Hillwalking in Shropshire. John Gillham

running south-west towards Ludlow and north-east to Newport, has not only moved rockforms sideways past one another; it’s also moved them up and down. To west of the valley and its railway line, ancient rocks have been moved downwards, while east of the line everything has moved up. And so the very old grey sandstones of the Long Mynd look across Church Stretton towards the even older, and quite different, volcanic rocks of Hope Bowdler Hill and the Lawley.

      Volcanoes of Uriconia

      Uriconium Cornoviorum was the Roman town on the site now occupied by Wroxeter. The Uriconian Volcanics started off as a chain of volcanic islands, which were then crushed and mangled in a continental collision. So Wrekin and Earl’s Hill, Caer Caradoc, Lawley and Hope Bowdler Hill have the same origin as Lakeland or Snowdonia, albeit 100 million years earlier on. And these rugged hills east of the Stretton valley show the same mix of black basalt, grey andesite and pale grey to pink rhyolite; the same sort of lava flows and volcanic ash that make Snowdon or Scafell.

      Scrambled Shropshire is difficult indeed when it comes to puzzling out how the various rock types fit together. But, by the same token, these small hills are a superb sampler of a dozen sorts of stone, from the sea-floor coral and limestone of Wenlock Edge through the white quartzite Stiperstones, to the volcanic ash of Caer Caradoc and the ancient mangled crust that makes the Long Mynd.

      Volcanic rock on Caer Caradoc (Walks 21 and 24)

History

      The first known settlement in Shropshire is at the Roveries near Lydham, just north of Bishop’s Castle. Although the fort is Iron Age, evidence has been found of a Neolithic (Stone Age) settlement dating back to before 2000BC. Shropshire, like most of England at this time, was heavily afforested and the Stone Age people forged highways such as the Portway across the region, erected stone circles and standing stones and buried their dead in raised barrows (tumuli) on the ‘open’ ridges. Axes and other flint tools have been found all over the county.

      The first evidence of tree clearing comes from the people of the Bronze Age (2000BC to 800BC). In the Iron Age period (800BC to AD43) the Celts put down roots and began to construct hilltop forts and settlements with roundhouses. Examples of these will be found on many of the walks but the most famous include Caer Caradoc, the Wrekin, and Bury Ditches. In Shropshire the Cornovii tribe ruled and probably had their capital on the Wrekin hillfort. The tribe cleared large swaths of the valley woodland into fields where they grew cereals, peas, beans and cabbages.

      The Cornovii, led by Virico, were here when the Romans came to the area in AD47. The Romans, under Governor Aulus Plautius, attacked the Wrekin fort and eventually overpowered it, but Virico must have put up a good fight as the Romans named their city at nearby Wroxeter Viroconium in honour of their enemy. The conquerors rapidly built forts of their own, along with roads such as Watling Street to link them. The Cornovii disappeared into history.

      The Roman city of Wroxeter

      After the Romans abandoned Britain in the fourth century, much of what we call Shropshire today became the Welsh Kingdom of Powys, and later Pengwern. These border grounds were the scenes of many a battle. In 656 the region was overrun by Saxons and became part of Mercia. In 765 the Mercian King, Offa, built Watt’s Dyke to repel the Welsh before advancing with his troops to take Shrewsbury. In 779 he drove them back into the hills and constructed the Offa’s Dyke earthwork border between Chepstow and Prestatyn. The border has changed little since those days.

      When the Normans conquered England in 1066 Wild Edric, a Saxon nobleman, owned much of Shropshire, which was at this time known as Scrobbesbyrigscire. He fought hard to repel the enemy but eventually had to surrender to William the Conqueror. Much of the land, including Shrewsbury, was ceded to Roger de Montgomerie. Over the next two centuries powerful castles were built at Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Clun, Bridgnorth and Bishop’s Castle. Many monasteries and abbeys were also built at this time, including those at Shrewsbury, Much Wenlock and Buildwas.

      The once powerful Ludlow Castle (Walk 3)

      There were frequent skirmishes between the Plantagenet kings and their Norman barons. When King John was crowned, the Shropshire noblemen opposed it. At this time the Welsh were making inroads into the county too, with Prince Rhys flattening Clun Castle and Prince Llewelyn the Great taking Shrewsbury Castle. In 1216 King John took the castles of Clun and Oswestry, only to have John FitzAlan take them back. In revenge King John had Oswestry burned to the ground and took Clun once more. FitzAlan would be a thorn in the monarchs of England’s side for many years.

      The Percy Rebellion against Henry IV came to a conclusion at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 when the Lancastrian king defeated Henry Percy (Harry Hotspur) of Northumberland. The battle was immortalised by William Shakespeare’s play Henry IV.

      By the late 14th century Ludlow had over 1100 inhabitants and had become one of the more formidable towns in England. In 1472 Edward IV founded the Council of the Marches, whose power was centred at Ludlow Castle. The council presided over much of Wales and the counties of the English Marches.

      In Tudor times Shropshire’s population doubled and it developed a vibrant economy. Shrewsbury became an important cattle market at this time, and the wool and cloth trade flourished, while the navigable River Severn became crucial to transportation of these goods.

      Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1535 saw the destruction of scores of ecclesiastical buildings such as the abbeys of Buildwas, Wenlock, Shrewsbury and Ludlow. The next hundred years also saw many periods of plague, with 10 per cent of the population being killed by one epidemic in 1604.

      The people of Shropshire were largely Royalists. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1642 King Charles I visited Shrewsbury and Wellington, where he made the Declaration of Wellington, promising to uphold Protestantism, the laws of the country and the liberty of Parliament. Shrewsbury was forced to surrender in 1644, and the Royalist strongholds of Ludlow and Bridgnorth were captured in 1646. In 1689 the Council of the Marches was suspended and Ludlow’s importance waned.

      The 18th century brought the Industrial Revolution. Coalbrookdale in the Severn Valley is generally regarded as its birthplace. In 1708 Adrian Darby leased the Coalbrookdale furnace and started iron-smelting with coke. John Wilkinson, a precision engineer of Broseley, built cylinders for early steam engines and also produced the first iron boat.

      Under instructions from Adrian Darby III, Thomas Telford designed the first cast iron bridge in 1779 to link the important industrial towns of Broseley and Madeley in a place now known as Ironbridge. The 30-metre bridge still spans the Severn to this day and the two towns became known throughout the world for the production of tiles, clay pipes and bricks. The Ironbridge Gorge Museums (www.ironbridge.org.uk) are a must see if you’re in the area.

      The coming of the canals and then the railways accelerated the march of industry, and quarrying and mining were now practiced on a large scale in order to feed the new industries with raw materials for roads, factories and furnaces.

      The New Towns Act of 1946 gave rise to a plan that would eventually create Telford, Shropshire’s largest town and one which would re-house people from the slums of Birmingham. The town was built on derelict industrial sites of Dawley, Oakengates, Shifnal, Wellington and the Ironbridge Gorge. The scheme was supported by the construction of the M54 motorway, a new railway station and a huge shopping centre, and also by the encouragement of new industries to the area.

Plants and wildlife

      Common heather, or ling, grows prolifically over the acidic soils of the Stiperstones and Long Mynd ridges, with bell heather thriving on the drier, sunnier hillsides. In wetter peaty uplands you’ll find the cross-leaved heath, cotton grass, bog asphodel, sphagnum moss and, less commonly, the insect-eating sundew. The heathers are often interspersed with bilberry,