In which I show two philosophers the real-life models for some of Malcolm Saville's Shropshire locations

As well as visiting new places, you can fight off holiday nostalgia by meeting new people. For all its faults, this is something that social media has made easier. 

So it was that I found myself outside Church Stretton Co-op waiting to meet two philosophers from Crete. We had arranged for me to give them a tour of some of Malcolm Saville's Shropshire locations.

The philosophers were Keith Frankish and Maria Kasmirli, who also brought their young teenage daughter Matea. I have got to know Keith on Twitter over the years through a shared affection for Malcolm Saville's books. 

The first location we went to was Hamperley Farm, the Ingles Farm of Saville's Lone Pine stories. You can see it in the photo above, which is by Keith Frankish.

Malcolm Saville describes Ingles Farm in Mystery at Witchend, the first Lone Pine book:

Ingles' farm was not very big, but the farmhouse of red brick was well set back from the road with a big lawn on the right and cowsheds on the left.

The real farm isn't red brick  and, though there is a lawn, it's on the left as you face it. I was surprised that there was a lawn at all, because it's not there on the photos I took of the farm when I was last here in 2012 nor even on Google Street View today - a clear case of Shropshire being "more like it was now than it was then".

And, just as happened to the twins in Mystery at Witchend, we got asked inside. I can reveal that the farmer's family name is Foulkes, but he does have a son called Tom.

You can stay at Ingles Farm yourself. Some of the farm's outbuildings have been converted into two beautifully appointed holiday cottages and you can see them in the photos below. (Follow the link for more information.) There's even a sweet little postbox if you want to send postcards.

Then we went up the lane to the real Witchend - it's a private house, so please respect that if you ever make this pilgrimage yourself. This photo was taken on a sunnier day than the one we had.

After that we went around the southern end of the Long Mynd and then north through Wentnor (where the Crown is currently closed) and on to the Bridges Inn at Ratlinghope for a pot of tea.

This is the pub that featured in The Green Green Grass, while Malcolm Saville fans will know it as the Hope Anchor from the second Lone Pine book, Seven White Gates. Again this is a picture from a sunnier day when it was still called the Horseshoes Inn and looked shabbier than it does today.

Then is was up to the Stiperstones ridge.

 I once heard a talk by Malcolm Saville's younger son the Revd Jeremy Saville in which he said he was pretty sure his father hadn't visited the Stiperstones when he wrote Seven White Gates. Even so, it's quite possible that Malcolm was right to paint the way from the pub to the Stiperstones as a rough, stony track rather than the metalled road it is today.

As we approached the car park near the Stiperstones ridge, we found that the Devil was in his chair - as the locals are supposed to say when the rock formation the Devil's Chair is obscured by cloud. By the time I took this photo, you could see it was going to clear from the west.

At this point I had better to pause to thank Maria for all the driving - the A roads in south Shropshire are single carriageway with lots of lorries, and the minor roads can be narrow and hilly. Not least the road we then took along the western side of the Stipersones through Stipersones village and Snailbeach, which has hairpin bends. And so we got back to Shrewsbury.

Thanks to Maria and Keith for their company - I even found time to talk philosophy with them too.

The Shrewsbury to Ludlow Railway part 2

As promised, here is the second and final part of this video - you can watch part 1 here.

Marshbrook is the Onnybrook of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine stories, while its signal box may be the oldest one on the British railway network that is still operational.

The Shropshire Star marks the 60th anniversary of the Longmynd Adventure Camp

The Shropshire Star has an article on the Longmynd Adventure Camp, which is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its foundation this year:

The young lads from underprivileged backgrounds in Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the Black Country, had never seen anything like it. 

Plonked in tents in the shadow of the Long Mynd, they washed in a brook, sang round a camp fire, roamed the countryside, played games, and generally enjoyed the fresh air.

I blogged about the camp back in 2010, when I exclaimed over how remarkable it was to find such an establishment just down the lane from the real-life models for Malcolm Saville's Witchend and Ingles Farm.

Writing this has reminded me that when I first discovered The Bog Visitor Centre on the other side of the hill there were still wooden tents in its yard, left over from the days when it had been some sort of outdoor activity centre.

And a letter from a former helper at the Longmynd Camp, quoted in the Shropshire Star, is unexpectedly moving:

"Dear Sir, As you can see by the above address [Her Majesty's Prison, The Dana, Shrewsbury] things have changed for me since our last meeting... I will always remember all the great songs we sang, especially your daughter Debbie's favourite, 'There's A Worm At The Bottom of the Garden.' Brilliant! ...

"I am sorry for letting you down Mr Williams."

A puppet theatre at Marshbrook

The other day I blogged about the new Radio Times database.

One of the first things I did with it, of course, was search for my favourite places in Shropshire. This threw up some fascinating (and no doubt long wiped) regional radio broadcasts on folklore and farming from the early years of radio. And it confirmed that Down Your Way and Gardeners' Question Time visited every settlement in the kingdom twice.

But it also threw up something unexpected. Because in 1969 Home This Afternoon ("A family magazine introduced from the Midlands by David Stevens") included this item:

Hand-in-glove at Fiddler's Folly: Keith Ackrill has been to see Shropshire's only permanent Puppet Theatre, run by Douglas Ward, in a valley near Church Stretton.

A puppet theatre in a valley near Church Stretton? It sounds unlikely, but there really was one.

I found it on the Beresford's Puppets website:

We had heard about Fiddler's Folly, which was over the other side of Shropshire, so we phoned and made a date to visit. It was run by Doug Ward, who had inherited his parents large house along the old road (now just a rutted track, superseded by the A49) from Shrewsbury to Ludlow near Church Stretton. When he was just a lad, his parents had let him use the small, empty, derelict cottage in the garden for a puppet workshop and later a theatre. It was - and still is - a beautiful and quiet site, with very few houses close by and on the edge of the Long Mynd (Mynd - mountain). The picture shows the cottage being renovated; Doug's house was the white house behind. 

Doug's assistant was Hilda Cross who had her own puppet show with which she toured schools and was responsible for the schools side of Fiddler's Folly. She, with the help of her husband Harry, made many of the Folly's puppets. Doug produced and directed the shows and was a good pianist and singer. The cottage was two storied and had a twenty five seat theatre downstairs and an exhibition room upstairs. School classes would visit and half would see the show whilst the other half looked at puppets and had pop and biscuits. ... 

Doug came into some money and decided to renovate the cottage theatre. Much of the work was self help. Son, Chris and I doing a lot of the rewiring and designing of the staging. Chris's then girlfriend, Helen, also helped as a labourer. The raked seating was improved and the staging completely rebuilt so that it extended into the upper floor. 

Many of the summer, public events were held in the garden.

Fiddler's Folly was at Marshbrook, the Onnybrook of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine books for children.

The estate agent's particulars do not say exactly where the house is, but I suspect it stands on the lane that runs parallel with the railway. This follows the route of a Roman road, and when the lane peters out you can follow the Roman road as a footpath over the hill to Wistanstow.

My 10,000th blog post

Alarming, isn't it?

To celebrate, here is a photograph, taken a couple of summers ago, of the real-life model for Malcolm Saville's Witchend.

Marsh Brook signal box and Malcolm Saville

Earlier this week the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced that 26 signal boxes have been granted Grade II listed status. BBC News has the full list, and if you study it you will see that Marsh Brook box in Shropshire, which has featured here before, is among them.

My earlier post mentioned that there is a theory that Marsh Brook is the oldest signal box still operating in Britain. It also features in the Lone Pine stories of Malcolm Saville and, with the help of the person who runs the Malcolm Saville Society Twitter feed, I have been able to track down two passages that mention it.

Published in 1943, Mystery at Witchend was the first of the Lone Pine Stories. And in the very first chapter you will find:

At last they were ready to start, but got no further than the level-crossing gates. A brown-faced signalman leaning from his window smiled at them through the rain, and Richard called out: "May I come up and pull one of those levers one day?" but he couldn't hear the answer as a goods train clanked by. Some of the long, low trucks carried tanks, and as they passed, old John said, "I've got a lad in one of them things in Africa."

And in chapter 2 of Lone Pine Five from 1949 (by the magic of series fiction the children have barely grown older) you will find:

Meanwhile, Dickie and old George the signalman had recognized each other. 

"Do you remember, George, the very first day we came to Witchend and got off the train you promised I could come and pull some of your levers? I never did, you know. Shall I come now?" 

"I won't make no promises, young man, but I remembers you and all of you for that matter, right well. Just come up here and see me some time when I'm not so busy. . . . Now sir, I'll be closing the gates again in a minute, so maybe you'd better come over."

These passages occur in the original versions published by George Newnes. When the stories were republished as Armada paperbacks the text was cut to fit the shorter format and both passages are missing from these later versions. This is a pity, particularly in the case of Mystery at Witchend and its picture of rural railways carrying tanks. Without this sort of detail the stories are far more formulaic, though never quite Blytonesque, and less remarkable.

You may be able to pick up the George Newnes editions for a few pounds, but if you want the Lone Pine stories with dustwrappers you are going to have to pay silly money. The best bet may be the recent paperback reissues by Girls Gone By, which have the full text, but the earlier ones in this series are now getting rare and expensive too.

Marsh Brook signal box

Our halt at Marshbrook has proved a little longer than I expected. After I put that post up Nigel Bishop sent me a link to his own nighttime photograph of the signal box and pointed out that Wikipedia claims it is the oldest surviving box on the railway network that is still operating.

I can't find confirmation of this claim, but I did come across Railway Signal Boxes: A Review, which was written by John Minnis and published by English Heritage.

This says:

The LNWR/GWR line across the Welsh marches was interlocked in the early 1870s and five of the squat hipped roof boxes, which are notable for being deeper than they are wide, survive. None are listed. Marsh Brook (1872) is the best surviving example of what is one of the largest groups of very early signal boxes to remain in operational use.

So it sounds as though it is, at the very least, one of the oldest boxes still operating in Britain.

Note, incidentally, that the box is called 'Marsh Brook' while the village, at least these days, is always written as 'Marshbrook'.

Marshbrook or Onnybrook?

"Get your things together, twins," Peter said as she opened her bag and stuffed her school hat in it. "We're nearly there." 

The train slowed down. High on their left they saw the lighted windows of the signal-box. Over the level crossing and then a flickering oil-lamp showed them - as if they didn't know - that the name was Onnybrook. 

They jumped out into six inches of snow and with their luggage round them and waved to the guard as he swung on to the step of his van and called "Good night." Then Dickie sniffed the cold air and said, "Super! I think this is the must beautiful station in the whole world. 

Malcolm Saville Wings Over Witchend (1956)

There was no snow when I was last at Marshbrook, the model for Saville's Onnybrook. The signal box and station building (on the Shrewsbury to Hereford line) are still there, though passenger services ended only two years after Wings Over Witchend was published.

Goods services lasted a few years longer, and today there is a little industrial estate in what used to the station's surprisingly large yard.

I don't know if Marshbrook was ever the most beautiful station in the world, but I like this photo with the Shropshire hills in the background.

And I can also recommend The Station Inn here too.

St Michael and All Angels, Cwm Head

Take the lane down the hill from Hamperley Farm and you will come to the little mid-Victorian church of St Michael and All Angels at Cwm Head.

It is set on a busy B road, which makes it positively dangerous to photograph, but I did like this outbuilding in the corner of the churchyard. It is said to be a relic of the days when worshippers would arrive here by pony and trap.

A note at the end of Mystery at Witchend, Malcolm Saville's first Lone Pine story, published in 1943, says the book was written at Cwm Head, Shropshire, and Westend Farm, Wheathampstead.

Saville's wife and children came to stay at Cwm Head House, behind the church, to get away from the war. The house used to belong to friends of a friend, so I had the chance to look around it.

There is a lovely old glasshouse with cacti to the rear, and I like to think that Saville sat in there with his typewriter.

Shropshire on Countryfile

Countryfile on Sunday was all about the glories of the Shropshire countryside. I could not watch it because I was out enjoying the glories of the Shropshire countryside.

I have now watched it on iPlayer and can recommend it. In between the items on trimming cows' feet and the robot milking of the poor beats you will see why I am always going on about the hills here. Sadly, more from stock footage than from what the Countryfile people shot on their very damp day in the county.

And I was pleased by the influence on William Penny Brookes (I once wrote about his Much Wenlock Olympian Games in the New Statesman) and Malcolm Saville.

By coincidence, today I met two of the people who involved with this issue of Countryfile.

Mark O'Hanlon (whom I know from the early days of the Malcolm Saville Society and who now runs his own Saville website) was in the Station Inn at Marshbrook at lunchtime.

Later I met the owner of Priors Holt - indeed she very kindly gave me some of their spring water  (I suspect I looked very hot) and then a cup of tea and piece of cake. Having afternoon tea at Witchend is about as good as it gets for a Malcolm Saville fan.

Both said that the day the Countryfile crew was in Shropshire was appallingly wet - far worse even than it appears on screen.

Today, by contrast, has been roasting and there are reports of a major gorse fire on the Stiperstones.

The Longmynd Adventure Camp

Longstanding readers will know that my favourite writer as a child was Malcolm Saville. His books are where my love of the Shropshire hills first came from.

The first of Saville's Lone Pine books was Mystery at Witchend. In his foreword he says:

"The country in which this story is set is real, but if you are ever lucky enough to explore it for yourself you will not find Witchend."

Up to a point Lord Saville.

If you do explore the Shropshire hills with an Ordnance Survey map and the maps you find on the endpapers of the Lone Pine books, you will soon discern that the real-life model for Witchend is a house called Priors Holt. Equally, you will discover that the Ingles Farm of the book is based on Hamperley Farm down the lane.

When making these discoveries you will probably also come across the Longmynd Adventure Camp - just the sort of establishment of which Malcolm Saville would have approved.

It has always been a bit of a mystery to me, but the Shropshire Star tells you all about it:

A south Shropshire adventure camp, set up 50 years ago, is enjoying its busiest years ever – but supporters fear the credit crunch could hamper plans to finish refurbishment work. 

The Longmynd Adventure Camp ... has had its busiest half-year ever. 

“It’s extremely heartening to see the camp being used by more groups of special needs children. Once our wheelchair path opens in early August we plan to welcome even more.” said president Don Rogers. 

A massive £36,000 fundraising drive has reached the half way total. but trustees still need to raise another £18,000 to complete the refurbishment of the camp’s mess hall.

The article goes on to give contact details, should you feel moved to donate to the camp.