Darwin's birthplace — a Tudor town in a river loop on the Welsh border
Shrewsbury is one of England's finest medieval towns, a near-island formed by a tight meander of the River Severn and filled with over 660 listed buildings including 400 black-and-white half-timbered structures from the Tudor era. It is the birthplace of Charles Darwin (1809) and the setting for Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael murder mysteries. The red sandstone castle, the Abbeygate, and the winding Grope Lane (medieval market street) are unmissable.
Shrewsbury was the most important English town on the Welsh border — controlling the main crossing of the Severn, it served as the base for English campaigns into Wales from the Norman Conquest onwards. Edward I's forces defeated and killed the Welsh Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd near here in 1282, effectively ending Welsh independence. Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury in 1809 and spent his childhood at The Mount; his statue now stands outside the town library.