Town in Shropshire, England
Ludlow
A prince's heart lies in its church, a poet's ashes outside it, and a whole slice of Earth's Silurian past is named after it. Meet Ludlow.
Key information
- County
- Shropshire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 10,500, 2011 Census
- Known for
- Norman castle, medieval streets, a food-festival reputation and a history of Michelin-starred restaurants
- What locals are called
- Ludlovians
- Famous people
- A. E. Housman (buried here), Prince Arthur, Catherine of Aragon, Claude Bosi
About Ludlow
The town where a prince's heart stayed behind
Ludlow's most poignant story belongs to Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son and heir to the Tudor throne. In 1501 he came to Ludlow Castle with his new bride, Catherine of Aragon. In April 1502 he died there, aged fifteen. His body was carried to Worcester for burial. His heart, local tradition says, was left in St Laurence's Church. His death put his younger brother on the road to becoming Henry VIII, and sent Catherine down a path that would end in the break with Rome. It was not Ludlow's only brush with royal tragedy. In 1483 the young Edward V was at the castle when his father, Edward IV, died. He set off for London, and became one of the Princes in the Tower.
A castle that ran half of Wales
Ludlow Castle went up in the 1080s, built by the Norman Lacy family on a rocky spur above the River Teme. Its round chapel of St Mary Magdalene is one of the oddest sights in any English castle. Later the castle became the seat of the Council of the Marches, which governed Wales and the border counties from Ludlow for generations. That made this small Shropshire town a kind of capital, with lawyers, officials and royal households in residence. Milton's masque Comus was first performed here in 1634. The Council was abolished in 1689, the castle slowly fell into ruin, and in 1811 it was bought by the Earl of Powis, whose family kept it for generations. The castle formerly hosted annual Shakespeare productions as part of the Ludlow Festival. Today it hosts events including the Ludlow Food Festival.
Broad Street and the buildings that never got bulldozed
Ludlow was planned by the Normans on a grid, climbing the hill from the river to the castle gate. Wool made the town rich in the later Middle Ages, and that money turned into half-timbered houses, grand Georgian frontages and the soaring tower of St Laurence's, which is sometimes called the cathedral of the Marches. Later booms passed Ludlow by, so the old streets survived. The town has more than 500 listed buildings, and you can walk from the Buttercross, built in the 1740s, down the long slope of Broad Street to the medieval Ludford Bridge without passing anything much newer than the Victorians. The Feathers Hotel, dated 1619, is a riot of carved timber and one of the most photographed pub-hotel fronts in England.
The sausage-and-Michelin-star town
For a town of around 10,000 people, Ludlow has punched far above its weight at the table. In the 2000s it had three Michelin-starred restaurants at once, among them Hibiscus, where Claude Bosi made his name before moving to London. The town's food festival, held in and around the castle each September since the 1990s, helped to turn a market town into a pilgrimage for people who care where their dinner came from. Independent butchers, bakers and cheesemongers still fill the centre. The regular market runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with additional specialist markets on selected Thursdays and Sundays. And yes, Ludlow sausages are a thing.
A poet's Shropshire, a geologist's Ludlow
A. E. Housman never lived in Ludlow, but he made it famous. His 1896 poems A Shropshire Lad mention "Ludlow fair" and "Ludlow tower", and when he died in 1936 his ashes were buried beside St Laurence's Church. Geologists know the town in another way. The Victorian geologist Roderick Murchison studied the rocks around Ludlow, and the name "Ludlow" now labels an epoch of the Silurian period, roughly 420 million years ago. Fossil hunters still comb the local rocks, including the famous Ludlow Bone Bed. Locals, known as Ludlovians, can claim a town whose name is written in both literature and stone.
Racing, football and the view from Whitcliffe
Ludlow Racecourse at Bromfield, just outside town, stages National Hunt meetings, and Ludlow FC carries the local football flag. The original Ludlow Town FC folded in 2012. The best view of the town is from Whitcliffe Common, across the Teme, where the castle, church tower and rooftops line up as if staged for a postcard. Locals walk the riverside path to Dinham Bridge to get the same picture from below.