Much Wenlock
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.