Scenic Place in Shropshire

Much Wenlock in Shropshire is one of the most historically interesting and most architecturally complete small towns in the Welsh Marches, a settlement of considerable medieval character whose combination of the ruined Wenlock Priory, the remarkable Guildhall building overhanging the market place on timber pillars and the variety of medieval and Tudor domestic buildings creates one of the finest small heritage townscapes available in the English Midlands. The town also has an extraordinary connection to the modern Olympic Games. Wenlock Priory, founded in the seventh century, refounded by Lady Godiva in the eleventh and rebuilt by the Cluniac monks in the twelfth century, is one of the finest and most complete monastic ruins in Shropshire, its combination of the Norman chapter house with its remarkably preserved interlaced blind arcading and the later Gothic nave ruins creating a site of considerable architectural quality. The priory ruins are managed by English Heritage. The connection to the Olympics derives from the Wenlock Olympian Games established in 1850 by the local physician William Penny Brookes, whose competitive sports meetings at Much Wenlock directly inspired the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin, who visited the games in 1890. The Wenlock Olympians mascot of the 2012 London Olympics took his name from the town, giving Much Wenlock a global visibility entirely disproportionate to its modest size.

The Long Mynd is the finest upland walking destination in Shropshire, a broad plateau of Precambrian moorland rising to over 500 metres above the Church Stretton Valley in the southern Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty whose combination of the open heather moorland, the deep glacial valleys cutting into the plateau from the east and the extensive views from the summit ridge across the Welsh borders creates one of the finest accessible upland landscapes in the English Midlands. The name means the Long Mountain in Welsh. The Church Stretton Valley below the eastern escarpment provides the most dramatic approach to the plateau, the small Victorian spa town surrounded by the high ground of the Long Mynd to the west, Caer Caradoc and the Stretton Hills to the east in one of the most completely enclosed valley settings available in the English hill country. The combination of the Victorian architecture of Church Stretton and the wild moorland immediately above creates an unusual juxtaposition of settled English culture and open upland that has been attracting visitors since the Victorian era, when the town was marketed as Little Switzerland. The Portway, an ancient ridgeway track crossing the Long Mynd plateau from north to south, is one of the oldest roads in Shropshire, and the walking along the ridge between the deep valleys of Ashes Hollow and Carding Mill Valley provides some of the finest ridge walking available in the south Shropshire hills.

Ludlow in Shropshire is one of the finest medieval planned towns in England and one of the most food-celebrated market towns in Britain, a settlement of exceptional architectural quality whose combination of the great ruined castle, the medieval grid street plan, the magnificent church of St Laurence and the reputation for outstanding local food creates one of the most rewarding small town visits in the Welsh Marches. The Ludlow Food Festival, held annually since 1995, has established the town as the culinary capital of the Marches. The castle at Ludlow, built in the late eleventh century as the principal Norman stronghold of the Welsh Marches, has one of the most complex and most historically rich castle histories in England, its buildings spanning six centuries. The round Norman chapel within the castle, one of only a few surviving round-nave Norman churches in England, is the most architecturally unusual feature. The Church of St Laurence, one of the largest and most impressive Perpendicular Gothic churches in the Marches, provides the ecclesiastical centrepiece of a town whose medieval prosperity left an architectural legacy of considerable quality in every main street and alleyway.

Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment extending approximately fifteen miles through the south Shropshire countryside from Much Wenlock to Craven Arms, a wooded ridge of Silurian limestone whose combination of the ancient woodland, the far-reaching views westward toward the Welsh hills and the exceptional geological and ecological interest of the limestone habitats makes it one of the most distinctive and most rewarding walking landscapes in the English Midlands. The National Trust manages large sections of the Edge and the Wenlock Edge Walk provides the framework for exploring its full length. The woodland of Wenlock Edge, predominantly ash with field maple, wych elm and other characteristic limestone woodland species, is one of the finest examples of ancient limestone woodland in the Midlands, its flora reflecting centuries of traditional coppice management. The characteristic limestone woodland ground flora of dog's mercury, sanicle, wood anemone and the rare limestone polypody fern creates a botanical interest of considerable quality, and the spring display of bluebells and wood anemones is among the finest in Shropshire. A E Housman used Wenlock Edge as one of the principal landscapes of A Shropshire Lad, the 1896 collection of poems that established the melancholy pastoral character of Shropshire in the literary imagination. The Edge appears in several poems as a place from which the wider country can be seen and the transience of human life contemplated, giving this particular landscape a literary resonance that adds to its considerable natural quality.

The Stiperstones in south Shropshire is one of the most distinctive and most atmospheric ridge walks in England, a line of quartzite tors rising along a moorland ridge whose combination of dramatic rock formations, dark heather moorland and rich seam of legend creates an experience quite different from the pastoral gentleness of most Shropshire walking. The dramatic profiles of the Devil's Chair and other tors are visible for miles across the surrounding hills. The Devil's Chair, the largest tor, is the focus of the principal legend attached to the hill, in which the devil rests here when flying between meetings with his followers. The quartzite tors are remnants of a Cambrian-age formation hardened into a much more resistant rock, the quartzite resisting erosion while surrounding material was worn away to leave the distinctive jagged profiles that give the Stiperstones their visual character. The Nature Reserve above the Stiperstones provides excellent heathland walking and the views from the ridge over the Welsh border country are extensive. The combination of the geology, the folklore, the wildlife and the remote Shropshire border landscape makes the Stiperstones one of the most characterful hill walks available in the English Midlands.

Bridgnorth in Shropshire is one of the most unusual and most visually interesting small towns in England, a town divided into High Town and Low Town by the dramatic sandstone gorge of the River Severn and connected by the steepest funicular cliff railway in England, the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway opened in 1892. The combination of the medieval and later architecture of the High Town perched above the river, the commercial character of Low Town at the riverside and the dramatic topography that separates them creates one of the most distinctive townscapes in the English Midlands. The remains of Bridgnorth Castle, reduced to a fragment of the original Norman keep by Parliamentary demolition following the Civil War siege of 1646, lean at a greater angle than the Tower of Pisa following the destruction of their lower sections, providing one of the most improbable architectural features in any English town. The Civil War history of Bridgnorth, which was one of the last Royalist strongholds in the Midlands, permeates the town's heritage and the local museum provides an excellent account of the siege and its aftermath. The High Town contains a remarkable collection of timber-framed buildings including the extraordinary Bishop Percy's House of 1580, one of the finest examples of Elizabethan half-timbered architecture in Shropshire. The Severn Valley Railway, one of the finest heritage steam railways in Britain, connects Bridgnorth with Kidderminster through the beautiful Severn Valley and provides one of the most rewarding railway heritage experiences in England.