THERE are more than 40,000 old fossils in Ludlow.

No, this is not a joke in poor taste about the higher-than-average age profile of people living in the town.

It is a reference to the collection to be found at the Ludlow Museum Resource Centre.

While the topic of old fossils may not be one to set the heart racing, the collection in Ludlow is of national and even international significance.

The vast majority of the collection that runs to more than 41,500 items are fossils. More than 30,000 of these are from the Palaeozoic era of south Shropshire and the Marches.

Probably the most important part of the collection are the items discovered at Condover just over 30 years ago which include the remains of mammoths.

But there are also examples from the north of the county of Silurian and Devonian fish.

Fortunately, the town has a very active Friends of the Museum Resource Centre that is set to undertake the work of cataloguing the collection.

It also has an active civic society that is looking at trying to restore a historic scroll for the town dating back to Tudor times.

The civic society also had hopes of restoring the historic water fountain near the castle until this got caught up in town council red tape.

Ludlow Historical Research Group also does very good work in finding out more about the past.

Having such a rich past is a great blessing but does not come without problems.

The Ludlow town wall is not exactly falling down but that is a real risk in places and getting it repaired is going to be a very major project that will cost a lot of money.

Ludlow Town Council is to take the lead in preparing a specification and getting estimates but the expectation is that this will run into six figures and therefore be dependent upon securing major grants.

St Laurence Church in Ludlow is a wonderful building but its restoration and delivering the ‘vision project’ is like peeling an onion and the next big steps will require grant funding.

The damage to Ludford Bridge was repaired more quickly than many expected but not as quickly as traders in the town would have liked.

One of the big issues in a town like Ludlow, so full of historic structures, is that getting repairs and renovations done is not just a case of going to the local DIY store and buying a couple of bags of sand and cement.

The work has to meet very high specifications set down by Historic England and this adds both cost and time.

Lime mortar will have to be used in the town walls and this will only dry in the summer resulting in a very narrow window of opportunity for work to be done.

Even when the work has been done and the standards met, there are those that will criticise.

Some people are unhappy about the repair to Ludford Bridge not because of the quality of the workmanship but because they say it looks different.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to completely use recovered stone and hence the difference but time is a great levellers and the new stone will come to look like the old.