The Shrewsbury Chronicle

About The Shrewsbury Chronicle

The Shrewsbury Chronicle is a weekly newspaper serving Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, and its surrounding district. First published on 23 November 1772, it is one of the oldest weekly newspapers in the United Kingdom, older than The Times by more than a decade, and it has been published continuously through the reigns of nine monarchs. Printed on Wednesday evenings and on sale or distributed on Thursdays, it is published by the independently owned Midland News Association and covers the county town and villages including Church Stretton, Minsterley and Much Wenlock. In 2022 it celebrated its 250th anniversary, a milestone marked by a new book charting its extraordinary history.

Founded by Thomas Wood in 1772

The paper was founded by Thomas Wood, a drapery salesman turned printer who had been a partner in the Birmingham Chronicle newspaper. The first edition appeared on Monday, 23 November 1772, under the title The Shrewsbury Chronicle, or Wood's British Commercial Pamphlet, and ran to eight pages. Wood had spotted an opening in the county town of Shropshire, and his paper quickly established itself as the journal of record for Shrewsbury and the surrounding county. The Chronicle's origins pre-date the first Ordnance Survey mapping of the county, and the paper was already decades old when The Times first appeared in 1785.

Mary Wood: a pioneering woman proprietor

Following Thomas Wood's death in 1801, the paper was carried on by his widow, Mary Wood, née Horlick, who ran it until her own death in 1808. Her stewardship makes her one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of women newspaper proprietors in Britain, a remarkable position for a woman in the early nineteenth century. That the paper survived the transition and continued to publish is a testament to the business Wood had built and to his widow's ability to sustain it. The episode remains one of the most striking in the long history of the provincial press.

Two and a half centuries of news

In its early days the Chronicle covered national, international and local news, reporting the great events of the age for its Shropshire readers: the American War of Independence, the death of Nelson at Trafalgar and the Crimean War all featured in its pages. In the 1830s, under the editorship of John Watton, the paper supported the Whigs in the turbulent politics of the Reform era. Until February 1953 the paper carried advertisements alone on its front page, with news beginning inside, a convention it abandoned only in the post-war years when major Shropshire-interest stories began to lead the front page.

The daily Chronicle of the General Strike

One of the most unusual episodes in the paper's history came during the General Strike of 1926, when the Shrewsbury Chronicle appeared as a daily newspaper for just under a fortnight. With the national press disrupted, the paper stepped into the breach, its contents largely taken from BBC bulletins. For a weekly rooted in the rhythms of a county town to publish daily was an extraordinary undertaking, and it demonstrated the paper's sense of public duty at a moment of national crisis.

Printing works: floods, fires and rebuilds

Over the centuries the paper has occupied many different offices and printing works around Shrewsbury. Between 1916 and 1927 printing was done at Newport, some miles to the east, because of structural defects in the Shrewsbury premises pending a rebuild. On several later occasions printing had to be done in Walsall, in the West Midlands, when the works in Castle Foregate were flooded. The paper is now based in Abbey Foregate, on the eastern side of the town near the historic abbey. The British Newspaper Archive holds digitised issues of the Chronicle from 1772 to 1910, offering researchers a window onto two and a half centuries of Shropshire life.

Midland News Association ownership

The Shrewsbury Chronicle is published by the Midland News Association, the independently owned Wolverhampton-based publisher that also produces the Shropshire Star, the region's daily newspaper and the Chronicle's sister title. The Association's independence, unusual among Britain's regional publishers, has allowed the Chronicle to maintain its distinct identity as a weekly even as its daily sister covers the breaking news of the day. The paper's associated website is shrewsburychronicle.com, which carries its journalism online.

Editors: from John Butterworth to Kim Bennett

The paper's modern editorship has been notably stable. John Butterworth edited the Chronicle from 1997, steering it through the turn of the millennium, before Kim Bennett took over in 2009. Bennett's tenure has seen the paper through the digital transformation of the regional press and its 250th anniversary. The continuity of editorial leadership reflects the paper's settled place in the town: it is edited by people who know Shrewsbury intimately, and its journalism is rooted in long-standing relationships with the town's institutions.

Campaigning journalism and awards

The Chronicle has a proud record as a campaigning newspaper. In 2005 it was named Best Campaigning Newspaper in Great Britain by the Newspaper Society, recognition of its work on behalf of its readers. In 2009 the then Shrewsbury MP, Daniel Kawczynski, noted the paper's campaigning on local issues in Parliament, as well as its fundraising for good causes in the town. Campaigning has been the paper's hallmark since its earliest days, and the award confirmed its standing among Britain's weekly newspapers.

Circulation and the part-free model

The paper's circulation has reflected the changing fortunes of the weekly press. In 2004 it stood at over 19,000, the highest for twenty years; by 2008 it was 14,015. In 2009 the paper moved to a part-free, part-paid model, with some copies distributed free and others sold, a hybrid approach adopted by many weeklies seeking to sustain their reach as paid sales declined. The paper is distributed free in the town of Shrewsbury itself and sold in the surrounding parts of Shropshire within a radius of about ten miles, including Church Stretton, Minsterley and Much Wenlock.

The 250th anniversary and Phil Gillam's history

In March 2022 the Chronicle celebrated 250 years in business with the publication of "Shrewsbury Chronicle: The History of One of England's Longest Running Newspapers". The book was written by Phil Gillam, who worked for both the Chronicle and the Shropshire Star during his career and began his own journalistic life on the Chronicle, his home-town paper, in 1977. Part historical record and part memoir, the book includes Gillam's personal recollections alongside essays from former Chronicle journalists, tracing how the newspaper evolved across two and a half centuries. It is sold in Shrewsbury bookshops including Waterstones, Pengwern Books and Raven Books.

The county town the paper serves

Shrewsbury is the county town of Shropshire, a handsome medieval town looped by the River Severn, known for its abbey, its castle, its timbered streets and as the birthplace of Charles Darwin. The Chronicle's patch takes in the town and the Shropshire hills to the south, including Church Stretton, the market towns and villages of the rural district and the farms of the Severn valley. A typical edition averages ninety-six pages a week, including five pages of news, eight of sport, two of entertainment, a page of letters and seven pages of classified advertisements, plus a forty-eight-page property supplement: a substantial weekly record of England's most quietly beautiful county town.

Visit the official website: shrewsburychronicle.com