There are two houses at the junction between Salop Road and Middleton Road, opposite Holy Trinity Church.

Built in 1841, Watkin’s book on Oswestry states that this set of houses were once called Middleton Place’.

Watkin’s book on Oswestry also states that in 1852, one of the many owners was Mr J Pryce-Jones, principal of Grove Park School in Wrexham and English Wesleyan Methodist preacher, who laid the foundation stone for the Dispensary and the Welsh Wesleyan Methodist Church in Victoria Road, and who ran a boarding and day school from Middleton Place, before relocating to house Number 59, Willow Street, in 1852, to found the Willow Street Academy.

According to the Grade II listing entry for these properties, dated May 15, 1986, the description is as follows: “Pair of houses, now divided into flats. 1841 (datestone) with later additions and alterations. Red brick, hipped slate roof with axial stacks in roof slope to left and right. Three storeys, moulded wooden eaves cornice and first-floor cill band carried round left and right returns; four-window front, central windows in projecting pedimented break with datestone 1841, glazing bar sashes with plain stone lintels and late 19th century canted bay windows to lower left and right; twin entrances to centre, plain pilastered wood doorcases (left retaining pedimented hood) have six-panel doors with panelled reveals and rectangular overlights.”

The listing entry also goes on to state: “Closely comparable in style to Nos. 16 to 22, Salop Rd. (q.v.) which are dated 1827-8. Included for group value.”

Incidentally, many of our readers would know of Numbers 16 to 22 in later years as the MANWEB offices, but are now divided between an accountancy company, a cake shop and a fish and chip shop.

By the late 1980s, Middleton Place had become derelict after the owner[s] had vacated them, causing them to fall into a serious state of disrepair.

Consequently, they were described by a local newspaper as “blots on the landscape” and Shropshire County Council had taken control of the houses with the intent on demolishing them. A public inquiry followed this decision and ruling stated that these houses must not be demolished because of the Grade II listing in 1986, and so the houses were saved from the bulldozers.

Another newspaper article from June 1990 states the Shropshire Building Preservation Trust was looking into purchasing the houses to restore them and eventually sell them on, but Shropshire County Council refused to transfer them as they wished to use the houses themselves.

In March 2009, Middleton Place was converted into six flats, each to serve as social housing – and as of May 2017, they are under the care of The Wrekin Housing Trust.

Sources:

- ‘Oswestry, with an account of its old houses, shops, etc., and some of their occupants’ [Pages 28, 146 and 260], by Isaac Watkin (1920);

- British Listed Buildings: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101054314-48-and-50-salop-road-oswestry#.W6dfrPZFzIU;

- Historic England: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1054314;

- UK Social Housing: https://uksocialhousing.com/properties/OSWESTRY?page=6;

- Oswestry Genealogy: http://www.oswestrygenealogy.org.uk/photos/osw-ph-o-5-17-2-corner-of-salop-rd-middleton-rd/