Ludlow Walking Tour: A Guide to the Slow Food Capital of England

(72 reviews)

Shropshire audio tour: Ludlow Walking Tour: A Guide to the Slow Food Capital of England

This is a 1.5mi walking tour

It takes an average of 90 mins to complete.

Shropshire

The United Kingdom

$9.99

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About the Tour

Full of restaurants with fantastic tasting menus and other more modest lip-smacking eateries and pubs, a visit to the market town of Ludlow is a feast for the senses for foodies! On this walking tour, I’ll show you the gastronomic delights and historical sites of Ludlow, the slow food capital of England.

Starting in front of Ludlow Castle, you’ll be guided around the town, down Broad Street, through the Whitcliffe Common Nature Reserve and over the Dinham Bridge before arriving back at the castle. Along the way, I’ll show you some of the town’s more than 500 listed buildings of special historical interest – more than any other town of equivalent size. You’ll also hear fascinating tidbits about Ludlow and find out if poet John Betjeman was correct when he described it as “probably the loveliest town in England.”

On this 90-minute walk around the town, you’ll have the opportunity to:

Find out how the castle’s massive outer bailey was used to muster troops for the Norman invasion of Ireland
See Ludlow Assembly Rooms where the great and the good of Georgian and early Victorian society came to party
Peruse Ludlow Market’s superb range of local produce
Take in the massive cathedral-sized wool church of St Laurence’s with its famous carillon playing at 4-hour intervals
Pass by sumptuously decorated historical inns, shops and houses, including the Feathers Hotel which was once described as the “prodigy of timber framed buildings”
Walk through the fortified gatehouse of Broad Gate, built to keep out the marauding Welsh
Go over the medieval stone Ludlow Bridge, built in the early 1400s, which was a site of early confrontation in the Wars of the Roses
Discover Whitcliffe Common, a site of Special Scientific Interest with 415-million-year-old rock formations and early fossils, on a stroll along the Bread Walk, its riverside promenade
Take delight in the River Teme, a fast-flowing river which skirts the town
Hear about how Lucien Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon, was confined to Dinham House during the Napoleonic Wars

By the end of the tour, you’ll have the answers to questions like:

Who was the first husband of Catherine of Aragon?
What is a Burnt Cornflake?
Where did Robin Hood lose an arrow?
When did Ludlow become the capital of Wales?
How did Ludlow get its name?

So come and join me on this stroll around Ludlow and Whitcliffe Common and discover its historical and culinary delights!

Tour Producer

Owen Bowles

6 tours

I'm a Blue Badge Tourist Guide for the Heart of England and Southern England, offering tours of the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, and the West Midlands' cities of Birmingham and Coventry, as well as Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire (including Stonehenge) and the Isle of Wight.

Preview Location

Location 11

The College, Alms-Houses and St Laurence's Church

Please stop to look at the red-brick building on your left.

This building dates from 1758 and contains Hosyer’s Alms-houses, replacing the original alms-houses built in the 1400s by a wealthy cloth merchant called John Hosyer. The current building was designed by local ar... Please stop to look at the red-brick building on your left.

This building dates from 1758 and contains Hosyer’s Alms-houses, replacing the original alms-houses built in the 1400s by a wealthy cloth merchant called John Hosyer. The current building was designed by local architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, most famous for his work designing the world’s first iron bridge in 1779. The bridge can still be seen spanning the River Severn at Ironbridge, around 25 miles (40 km) north-east of Ludlow. The alms-houses originally accommodated thirty-three inmates who each occupied a room with one window in the façade but the accommodation has since been modernised and now comprises five one-bedroom flats, and seven bed-sits.

Ludlow’s coat of arms is displayed on the building pediment. It features the white lion of the local Mortimer family, three white roses signifying the town’s links with the royal house of York, and the Plume of Feathers, symbol of the Prince of Wales, who formerly headed the Council of the Marches based in Ludlow.
The Latin inscription beneath the coat of arms commemorates the munificent gift of John Hosyer, merchant, in the year 1486 and of the re-building of the alms-houses by Ludlow Borough Council in 1758, during the reign of King George II. An English translation of the inscription is given on a brass plaque to the right of the entrance door.

The row of terraced houses to the right of Hosyer’s alms-houses is the former site of the College of Priests, established in 1393. The College of Priests accommodated the chaplains who would attend the altars of the chantry chapels in St Laurence’s Church. Chantry chapels were private chapels built in churches by the rich, who paid for priests to ‘chant’ and pray for their souls when they died. According to religious belief at the time, the chaplains’ prayers would hasten the passage of their sponsors’ souls through purgatory so they would reach Heaven more quickly. By the end of the Middle Ages, there were 16 chantry chapels in St Laurence’s Church, on your right.

Chantry chapels were abolished, but not all of them destroyed, during the Reformation of the English Church in the 1530s.

Now, please turn to face St Laurence's Church and face the large central window.

St Laurence’s Church is often called ‘the Cathedral of the Marches’ and is a fine example of a ‘wool church’, a church whose construction was financed by the huge profits being made in England’s mediaeval wool trade. It is the largest church in Shropshire and one of England’s Greater Churches – that is a group of very large English churches whose size make them similar to cathedrals. In Simon Jenkins’ book England’s Thousand Best Churches, St Laurence’s was rated five-stars.

The church was built on the site of an earlier, Norman church. Parts of the current building date from 1199, but most of what you see today was built in the 15th century. The construction material is of locally quarried red sandstone. Most of the finance for the church’s construction came from the Palmers’ Guild, a very wealthy local trade guild which took its name from a palm, being a symbol of pilgrimage. The Palmers Guild also paid for a dedicated Guild Chapel within the church as well as for the construction of the building of the College of Priests on the opposite side of College Street.

The three windows reveal two different styles of English Gothic church architecture. The one on the left is the earliest dating from the early 1300s and is in what is known as the ‘Decorated style’ with four large vertical expanses of glass known as 'lights' topped by a flower-shaped window known as a cinquefoil, meaning five leaves. The window is surrounded with individually carved stone balls, known as ballflower, another characteristic of the Decorated style. Ballflower decoration is extremely expensive, and this is an ostentatious display of the church's wealth.

The main West Window in the centre, and the window on the right are both from the 1430s and are in Perpendicular style. This style has more lights of glass in each window and more elaborate tracery and decoration, with multiple vertical lines which gave Perpendicular its name.

When you're ready, turn left and enter St Laurence’s churchyard through the entrance which is located just after the lamp-post coming up on your right. Read More

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Major Landmarks

Ludlow Castle
Ludlow Assembly Rooms
Ludlow Market
Quality Square
Church Street
Georgian Alms Houses
St Laurence's Church
Readers House
Bull Hotel
The Feathers Hotel Ludlow
Tolsey House
Ye Olde Bull Ring Tavern
Bodenhams
Butter Cross
Angel Inn
Broad Street
BroadGate
Ludford Bridge
River Teme
Whitcliffe Common Nature Reserve
bread walk path
Dinham Bridge
Dinham

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Getting There

Route Overview

VoiceMap tours follow a route from a set starting point. It’s how we give turn-by-turn directions and tell a story greater than the sum of its parts.

Start location
Castle Sq, Ludlow SY8 1AY, UK
Total distance

2km
Final location
Linney, Ludlow SY8 1EH, UK
Distance back to start location

82.53m

Directions to Starting Point

Start: Ludlow Castle: Castle Sq, Ludlow SY8 1AY, United Kingdom

The tour begins at the entrance to Ludlow Castle, next to the Russian Cannon, at the west end of Castle Square.

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Tips

Places to stop along the way

The hot sandwiches at Vaughan's Sandwich Bar in King Street are a real treat! If you fancy a bite to eat or liquid refreshment just after half-way, try the Charlton Arms, a riverside pub next to Ludford Bridge. St Laurence's Church, 'the Cathedral of the Marches,' is also worth a visit - climb the tower to have stunning views over the town and the surrounding countryside.

Best time of day

The best time to do this tour is on market days (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; local produce markets on second and fourth Thursdays of the month and antique and flea markets on the first and third Sundays of the month) during daylight hours. Try to be in hearing distance of St Laurence's Church bells at 8am, noon, 4pm or 8pm to hear the famous carillon.

Precautions

A portion of this tour is a riverside walk in Whitcliffe Common where the footpaths are uneven and may be muddy. Sturdy footwear, ideally walking boots, is recommended.

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