Heather Kidd welcomes project to restore habitats at old industrial sites in rural Shropshire

A new nature recovery project, the Rescuing Rocks and Overgrown Relics scheme, is will restore natural habitats at four sites in the Shropshire Hills. The locations involved include Poles Coppice in Pontesbury, Snailbeach and The Bog.

The work will include scrub management and coppicing to expose rocky habitats that support species like slow worms, grayling butterflies and bird's-foot-trefoil. 

It will be carried out by Shropshire Council's outdoor partnership team and the Shropshire Hills National Landscape team, with help from volunteers.

Heather Kidd, the Liberal Democrat leader of Shropshire Council, told BBC News she is delighted by the project:

"Bringing these historic sites back to life for both nature and people is a fantastic example of partnership working in the Shropshire Hills.

"It's especially welcome that this important work is being funded by Defra, supporting our shared commitment to nature recovery without placing additional pressure on local council budgets."

Fears of lead poisoning killed off the idea of a new Snailbeach

All you Snailbeach fans out there are in for a treat. Remember 1946 and the plan for this former lead-mining village to be moved to a new site?

I know why it didn't take place. 

So do you because of the headline, but let's start with a letter in the Shrewsbury Chronicle (18 January 1946) from F.H. Edwards of Snailbeach:

Housing at Snailbeach 

I would like to congratulate Mr. William Humphrey for the way he is putting the most serious housing problem to the Clun R.D.C. No wonder the chairman, Mr. J. Norton, wants a move in this housing business. I personally have been in contact with Government officials regarding housing water and electricity. I have explained how we are in need of at least 60 houses in the Heath Ward for Service men and girls alone, and another 20 for couples who are not in the Forces but have got married during the last six years. ...

I can well imagine the Minister of Town and Country Planning having a good laugh when learning there was no electricity and water in the Snailbeach district, and we applied for industry to be brought here. Probably we shall have to wait until March before being able to get a move on, when we may see fresh faces on the council.

So it sounds like there was a plan, not just to move Snailbeach, but to expand it because of the the local housing shortage and lack of amenities.

Wondering exactly where the Heath Ward of Clun Rural District was, I googled it, though without much expectation of success.

But I can tell you that it covered the villages of Snailbeach, The Bog, Stiperstones, Pennerley and Tankerville. (The Bog was largely razed in the early Sixties, and you wouldn't call Tankerville a village today.)

I got this information from the preamble of a thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh [this link will download a pdf] in 1951 by a George Kenneth McKenzie:

The investigations recorded in this thesis were initiated as a result of a report sent to the surveyor of the Clun Rural District Council, Shropshire, by Professor W.G. Fearnsides, MA, FRS, FGS, MIME, senior geological consultant to the National Coal Board.

Professor Fearnsides had been asked to investigate the suitability of a site in the Snailbeach District for the erection of a new housing estate. In his report he had stated that in his opinion the site was unsuitable, because the tenants would be exposed to lead poisoning from the slag heaps deposited by the old mines in the area; and that the anaemia which past doctors in the area had believed to be present, was in all probability due to lead intoxication.

If I'm reading the thesis correctly, McKenzie found from his testing of people of the district that there was a high incidence of anaemia, but no reason to think that it was caused by lead poisoning. 

It sounds, though, as if this finding came too late to save the dream of New Snailbeach.

The aerial ropeway trestle at The Bog

When in the Shropshire Hills be sure to visit the visitor centre at The Bog. It's housed in what was the school for this lost mining village and serves tea and wonderful cakes, as well as selling local crafts and books on the area.

I got there using the Shropshire Hills shuttle bus, which will run on every Saturday for the rest of September. I remember the days when these buses would take you to far off places like Much Wenlock and Knighton. They have gone along with reasonable funding for local authorities, but they still take you round the Long Mynd and Stiperstones.

This time there was a new (for me) attraction at The Bog: a trestle from an aerial ropeway that has been put up as a tribute to all who worked at the mine here.

The Shropshire Mining Club explains:

Bog mine was redeveloped before the 1st World War and different ways of transporting ore from the mine to the railway at Malehurst and of coal back to the mine were considered. Traction engines would cause extensive damage to the roads, and extending the railway from Snailbeach would be prohibitively expensive. 

The solution adopted was a five mile aerial ropeway which took less land and could cope with rough ground and gradients. Its drawbacks were its limited carrying capacity, problems in frost and high winds and the amount of maintenance it required. 

It was designed and constructed by "Ropeways Limited" during 1918, much of the construction work being done by German prisoners of war. The mine closed in 1925 and the ropeway with it.

The trestle, which is of the same design as those used on the original ropeway at The Bog, came from Claughton Manor Brickworks, which had the last functioning ropeway in the country. You can see a video of it in use on this blog.

The trestle isn't as tall as I expected, which makes sense of the stories you hear at Minsterley. There the ropeway taking coal up to the boilers at Snailbeach mine ran across people's back gardens. If times were hard, residents would reach up with a stick to tip a bucket as it passed overhead and receive some free fuel.

And then it was time to get the bus to the pub at Bridges to meet another friend from Twitter.

The Long Mynd and Stiperstones shuttle bus is back

Good news from the Shropshire hills: the coming weekend sees the return of the shuttle bus that takes visitors to the Stiperstones and the Long Mynd. It will run every weekend through the summer: the last day of operation is Sunday 8 October.

There's more good news: the buses will stop near the lead mines at Snailbeach after missing them out last summer and, by serving Hamperley, they will take you to the heart of Malcolm Saville country. There are also better links with service buses on the Ludlow and Bishop's Castle roads.

The bad news is that all this is being accomplished with just one bus, so you will have to plan your day more carefully than in the past. There'll be no more waiting an hour for the next bus if you are having a good time at The Bog visitor centre or the Stiperstones Inn.

But we all know the pressures on bus services at the moment, so I'm pleased this one is running at all.

You can read more on the Shropshire Hills AONB site and also download the tables from there. I have borrowed the rather impressive map above from the same source.

Stiperstones walk to raise money for curlew conservation

The cry of the curlew reminds me my early trips to the Stiperstones, when it served as confirmation that I was reaching high ground.

In recent years the number of these wonderful birds breeding in the Shropshire Hills has fallen markedly. 

So on Thursday 21 April, which is World Curlew Day, the conservation group Curlew Country is organising a fundraising walk there.

Starting from The Bog car park in the Stiperstones, the  13-mile circuit will take in beautiful scenery and curlew hotspots.

You can learn more and book your place via the Curlew Country website.

Fire in The Bog

This just in from the Shropshire Star:

Firefighters had to deal with a bonfire that spread out of control on the Stiperstones. 

The fire, at the Bog, near Minsterley, was reported at 7.30pm on Saturday. 

Crews from Church Stretton and Minsterley arrived to find the fire had spread to undergrowth and was about 50 metres by three metres wide. 

They brought the fire under control in just over an hour.

Well done everybody.

This story does give me a chance to use another of my many photographs of The Bog and to recall that the New Statesman once described my blog as:

An eclectic mix of musical choices, random news items from Shropshire (where he doesn’t live), and political news and views.

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."

Stiperstones snow 1 Tesco 0

Peter Phillips, doyen of Shropshire Liberal Democrats, sends me this photograph of a Tesco delivery van abandoned in a snow-choked lane deep in the county's hills.

He speculates that the locals may prevent its contents going to waste, much as happened in Whisky Galore.

Hay Meadow Festival at The Bog, Shropshire, on 24 June

This sounds fun in a gentle sort of way:

A fun filled family day to celebrate wildflower meadows and their wealth of wildlife. FREE ENTRY, everyone welcome! 

We have a packed programme of activities planned. These include guided meadow walks, family bug hunts, and the launch of the new Stiperstones Butterfly Trail. 

Try your hand at scything, or show off your scything skills in the competition arena, along with hay bale lobbing and hayrick building. Alternatively, head for the arts & crafts tent where you’ll find lots of hay to play and create with.

Full details on the Stiperstones & Cordon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme site.

Shropshire Conservatives interfere in The Bog

The Bog Visitor Centre is based in an old school that opened in 1839 for the local mining community, at one stage the village had over 200 buildings and was a prosperous centre for lead and barytes mining. The mine closed in the 1920s, and as buildings gradually disappeared the school eventually closed in 1968.

So Paul Davis once wrote for me in a guest post about the Bog Centre.

You may find it hard to believe, but Shropshire's ruling Conservative group is proposing to install pay and display machines in the centre's very basic car park.

And how do they propose to stop people parking a little way down the lane? Double-yellow lines.

This would look ridiculous in such a remote location. And who would police them is a good question.

Peter Phillips, the doyen of Shropshire Liberals, suggests the council should simply  install an unobtrusive stone pillar housing an honesty box, as has been done with success at nearby Snailbeach village hall, and leave it at that.

Six of the Best 628

"There are those who dislike the term Left. I am not one. It is a short hand for those dissatisfied with the status quo. For a season it came, somewhat perversely, to mean political ideas that championed state ownership and regulation." Iain Brodie Brown attended the Social Liberal Forum's Brighton fringe meeting on the realignment of the left.

Dirk Singer offers two questions you should ask Labour MPs who suddenly oppose freedom of movement.

Donald Trump is the second coming of Joseph McCarthy, says Jelani Cobb.

"'Don’t worry, I’ll be back by lunch.' Those were the last words of a Scottish teacher who was murdered at Auschwitz for protecting Jewish schoolgirls, as revealed by the students who watched her being taken away to her death." Esther Addley tells the story of Jane Haining.

Michaelangelo Matos reviews '1966: The Year the Decade Exploded' by Jon Savage and 'Never a Dull Moment: 1971 - The Year That Rock Exploded' by David Hepworth.

Olly Parry-Jones visits The Bog. It's an abandoned mining village. In Shropshire.

The Stiperstones and The Bog filmed by a drone

A little bit of Shropshire goodness for you to be going on with.

Mind you, flying over the Stiperstones has its dangers:

She followed his pointing finger and saw briefly in the moonlight a small aeroplane against a shifting background of cloud. It was swooping low in silence, but soon rose sharply as the engines roared again, and disappeared over the tree-tops in the direction of the mountain. 

"But he can't land on the Stiperstones," Peter said. "It's too rough up there. It would turn over at once." 

Malcolm Saville The Neglected Mountain (1953)

50 years of National Trust ownership of the Long Mynd

It is 50 years since the Long Mynd was acquired by the National Trust, reports the Shropshire Star.

No less than £18,000 was raised by public subscription to buy a large part of the hill.

The Star quotes Peter Carty from the National Trust (with whom I once drank with at the Bishop's Castle Real Ale Festival) on how it has fared since:

"The heather-covered plateau has returned. There is a more diverse range of vegetation, while wet flushes and boggy areas are thriving and species of wildlife are beginning to return and establish themselves. 

"However, there are still species that are struggling, curlew in particular – once a common sight and sound on Long Mynd. We now only have two breeding pairs.There is still so much to do to protect this fragile environment."

The anniversary will be celebrated at the National Trust hub in Carding Mill Valley, Church Stretton, on Sunday 28 June.

From Snailbeach to the Stiperstones ridge by motorbike

We have, thanks to a drone, seen the remains of the lead mining industry at Snailbeach in Shropshire.

This film by the same cameraman takes us on a motorbike ride from the village to, if not the Devil's Chair, then at least the car park under the Stiperstones ridge from which you can climb up to see it.

Along the way we pass the chimney at the old Tankerville mine [2:06], the Stiperstones Inn [4:01] and Stiperstones primary school [4:15]  and The Bog Centre [9:42].

Can anyone tell me what the music is?

The Somme Tunnel at The Bog, Shropshire

The BBC's World War One At Home site suggests there is a mystery about the Somme Tunnel which, as the name suggests, was driven into the side of the Stiperstones in 1915.

Was it a spurious, make-work scheme devised to keep the miners in Shropshire and away from the Western Front?

I think this is unlikely for two reasons.

First, because I have a book with a wartime photograph, taken outside the mine buildings, of the Bog Mines Platoon of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry.

Second, because just about every attempt to find new lodes of lead ore in the Shropshire hills came to nothing in the 20th century. The deposits were rich, but they proved to be quite localised and had been more or less worked out by 1900.

Still, such an approach would be in line with that taken in the county by the clubmen of Clun and Bishop's Castle in the English Civil War.

And mention of The Bog, now an abandoned village, gives me an excuse to recommend again this guest post on its visitor centre by Paul Davis.

Stiperstones and Corndon Hill Country Landscape Partnership

Good news from the Shropshire Hills AONB website:

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has confirmed a grant of £1.35 million to the Stiperstones and Corndon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme, which aims to safeguard the special qualities of the countryside. This is excellent news for the local area and for everyone, including the many volunteers, who helped to prepare the bid over the last twelve months. 

The Scheme, which will cover an area of just under 200sq km defined by a rich industrial heritage as well as earlier prehistoric and medieval history, aims to conserve and restore historic and wildlife sites, help communities take part and learn about the landscape and its heritage, and improve access and training opportunities in local heritage skills.

My photograph, taken at The Bog, shows Corndon Hill over the border in Wales.

GUEST POST Why you should visit The Bog

Paul Davis on a good year for a unique visitor facility in the Shropshire hills

The Bog is a small village at the foothills of the Stiperstones National Nature Reserve, 1300 feet up in  the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. There’s not a lot here other than fantastic views, peace and tranquillity, great walks, rich natural flora and fauna, and The Bog Visitor Centre.

The Bog Visitor Centre is based in an old school that opened in 1839 for the local mining community, at one stage the village had over 200 buildings and was a prosperous centre for lead and barytes mining.  The mine closed in the 1920s, and as buildings gradually disappeared the school eventually closed in 1968.

After a period as a field study centre for schoolchildren, in 1996 the old school was taken on by a group of local volunteers as a Visitor Centre. Electricity arrived about 5 years ago, along with inside toilets, and as part of the atmosphere the gas lights have been retained – probably the only visitor centre in the country not lit by electricity.

The centre is staffed entirely by volunteers from the beginning of April through to the end of October – 7 days a week during any school and public holidays and from Wednesday to Sunday the remaining time.  People travel from far and wide for the delicious cakes made by a group of locals – and the portions are very generous.

The volunteers are very knowledgeable about the area, and there are many resources like previous census returns and school records for those trying to trace ancestry. Malcolm Saville and Mary Webb set some of their novels around here and display boards show explanations and conversions of place names from fiction to reality. Other boards explain the geology, history and myths of the area.  In addition the centre sells locally made handcrafts, cards, pictures and other gifts, all made within 10 miles.

Last year the centre welcomed over 17,500 visitors and this year looks set to break this in the normal opening, with an influx of visitors on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 November for the Christmas craft fair (10 a.m. - 3 p.m)

There is a large car park and numerous waymarked walks start from The Bog, some of which can be found through the Shropshire Walking website. These include the Flenny Bank walk and the Mucklewick walk, which head off on the relative flat. Other walks start going up or along the Stiperstones, including the Stiperstones Stomp.

Dogs are welcome at the centre, and even can bring your own packed lunch. Though the Centre will not not be open regularly again until the spring, there is a chance to visit it for the Christmas craft fair this weekend.

I suggest you take it - I recently spoke to a couple who had come 55 miles just for the cake!

The Bog Visitor Centre, Shropshire

A final photograph from my trip last week. When in the Shropshire hills be sure to take in The Bog Visitor Centre for tea, cake, books and crafts.

Why I love the Stiperstones

Longstanding readers of this blog will know that I return, in thought and in person, to the Stiperstones – a range of hills in south Shropshire. When I wrote a much mourned (at least by me) column for the New Statesman website I pretended to live there. Why do these hills mean so much to me?

First, I have been going there for over 20 years: I first visited them on 3 June 1989. I can date my first visit so exactly because I recall carrying a radio in my backpack and hearing, rather unexpectedly, England play well and beat Poland 3-0, a victory which did much to ease their path to the 1990 World Cup. Goals by Lineker, Barnes and Webb. When you have been visiting a place for a long time and been happy there, then returning there, simply thinking of the place makes you happy.

Second, 20 years before I visited them I was familiar with the Stiperstones from the Lone Pine books by Malcolm Saville. My favourite children’s author (unlike Enid Blyton, whose publicist he had been) set his stories in “real places you can explore for yourself”. One of those places was the Stiperstones, although one of his sons, the late Revd Jeremy Saville, once told a meeting of the Malcolm Saville Society that he was sure that when the first Stiperstones book, Seven White Gates, was published, his father had not visited these hills. Its forbidding atmosphere was copied from the novels of Mary Webb.

Third, the Stiperstones are a striking landscape. The crest of the hills is crowned with strange rocks likes the tors of Dartmoor, one of them known as the Devil’s Chair. And when you round the corner on the way into Stiperstones village from Tankerville you encounter the “purple-headed mountains” you were promised by the childhood hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. Let no one tell you the Midlands are flat.

Fourth, there are the remains of the 19th-century lead-minding industry. There is the great complex at Snailbeach and the remains of lesser undertakings scattered elsewhere. For a time the deposits of lead ore here were the richest in Europe, but they proved to be limited and were soon worked out.

Fifth, there is the areas dark folklore and social history. On the night of St Thomas’s Day (21 December) all the ghosts of Shropshire are supposed to gather around the Devil’s Chair. And in 1945 the death of a boy caused a revolution in the treatment of children in public care. The Stiperstones are not conventionally pretty and they can be bleak and brutal. That is part of their attraction.

Sixth, the watering holes in this remote area are far better than you are entitled to expect. The Stiperstones Inn welcomes everyone and serves food and good beer all day. Its lack of competition has not made it uncaring, like some rural pubs I could mention. And The Bog Centre, with its homemade cakes and local crafts, is surely a model for the Big Society.

The photograph shows Shelve Pool. It is not, as I imagined, a remnant of lead mining, but was dug in the 17th century as a fish pool by the More family. It can be reached only on foot, which makes the walker feel comfortably smug.

Shropshire buses in 1967

Before my New York interlude I was working through my summer holiday for you on this blog. I had got as far as White Grit on the way to The Bog and the Stiperstones Inn.

Soon I will resume that journey, but in the mean time a reader - who knows what I like - has kindly sent me an article from an issue of the magazine Buses Extra (published around 1981) which recalls a two-day wander around Shropshire that the author, Tony Moyes, took in 1967.

Discussing the route along the main road from Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle, Moyes writes:

For the first eight miles through pleasant lowland countryside, the route was accompanied by three others: most importantly Midland Red's hourly, almost suburban offering along the A488 as far as Plox Green, beyond Minsterley. Indeed, and S14 was at Plox Green as we passed.

Secondly, A.J. Evans' Minsterley Motors' thinnish service would head off southwards from Plox Green into the hills, through the waste from the Snailbeach lead mines whose white tips could be seen glinting from the main road; then it would corkscrew high up into the tor-crested Stiperstones to a terminus at The Bog, as the blind on its OB coach would have it.

Thirdly, though diving off in a loop to serve the hamlet of Asterley on the way, Lewis of Pennerley's SB coach would then head south west from Minsterley to incorporate remote Rorrington and Priestweston on its four sorties per week to Churchstoke.

Sheer poetry.

These days the only company left is Minsterley Motors, which runs the Bishop's Castle to Shrewsbury service. But it still possible to reach remote places like Pennerley, Shelve and Bentlawnt if you arm yourself with a timetable.

You can even get to The Bog, where this photograph was taken a couple of hours after I was at White Grit.