Scenic Point 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.

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.