"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
I wrote this in 2008 about a memory that was already more than a dozen years old:
Much Wenlock is not just the spiritual home of the Olympics. It also the venue for Festival at the Edge, which I attended a couple of times back in the 1990s.
Although it is chiefly a storytelling festival, my chief memories of it are musical. I heard a young Eliza Carthy play (with Nancy Kerr) and, best of all, I heard the Polly Bolton Band.
That year everything was running hopelessly late, and it was after midnight when the band (Polly Bolton, John Shepherd and Steve Dunachie) took the stage in the marquee. Everyone's breath was steaming in the cold air. The band played traditional folk songs and their own settings of poems by Kipling and A.E. Housman. Above all I remember Polly Bolton's wonderful folk voice.
Now, at last, I have found a recording by the Polly Bolton Band on YouTube. It's a setting, not of Kipling or Housman, but of a poem by their contemporary W.B. Yeats.
Betty Harris Square Telford. Photo: Telford Council
A new square has been named in honour of women who worked in Shropshire coalfields, reports BBC News:
The area in Telford has become Betty Harris Square, after her experiences "as a 'pit girl' became one of the most powerful accounts of women's working lives during Britain's industrial past", the council said.
It added while she was not from Telford, her story represented thousands, many whose names were unknown, who worked in east Shropshire coalfields.
More than 1,000 people voted for the name after residents were invited to vote from a shortlist of influential women connected to the area's history.
This gives me the excuse to quote from Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband Charles Masterman:
The Coal Mines Act went through with little trouble except for a struggle to keep pit-brow lasses their right to work. Masterman had made enquiries into the question when he had been to Lancashire ... and had also received a deputation of the lasses themselves, sturdy, strapping girls obviously in far better health than the majority of factory or shop girls; and was determined they should not go.
He laid down the principle: that women should not be forbidden any type of work unless it was proved to be (1) unhealthy, (2) in a situation dangerous to morals, (3) of a degrading and degraded character, and that a Parliament in which women were not represented should be chary of excluding them from any work they wished to do.
I knew I had used that quote on here before and, I thought, quite recently. When I searched for it, it turns out to be eight years ago. Who knows where the time goes?
Long overshadowed within Powell and Pressburger's canon, this major new restoration reveals the visual splendour and dramatic intensity of one of their most misunderstood films.
Powell and Pressburger’s passionate Technicolor melodrama stars Jennifer Jones as the free-spirited Hazel, who refuses to be bound either by her clergyman husband or the predatory squire who pursues her.
The untamed Shropshire landscape is at one with Hazel’s primal spirit, making this one of the filmmakers' most rhapsodic odes to the English countryside and among their most intoxicatingly sensual achievements.
The showing of Gone to Earth is on Wednesday 7 October (6pm) at the National Film Theatre.
I can't remember a single bus turning up late during my 10 days of outings in Shropshire, which is an impressive record.
And let's hear it for concessionary travel for pensioners. Family legend has it that I learnt to read from the West Hertfordshire bus timetable, and I can't help thinking how wonderful getting a card that gave you free travel on any bus would have seemed when I was six. Well, now I have one.
My train to Newport was seriously late because of a track fault north of Shrewsbury, and faced further delay between Ludlow and Leominster. But I had all day, and the recent derailments have emphasised that high temperatures are a risk to safety, so I wasn't going to complain.
I do have two moans about public transport from the holiday. The first is that I had to go through two ticket barriers at Birmingham New Street to change between the train from Leicester and the train to Shrewsbury. Who thought it was a good idea to redesign the station so that is necessary?
A bit of googling this morning has taught me that the way to avoid this is to use the escalators or lifts at the B end of New Street's long platforms, when you don't encounter any barriers within the station. I did it inadvertently on the journey home.
And the second is that when I got on my West Midlands Railway train to Shrewsbury I had to listen to an announcement warning me that three other railway companies sell tickets for this route and that if I had bought one it might not be valid on this train.
I don't think anyone designed this ticketing system: it has just grown like fungus on an October morning.
So, overall, I had a good experience with public transport and an outstanding one with the buses.
This is the last of these brief posts on where I have been that day, as I'm going home to Leicestershire tomorrow. They will remind me of what I got up to on holiday and of some possible longer posts about the places I've been to that I may write later in the year.
Today it was the town of Church Stretton and the village of Little Stretton. I saw several emergency vehicles in Church Stretton and a helicopter landed in the centre, all of which made me fear that someone had met with an accident on the Long Mynd, a hill that towers over the town. But I can't find any news reports about what was going on.
And in Little Stretton I once again admired All Saints' Church. This began life in 1903 as a tin tabernacle – one of those flat-pack, corrugated-iron churches that were produced in their hundreds for new industrial settlements or the further reaches of the Empire.
It's a surprise to find one in an ancient Shropshire village, but All Saints' was soon zhuzhed up with a mock Tudor exterior and thatched roof to make it look at home. And it does to this day.
Later. The incident at Church Stretton, whatever it was, didn't make the media, but somebody was flown to the Royal Stoke University Hospital in the helicopter.
I got on better with Ludlow today. In the past I've not always loved it as much as I should - I think this dates back to the time that the tourist information centre told me off for not booking accommodation before I came to the town.
But today I arrived with the firm intention of finding and photographing a rather unLudlowlike building on the edge of town, and that gave me a sense of purpose beyond wandering about the centre waiting to be smitten.
I fulfilled that intention, even though I found I had set off without a memory card in my camera. (Thank you, phone.)
I'll show you the building I hunted down on another day, but here is a little bit of typical Ludlow to enjoy.
I was up on the Stiperstones ridge today, placating the Devil and admiring the view into Wales.
Mind you, the border does funny things around there. So the large hill in the background and to the right, Corndon Hill, is in Wales, while the high ground to the left and behind it is Clun Forest and so in Shropshire.
Those tortured rocks in the foreground are, of course, the Stiperstones' very own.
I've been to Clun today, making use of one of the last workings of the 745 bus from Minsterley to Ludlow. It's going to be replaced by a community transport scheme that sounds as though it may even be better for residents, but it will no longer be possible to get to Clun, as I did today, by catching the early bus from Shrewsbury to Minsterley.
Anyway, here's a souvenir of Clun and of this extraordinary summer. It's taken from the castle mound looking down on the town's bowling green, though 'green' isn't quite the word at present.
It seems to be a Shropshire thing to have bowling greens on old castle sites. There is one at the top of what remains of Bishop's Castle castle, and the other day I found one in Ellesmere too. In fact, it was seeing the bowling green that awoke me to the fact that I was looking the remains of a castle.
This former canal warehouse, with its thumping great ghost sign, is to be found by the canal basin at Ellesmere in Shropshire.
The basin is at the end of a short arm off what is now called the Llangollen Canal. I took plenty more photos of the town and its canal, which I'll post another day.
I may be in Shropshire, but our Headline of the Day comes from the BBC News Leicestershire pages:
Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service said they were called to Aylestone Meadows after Nell "must have decided to cool-off in the canal near the Packhorse Bridge" but suddenly became stuck in the waterway.
A technical rescue team from Southern Station and a crew from Wigston Fire Station were dispatched to the scene on Saturday evening, and working alongside local farmers they lifted the animal out and had her checked over by a vet.
A statement from the service said Nell now "appears to be in a stable condition" at home, adding: "You can lead a horse to water, but it can be a struggle getting it back out again."
The judges did find a Shropshire Star story to commend highly:
"The impact would be huge": Residents rally against plans for three new homes in Shropshire village
The Independent wins our Headline of the Day Award.
Apparently the font wasn't academically gifted, but it had character and played in the front row for the first XV. It later became a management consultant.
Our photograph shows this very font, now to be found back at Upton Cressett in Shropshire.
"Dartford Warblers skim across the heather before diving into the vegetation, defying all but the quickest observers. At dusk Nightjars churr from the isolated trees or fly overhead, the males clapping their wings in display flight." David Jobbins mourns what has been lost to the fire at Dunwich Heath.
Sam Power explains why Reform UK will find it hard to shake off questions about its donors: "An important thing to note is that the legal onus rests almost entirely on the donor. The party in receipt of the donation simply needs to show that it has conducted a permissibility check on them. In the case of Reform, some of its biggest donors (like Tice) are effectively woven into the party apparatus. This makes it much harder for the party to be seen to be one step removed from the money."
An increasingly narrow English curriculum, with its emphasis on phonics and 'teaching to the test', is squeezing reading for pleasure out of our primary schools, experts in the field tell Lydia Chantler-Hicks.
Rebecca Johns finds that British scientist James Lovelock warned executives of the risks of burning fossil fuels in the 1960s. Rather than share his reports with the public, claims an imminent legal case, Shell responded by funding the Global Climate Coalition – an industry group that pursued multimillion-dollar influence campaigns promoting climate denial and misinformation.
Leanne Tritton reports on the fate of Shrewsbury's Shirehall, the modernist former home of the Shropshire County Council.
"Dirk Bogarde came in for some stick from certain quarters for his portrayal of General Sir Frederick 'Boy' Browning, who was under considerable pressure from Monty to deliver Operation Market-Garden. Dubious about taking Arnhem, Browning stated that they’d be going 'a bridge too far.' He said this before the operation, but there is no scene with Montgomery in the film, instead Bogarde gets the line after the snafu, coming across like an aloof clever-dick 'told you so' type." Tim Pelan looks back to to 1977 and the making of A Bridge Too Far.
The project brings together farmers, communities and young people to improve habitats and strengthen ecological networks across one of England’s most treasured landscapes. With almost £1m in development funding awarded and the potential for a further £8.9m in delivery funding, the project will support long-term stewardship while helping more people connect with nature and heritage.
Over the next decade, the project aims to work with more than 200 landowners across the Shropshire Hills, delivering four large-scale river restoration projects alongside 120 smaller capital nature restoration initiatives. Local communities and parish councils will be supported to deliver Shropshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy, while funded traineeships for young people will help secure the landscape’s future for generations to come.
Through Landscape Connections, fund has already invested more than £2.7m in development funding to projects in the Solway Coast and Marine area, the North Pennines, and Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, with the potential for almost £25m in delivery funding to follow.
Forty-eight young curlews are being released back into their natural habitat in the Shropshire hills as part of efforts to protect the species.
The scheme, which is run by the non-profit organisation Curlew Country, has seen eggs taken from wild nests and incubated, with the hatched chicks then raised in specially-constructed pens.
Amanda Perkins discussed this 'headstarting' process with BBC News:
"Our monitoring showed that no chick survived to fledging from any of the nests we looked at," she said, adding that the team "needed a desperate measure to try and hold the situation".
Perkins described the process, which is licensed by Natural England, as "a sort of sticking plaster" that will work "until we can get better natural nesting in place".
"In the wild, these chicks aren't surviving," she said.
The curlew is also listed in Shropshire's Local Nature Recovery Strategy as a species that needs particular help.
Lynn Parker, who coordinates that strategy, also spoke to BBC News, saying that groups "need to work together", otherwise "we really will see curlews go extinct":
The strategy focuses on "landscape scale connectivity", she explained, adding that "really good quality grasslands or wetlands" are exactly what the curlews need.
As curlews like to nest on farmland, Parker praised the farming community for being "really supportive" of conservation efforts.
"They let people know where nests are, fence them off sometimes, and work with volunteers," she said.
With curlews marked as a "priority species" on the county's nature restoration plan, Parker said that seeing them thrive "would be great, but survive is kind of what we're working on at the moment".
This year's release of chicks is one step further towards "a situation where we're not at risk of losing this really iconic species for Shropshire", she added.
For me, the unique haunting cry of the curlew is the sound of the Shropshire hills and I wish the people working to keep them in that landscape every success.
Ginger Beard Mark and the musician Eric Loveland Heath visit the old lead mine at Snailbeach in Shropshire. In its heyday in the second half of the 19th century, it was the most productive lead mine in the country.
Eric Loveland once wrote a guest post for Liberal England about growing up in Snailbeach and his reaction to it today.
The judges have torn themselves away from England's World Cup game, and our Headline of the Day Award goes to BBC News.
The headline stands above an encouraging story from Shropshire:
An 18-month-long project to "re-wiggle" a river after more than a century has been successfully completed prompting "tears and celebrations".
A section of the River Kemp, in south Shropshire, had been straightened by landowners in the 1800s, disconnecting it from its natural floodplain and reducing biodiversity.
Now water is flowing in the meander again, after it was restored in a project led by Severn Rivers Trust and involved local landowners.
The illustration shows the distinctive signpost at Little Brampton, where this work has been carried out.
Wynford Vaughan Thomas and friend travel the length of the border between England and Wales in 1963.
But the tone of the commentary could come from a topographical book of 30 years before. Anything that smacks of modernity or progress is suspect and the old ways are to be supported, however silly. There's an obsession with market day, while farmers can do no wrong.
Also in line with such books, there is disapproval for visitors' buses, but the writer's own car gets a free pass.
Still it's lovely country and Montgomery is still a little-known treasure. And Knucklas Viaduct still carries trains despite what the film says about Dr Beeching.
What really interested me in the films are the remains of Victorian agricultural improvement on Long Mountain, because I once discovered them for myself.
I had stayed for the night at Colebatch, the first village south of Bishop's Castle. I set off the next morning to walk to Montgomery. At first I went cross country via Bishop's Moat and Mellington Hall to meet the Offa's Dyke Path.
In those days I sometimes carried a radio when I went walking, and I can remember sitting in the sun listening to The World at One. It was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was an item discussing how an independent Ukraine would fare.
I remember laughing because such a notion would have been unthinkable a few days before, and perhaps because I had called at a pub for a lunchtime drink. Looking at the map, I think it must have been the now-closed Blue Bell near Pentreheyling.
Anyway, I passed the turn for Montgomery and kept going because it was only mid afternoon and I felt fine. That's why I found myself on Long Mountain, and wondering what these strange Victorian remains were, before I managed to snag a bed for the night in Welshpool.
Now you could find out online, but this was 1991. Yet, by another of those strange coincidences, there was an item about them in, I think, The Times a couple of days after I got home.
But Wynford Vaughan Thomas is getting impatient, so you'd better watch the video. But after you've done so, you might enjoy my review of All the Wide Border by Mike Parker.
Here's Quentin Shaw writing in the London Review of Books in November 2022:
In September a camera trap monitoring hedgehogs in Kingston upon Thames caught an astonishing snap of a pine marten, the most elusive of English mammals.
There had been no confirmed sightings in England for a century until July 2015 when a naturalist in Shropshire took a photo. There, gambolling in broad daylight, was an animal from the wishful world of cryptozoology, a fantastic beast, previously no more substantial than a plesiosaur in Loch Ness or a big cat in Surrey.
There had been fleeting hints: a strange animal in the headlights on the A49, something scampering in the trees while a forester ate their sandwiches, but hard evidence was always lacking. Volunteers had cycled around country lanes scraping up roadkill and deep-freezing the flat carcasses for later identification, only to find that they were all polecats or mink. People had sniffed and handled strange scat, which turned out to be from foxes and badgers.
But now we knew there was at least one marten out there in Shropshire. A massive ongoing programme of camera traps has since revealed about a dozen more. Once in a thousand video clips there is a fleeting glimpse, usually of a marten already half out of shot before the camera triggered.
You can see a Shropshire pine marten in the video above, which is from the Shropshire Wildlife Trust site.
There you will also find discussion of the county's population of these rate animals:
Pine martens are a native species to England, but over-hunting saw them disappear in the country and the British population became restricted to the Highlands of Scotland. The last confirmed record of a pine marten in Shropshire was verified in 1894 (The Flora and Fauna of Shropshire). Anecdotal evidence suggested that a few may have clung on and other martens may occasionally have passed into Shropshire from a small relict population in Wales.
It is possible that escaped martens from private collections and illegally translocated animals could have also settled in Shropshire. Being a species that likes to roam over large distances, there is also potential for marten populations to spread from official release sites in Wales into Shropshire and surrounding counties too.
With work to provide pine martens good quality woodland, with improved connectivity, the future is looking bright for the species in Shropshire and it appears that now are now firmly established in the remotest corners of the county. But that is only possible if we work hard to protect them and create more space for nature overall.
Another site mentions Clunton and Lurkenhope, near Knighton, as places where pine martens have been seen. But how did one get to Kingston upon Thames?
On Friday we saw D.H. Lawrence getting all Lawrentian about the Stiperstones: "It was one of those places where the spirit of aboriginal England still lingers."
But when did he visit the area? The answer's in the video clip above: January 1924.
They enjoyed a winter's walk together, which they began by climbing Cad's Hill. Later they crossed a narrow gauge railway and ascended the Stiperstones. The tiny Lord's Hill Chapel, located at the edge of the moors, and the works and smoke of Snailbeach came within their view. They then climbed Cranberry to the crest of the Stiperstones, at the southern end of which is located the Devil's Chair, an area of scattered rock.
Lead mining had ceased at Snailbeach by 1924, but the upper levels of the mine and the spoil heaps were being worked for barytes. Colonel Stephens had recently bought Snailbeach District Railways. Most of the line's traffic came from a quarry halfway along the line, but it was still open all the way to Snailbeach mine because that's where its locomotive shed was.
I've not read St Mawr, but Jones and Simpson-Housley say Lawrence combined the Stiperstones and the Wrekin to produce a symbolic landscape with a Devil's Chair and an Angel's Chair, the latter based on Heaven's Gate on the Wrekin.
So D.H. Lawrence visited Snailbeach. I'm sure Mary Webb did too, but did any other notable writers?
