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Besides
having one of the shortest names in Britain, the Shropshire town
of Wem is also responsible for giving the world the sweet pea. It
was developed by one Henry Eckford, who crossbred the plants until
he came up with the highly scented blooms common today. Every July
the town still holds an annual sweet pea festival.
So
do you say Shrewsbury or Shrowsbury? The answer is...er...both.
Apparently, the traditional pronunciation of the 'ew' in Shrewsbury
only survives in the word 'sew', and in earlier days the town's
name was spelled Shroesbury or Shrowesbury, with the 'ow' pronounced
as it is in 'show'. But you'll even hear the locals pronouncing
it both ways, so in a way, everyone's right.
The first Welsh international football team was picked at a meeting
at the Queen's Hotel in Oswestry(in England!) in the 1870s. Oswestry
Town Football Club was a founder member of the Welsh football league
and is still the only English club to play in the League of Wales.
In the graveyard of St Chad's Church in Shrewsbury lies the grave
of one Ebenezer Scrooge - and it's something of a tourist attraction.
Unfortunately it's fake. The 1984 film 'A Christmas Carol', starring
George C. Scott, used Shrewsbury as a location and after the film
crew left, the grave remained. An even lesser-known fact is that Radio
Shropshire researcher Trystan Jones also made an appearance in the
film as a skinny street urchin - at the tender age of seven. Ahhhhhhhh!
The
modern Olympic Games have their roots in the Shropshire town of
Much Wenlock. In 1850 local self improvement guru William Penny
Brookes launched the first annual games in the village as a distraction
for a local population whose previous favourite pastimes were drinking
heavily and fighting. The games grew in importance and Brookes was
a driving force behind the eventual launch of the modern Olympics
in 1896. Sadly he died the previous year.
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