Relocating to Shropshire

[Hopping Mad]

Does anybody have tips about decent places to live - and those to avoid?

[WelshpoolMarauder]

I'm obviously going to be a bit bias as I live here, but Shrewsbury is a great place to live. Big enough to have plenty going on and for different areas of town to have their own vibes but small enough that you're never too far from the centre. Lots of great and varied pubs and bars, great music scene. Not a cheap place to buy or rent though.

Telford I've never really figured out, but it seems to have its good and bad parts. I mostly go there to watch ice hockey!

Of the smaller towns, I've always had a soft spot for Oswestry. Bridgnorth is nice, as is Market Drayton.

Another place worth a look is Bishop's Castle. It's only a small place but there's a great community spirit there and most of the pubs run their own breweries. It's a bit of a hippy enclave, with the accompanying 'relaxed' atmosphere..

 

Lots of great options, it's a fine county to live in!

[Hopping Mad]

20 hours ago, WelshpoolMarauder said:

I'm obviously going to be a bit bias as I live here, but Shrewsbury is a great place to live. Big enough to have plenty going on and for different areas of town to have their own vibes but small enough that you're never too far from the centre. Lots of great and varied pubs and bars, great music scene. Not a cheap place to buy or rent though.

Telford I've never really figured out, but it seems to have its good and bad parts. I mostly go there to watch ice hockey!

Of the smaller towns, I've always had a soft spot for Oswestry. Bridgnorth is nice, as is Market Drayton.

Another place worth a look is Bishop's Castle. It's only a small place but there's a great community spirit there and most of the pubs run their own breweries. It's a bit of a hippy enclave, with the accompanying 'relaxed' atmosphere..

 

Lots of great options, it's a fine county to live in!

Thanks for that. Coincidentally, one of my wife's colleagues relocated, from Sussex, to Bishop's Castle. We dropped by, last time in Shropshire. It seemed a long way from anywhere!

You've not been, then, to Telford to watch Telford Raiders ARLFC?! 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Hopping Mad

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

I always like Ludlow and Church Stretton; maybe worth a look if your domestic commitments allow you to consider relocating to the southern end of the county.  Nowadays, both are bypassed by the modern A49, which helps.  Ludlow is big enough to appear to have a reasonable range of services, shops and other facilities.  Church Stretton maybe has more of a large village feel.  The hills of the Long Mynd behind it are very impressive.

Unlike Leigh, both these places have direct rail access, to the south to Cardiff and, in the other direction, Manchester (or Manceinion, as the bilingual train announcements have it at the Welsh stations on the line.)

The poet AE Houseman (himself a native of Worcestershire!), in his most famous work, "A Shropshire Lad", enthused about the villages in the Clun Valley - 'Clunton and Clungbury, Clungunford and Clun, are the quietest places under the sun'.  Mind you, he did write it in the first decade of the 20th century, so they might be a wee bit busier nowadays!

[JonM]

My parents retired to near Oswestry, which always seems like a nice place. Ludlow is obviously the place to go if you're a foodie.

We looked around Bishops Castle/ Clun/ Church Stretton kind of area a couple of years ago with a view to moving there, before deciding to move up to the Dales. Nice countryside, cheap property (certainly much cheaper than N. Yorkshire...) and quite a bit going on in terms of arts (a hippy enclave, as described above...)

I think the only places to avoid might be those bits of Shrewsbury that flood regularly, and maybe some of the rougher bits of Telford - but even Telford is IMO one of the best of the 1960s overspill new towns - certainly compared to Runcorn or Skelmersdale it seems pretty nice.

[Hopping Mad]

On 22/08/2023 at 19:11, Wiltshire Warrior Dragon said:

I always like Ludlow and Church Stretton; maybe worth a look if your domestic commitments allow you to consider relocating to the southern end of the county.  Nowadays, both are bypassed by the modern A49, which helps.  Ludlow is big enough to appear to have a reasonable range of services, shops and other facilities.  Church Stretton maybe has more of a large village feel.  The hills of the Long Mynd behind it are very impressive.

Unlike Leigh, both these places have direct rail access, to the south to Cardiff and, in the other direction, Manchester (or Manceinion, as the bilingual train announcements have it at the Welsh stations on the line.)

The poet AE Houseman (himself a native of Worcestershire!), in his most famous work, "A Shropshire Lad", enthused about the villages in the Clun Valley - 'Clunton and Clungbury, Clungunford and Clun, are the quietest places under the sun'.  Mind you, he did write it in the first decade of the 20th century, so they might be a wee bit busier nowadays!

I've done a bit of walking in the Clun area, and been on the Long Mynd. Very nice. Recall reading Houseman's Shropshire was a fantasy - he never visited!

[Hopping Mad]

On 23/08/2023 at 11:23, JonM said:

My parents retired to near Oswestry, which always seems like a nice place. Ludlow is obviously the place to go if you're a foodie.

We looked around Bishops Castle/ Clun/ Church Stretton kind of area a couple of years ago with a view to moving there, before deciding to move up to the Dales. Nice countryside, cheap property (certainly much cheaper than N. Yorkshire...) and quite a bit going on in terms of arts (a hippy enclave, as described above...)

I think the only places to avoid might be those bits of Shrewsbury that flood regularly, and maybe some of the rougher bits of Telford - but even Telford is IMO one of the best of the 1960s overspill new towns - certainly compared to Runcorn or Skelmersdale it seems pretty nice.

Know a bloke who relocated recently to Scarborough from Oswestry. Speaks very highly of the latter. Probably too far north for us, however.

One of my wife's colleagues moved from Sussex to Bishops Castle. I suspect he likes its isolation more than his young daughters!

[Pen-Y-Bont Crusader]

Oswestry is a great place and right on Welsh border too ! Bridgenorth is a good place too.

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

7 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

Know a bloke who relocated recently to Scarborough from Oswestry. Speaks very highly of the latter. Probably too far north for us, however.

One of my wife's colleagues moved from Sussex to Bishops Castle. I suspect he likes its isolation more than his young daughters!

This is intriguingly ambiguous, HM.....!

[Hopping Mad]

9 hours ago, Wiltshire Warrior Dragon said:

This is intriguingly ambiguous, HM.....!

I've been to Bishops Castle. Struck me as the sort of place of which middle class parents say: "Oh, it's simply perfect for raising children." Whereas kids are likely to look at the map, then each other, and squeak: "Cripes! How far to the nearest town of any size?"