Shuts of Shrewsbury No 18 - Coffee House Passage
The Square - College Hill

Coffee House Passage runs up from The Square to College Hill along the side of the Music Hall. We start on The Square, just to the left of the Music Hall entrance and the passage can be seen between a shop and a cafe. The passage is open to the sky in the middle and goes uphill quite a bit, with some steps. As with Bank Passage, this one can become a torrent of water when it rains heavily!



The passage is named after a coffee house which was located at the lower entrance in the 18th Century and was first called Coffee House Shut. The Music Hall buildings now occupy all the way up the right hand side (as you walk up the passage). At the top the passage comes out at another narrow entrance onto College Hill. The buildings on the right (of the photo below) have just recently been restored and are now dwellings. A new passage name plate has been put up on this end recently.



There was once a passage which ran from The Square to Swan Hill through the fire station that was located where the Music Hall is now, called "Fire Office Passage". A sign for this passage can be seen in the entrance hall of the Music Hall, on the right as you enter. The passage actually still partially exists and as I know someone who works at the Music Hall I have walked the route from The Square to Swan Hill.

Well done again!

did you notice the carved roof beam at the square end?

once again I'll have to check a shut in more detail thanks to you!

(I checked Bank Passage and yeah I found that plaque thing with the benefactors on)

:)

keep your feet on the ground but keep reaching for the stars.

Shrewsbury is a wonderful town that gets even better the more we find out,thats the beauty of this website.

keep up the good work sir.

Updated the photograph for the top end of this passage.

As a new member and still investigating this forum I was amazed to see the picture of Coffee House Passage. Apparently one of my great grandmothers lived along there. She was born in 1881. Are there still houses along there or are they all gone? THANKS Chris

owdo Chris

the Music Hall takes up one side of the passage but there are still a couple of homes on the other side.

s.g.d.

A new passage name plate! Yay!



(At the top end of the passage..)

I've probably been a bit slow to notice, but with the redevelopment of the Music Hall, I think are the remains of Fire Office Passage are now (temporarily?) visible from Swan Hill.

Yup, they've demolished a building so you can see "through" a lot further from Swan Hill than before. The visitor centre will essentially re-establish the old shut*, albeit mostly indoors and obviously only available when the place is open to the public! It will connect the various parts of the complex (cafe, various galleries, etc).

http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/museums.nsf/v...impressions.pdf

I don't think the general public will be able to walk all the way through from The Square to Swan Hill, as the demolished building will be rebuilt (it was demolished to allow construction work) but it's a good re-use of the old Fire Office Passage nonetheless. :)

*most of the shut became the main corridor on the ground floor of the Music Hall; the route then veered right, through a fire door, into a small courtyard, then through "the stables" building (now temporarily demolished) and through the car park to Swan Hill... the redevelopment won't change this much, apart from turning the courtyard into the cafe's open air space, so members of the public will be able to go that little bit further along the route! The shut though will be lined with a stone floor, etc, and will have more of an appearance of a passage rather than the corridor as it was during the Music Hall era.