Owdo me owd butties, thank’ee most kindly for poppin in for a brevit and if you are one of our regular readers, that’s quite probably Shroppieoomon and owd Stanleydog, you might remember last wik’s mermaid, well here’s another ‘un.
Mytton & Mermaid, Atcham
The body of Mad Jack Mytton spent the night here on it’s way to his funeral in Halston, so that answers the Mytton part of the name, and why his ghost haunts here every year on his birthday (30th of September) but why the Mermaid?
The house was converted into a prestigious hotel in the 1930s by Clough Williams-Ellis. He wished to have somewhere for his guests to overnight on their way betwixt London and the Italianate village he built at Portmerion. A direction sign in Cross Houses used to have “Mytton & Mermaid, Meirion’s child” on it and he used a mermaid logo at Portmerion.
Some versions of where the mermaid comes into it are:
- the hotel is half way betwixt land (London) and sea (Portmerion) just like a mermaid.
- Mytton once described a lady as ” a mere maid” which has bin corrupted to mermaid.
- Mytton crashed his carriage whilst crossing the nearby ford and blamed it on a mermaid.
- A rather drunk Mytton fell in love with a mermaid in the river Severn.
There have bin at least three Mermaid Inns in Shrewsbury, one in Shoplatch was demolished to make way for the Victorian Market Hall, the name was then transferred to a black and white building in Claremont street, which was replaced by a brick building that was also demolished, this time for road widening in the 1930s.
If this has whetted your appetite for mermaids they also can be found in the Dairy Pit pool near the Wrekin, on a metal fence in Bridgnorth, a misericord in Ludlow and like Jim Payne you may see some at Bomere Pool but I ‘ull save that for another day (alus leave ’em wanting more)