite a grand building that started life as an Armoury (strangely enough) in the late 18th century, although it originally wasn’t situated on its present site at all. The whole building was moved lock, stock and barrel (to use an appropriate metaphor) in 1922, from the Armoury Gardens, because immediately after the First World War, building materials were hard to come by, and they recycled what they had. It has served various purposes in its life, having most recently been a bakery.
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After the war the Armoury was used for convalescence |
When the Armoury was a bakery the pillars were striped as a warning to fork-lift truck drivers. |
Jerry and Graham have always liked Shrewsbury, and one day had a wander round the city checking the lie of the land, seeing if they could find a home there. They saw the Armoury as it was, with its long run of high windows looking out over the river, and thought it would make an interesting pub, although it wasn’t available at the time. To use an attractive building on the banks of the river for industrial production was a waste and the potential was plain to see for those with pub-eyes. It seemed that it could be a Harkers on a bigger scale, with the advantage that it would be big enough to cope with a healthy dining trade as well as a busy wet trade.
When the building did come on the market some time later, we were pretty quick out of the traps, although the building needed some serious work on it to get it up to scratch. What began as a quiet spot down by the river when we opened has since burgeoned into the entertainment quarter of the town, with bars and restaurants all around, which wasn’t quite our original plan.
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Photos courtesy of Morris and Co.