Community Land Trust launches appeal to buy White Grit Meadows

Two sites owned by the Middle Marches Community Land Trust are included in the new Stiperstones Landscape NNR. Now the trust is appealing for funds to help it buy a third:

Help us acquire five acres of botanically rich meadow at the foot of Corndon Hill, where plants such as Heath Spotted Orchid, Dyers Greenweed and Devil’s Bit Scabious abound.

The area we wish to buy consists of 4 small fields totalling 5 acres, bounded by tall, thick hedgerows, with some small stands of Alder and Goat Willow trees.

The site is situated at the foot of Corndon Hill just inside Wales at an altitude of 1000 feet (300 metres) in the hamlet of White Grit.

White Grit is a small, quiet, scattered village directly on the border with Shropshire. The nearby village of Priest Weston, despite being in England, actually lies to the west of White Grit. To the east is the A488 road, and the nearest town is Bishop’s Castle.

The mining community which thrived here in the 19th century gave rise to this area of smallholdings and a series of species-rich meadows, some of which remain today. 

Read more on the Middle Marches Community Land Trust site, where this photo comes from.

There is a mosque in Craven Arms

There is an Orthodox monastery beneath the Stiperstones. There is a Buddhist retreat in White Grit.

Now, it transpires, there is a mosque in Craven Arms.

Its imam, Sohayb Peerbhai, told the Shropshire Star:

"We serve a large portion of the Shropshire hills. We have members of our community that come from Church Stretton, Ludlow, Knighton, Clee Hill, Cleobury Mortimer and Hereford, as there’s no mosque in Hereford."

Mitchell's Fold: A Shropshire stone circle

Mitchell's Fold is a Bronze Age stone circle, found to the west of the the Stiperstones close to the villages of Priest Weston and White Grit.

It is in Shropshire, but hard against the Welsh border.

I once attempted to fall asleep within it, reasoning that would bring me prophetic dreams, but failed.

In which Priest Weston is entirely surrounded by potholes

There's worrying news of my favourite part of Shropshire.in the Shropshire Star:

People living in a rural village on the Welsh border have demanded immediate county council action after being threatened with being effectively cut off by unfinished roadworks. 

At a meeting held at Priest Weston Village Hall locals told of their frustrations concerning the roads’ poor maintenance and the damage it was causing to their cars. 

Among those present was the school bus driver and the primary school minibus driver - both of whose routes have been affected by the lack of work to remedy the road surfaces.

The meeting was organised by the area's Liberal Democrat county councillor Heather Kidd.

She told the Star:

“Despite a sustained campaign by residents and myself we still have not had any meaningful repairs done to the dreadful road surfaces on all four roads leading out of the village.”

There is a mention too for The Miners Arms, which is one of the pubs in this part of the world where local resident Ronnie Lane would sometimes turn up with a few friends and give an unadvertised performance.

This is not the first time Priest Weston has had such problems. Back in 2007 the collapse of an old mine shaft led to the closure of the road to White Grit.

That incident led to this piece of whimsy from me in the New Statesman:

Last year, down the road in a field near White Grit, an old mineshaft collapsed. It left a hole 50ft across and 20ft deep. (You will find White Grit on the map near The Bog ­- the village names are delightful round here.) 

The hole turned out to be right on the border between Shropshire and Powys and neither council was keen to take responsibility for it. Argument raged over whether it was in England or Wales. And until the matter was settled I had a profitable side-line selling bootleg liquor from a stall in the field.

Anyway, as the Coalition and Conservative governments' cuts to local authority spending bite every more deeply, I fear there will be many more cases like Priest Weston.

Six of the Best 799

"Are they hiding something, or is it simply that they are so confused and divided by the outcome of the referendum that they daren’t doubt its legality?" Paul Tyler asks why Labour is silent on the possibility that Russia interfered with the 2016 EU referendum.

Judges in Canada are sentencing youth offenders to chess with promising results, report Monique Sedgwick, Jeffrey MacCormack and Lance Grigg. Chess joke: After 37 consecutive Berlins they break down in tears and promise to go straight.

Talking of Chess, Sarah Hurst looks at the Kremlin's plans to maintain control of world chess.

Ian Visits on the revival of London's pedways.

"The character of Dido was the embodiment of many of that small girl’s dreams, as, when Joan grew up to be a writer she was able to give her all the wonderful adventures she had imagined for herself, and encourage others to be bold and follow their dreams as well." Her daughter Lizza Aiken celebrates Joan Aiken's heroine Dido Twite.

Paul Steele takes us on a walk through some of this blog's sacred places, including White Grit and the Stiperstones Inn.

A Buddhist retreat in White Grit

I once discovered that there is an Orthodox monastery in the shadow of the Stiperstones. The other evening I arguably topped that by turning up a Buddhist retreat in White Grit.

It doesn't just have a strange name: White Grit is a strange settlement. Originally a lead-mining village, it now consists largely of modern bungalows that must have been put up long after the mine closed.

I was once bitten by a Jack Russell in White Grit. As the village is just over the Powys border, I complained about it to the then MP for Montgomeryshire, Lembit Opik, when I met him at the Liberal Democrat Conference.

His reply ("You're fucking mad, you are.") is not to be found in the ALDC guide to casework.

On a happier note, Ronnie Lane's farm is just up the road.

Advent Calendar 1: White Grit engine house

In my day we didn't get chocolates in our Advent calendars. We got little pictures - perhaps a drum or a ball - with the highlight being the Holy Family behind the final (double) window,

And we were happy.

Inspired by that I am doing a Advent calendar with my own photographs this year. Some will have appeared here before, but I shall also use it as a chance to present new ones.

We begin with an old favourites - I just wish I had taken it as a landscape shot.

It shows the ruined engine house at White Grit in Shropshire, with the crest of Bromlow Callow behind it in the distance.

Unexploded pre-WW2 bomb found at White Grit

The chief hazard of walking in my favourite part of Shropshire is tumbling down an old shaft left over from the 19th-century lead mining industry, but there are others.

I was once bitten by a Jack Russell in White Grit. When I complained about this to Lembit Opik (the village is just over the border in the Montgomeryshire constituency) he was not helpful.

Now, reports the Shropshire Star, two walkers and a dalmatian from White Grit have found an unexploded mortar bomb dating from before the Second World War on nearby common land:

Constable David Harte, of West Mercia Police, said: “I can confirm that on Sunday (May 31) at approximately 11.30am, West Mercia Police were alerted by a member of the public who had discovered an unexploded device within the marshland area of Corndon, White Grit. 

“In view of public safety, the area was cordoned off to allow the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit to attended the scene and destroy the believed pre-World War Two device.   

“Had it not been for a member of the public discovering the device, this could have potentially caused serious harm to the community.

If you survive your walk in this area, do call in for tea and cake at The Bog.

No gritting for White Grit

Heather Kidd, the Liberal Democrat councillor for Chirbury and Worthen, has been making waves in the Shropshire Star.

According to the paper, she has:

accused the authority of overlooking the county's hillier rural parts where the recent snow had lingered once the ice had melted in towns. 

She said in particular the village of Priest Weston had not seen a school bus for three weeks due to a combination of roadworks and a lack of arrangements to grit the roads. ... 

Councillor Kidd said: "The recent blast of wintery weather came and went quite quickly for most of the county. 

"But for much of the Bentlawnt, White Grit and Priest Weston area the snow and ice lingered much longer. 

"Unfortunately the council seemed to have forgotten much of the area when it came to gritting."

I knew this photograph would come in useful one day.

Jonathan Meades on how writers invent places not describe them

Jonathan Meades reviews Nairn's London for the Literary Review and in the course of doing so says something profound about topographical writing:

Do not feel tempted to go and see for yourself. He did his work at a desk, not when he was shuffling about, all eyes and raw antennae, in his slept-in suit. The description - a distillation of a specific perception - is invariably superior to the place which it evokes, which it invents. 

The compact is, or ought to be, between writer and reader, not between place and tourist. Only if we suffer a profoundly defective misunderstanding of places as subject or as catalysts of mood or as topographical correlatives do we hurry to the Teme Valley when we read Housman or to the Marshwood Vale when we read Household.

My own Shropshire is made up from scraps of Malcolm Saville and other writers, my own visits over 25 years, friendships and much else.

And I once heard one of Saville's sons way that when he wrote Seven White Gates, in some ways the most Shropshire of all his books, he had not visited the Stiperstones. He took all that books remarkable atmosphere from Mary Webb.

So, though I have dragged a surprising number of people up from Snailbeach to see Lords Hill Chapel, you cannot visit my Shropshire.

It is true that I photograph it for you, but the ones I use here are carefully selected. The one above shows the old engine house at White Grit with the unmistakable crest of Bromlow Callow behind it.

The Passing Show: The Life and Music of Ronnie Lane

In the course of reading about Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance I came across this terrific BBC documentary about him.

The programme confirms all the stories about Lane in Shropshire and the earlier material on the Small Faces and the Faces is fascinating too.

I once blogged about Ronnie Lane in Shropshire:

Charlie Hart, a member of Lane's band Slim Chance, remembers hanging out with a "lethal combination of rock and roll A-list - Clapton, Townsend, Small Faces etc. - and Shropshire farmers".

And an article on GoJo Music suggests we can add the Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle to the list of Lane's Shropshire haunts.

But take a look even at the first part of The Passing Show and you will see the sights of the Stiperstones as the charabanc ("a victoriana sharowbold, and this is the fourwheelful of sst sst out the backgrove," as Stanley Unwin would have put it) drives along.

The pub at the very start is the Miners Arms at Priest Weston, at 00:50 you see the Devil's Chair and at 01:02 the tin tabernacle at White Grit, which has been pictured on this blog.

Back in the sixties everyone was getting it together in the country. But to do it in the harsher climate of the seventies, that was something else.

The Congregational Chapel, Minsterley

I went to Minsterley chiefly to photograph its church, but I was also taken with this Congregational Chapel.

The website Shropshire's Nonconformist Chapels (which I highly recommend) describes it as follows:

In 1795 the "chapel house" was licensed for nonconformist worship. A joint church of Independents and Baptists was formed in 1803 which continued until 1833 when they separated, with the Independents building this chapel and the Baptists building the chapel at Lordshill ...

The chapel in Minsterley was built of brick which is now rendered. An upper floor was inserted in the late 19th century to be used as a schoolroom. The chapel was still in use by the Congregational church in 2003.

I shall have to go back to Lordshill chapel and photograph it one day. In the mean time you can see it in the 1950 Powell & Pressburger film Gone to Earth.

This completes the middle Sunday of my holiday, which I have been blogging about since the Iron Church at White Grit.

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.

White Grit engine house

Near the Iron Church at White Grit - and just over the English border - stands these remains.

According to Michael Shaw's The Lead, Copper & Barytes Mines of Shropshire:

White Grit engine house dates from 1783 and was extended and heightened in about 1840 to house a new engine.

These engines were Cornish beam engines, used to drain and provide power to the area's lead mines. The remains at White Grit are the most obvious, as they stand beside the Bishop's Castle to Shrewsbury road.

On the other side of that road stands the former More Arms, where Ronnie Lane and Eric Clapton used to hang out.

And I seem to have got the unmistakable crest of Bromlow Callow into the picture too.

More from Matthew Green

That prince amongst newspapers, the South Shropshire Journal, has more on Matthew Green's decision not to fight Ludlow again for the Lib Dems.

I remember meeting Matthew in the Strangers' Bar at Westminster one evening and swapping Shropshire village names. Here was a man who knew all about The Bog and White Grit.

No one wants White Grit

The Shropshire Star reports:

A family has been forced to flee after a gaping hole opened up in the ground next to their home in Powys.

Concerns have been raised about the structure of the chalet after an old mine shaft collapsed close to an unclassified road between White Grit and Priest Weston, near Montgomery - opening up a hole 50ft across and 20ft deep.

Police have now sealed off the area amid fears of a further collapse. There are old lead and silver mine workings in the area which are thought to date back to the 1800s.

This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with this old mining country, which was once known as "The Land of Desolation". What is rather amusing is that, judging by the report, neither Powys nor Shropshire is keen to claim the hole.

Priest Weston is a pleasant little village with an unspoilt pub, naturally called The Miners Arms. It is in England, but White Grit, which lies to the East but by a quirk of local geography is in Wales, is another matter.

It now consists mainly of modern bungalows - presumably because it was possible to get planning permission there as they replaced old miners' dwellings. It also has a little corrugated iron church of the sort that was generally sent out in flat-pack form to the furthest reaches of the Empire. I doubt the Church of England had much joy here amongst the staunchly Nonconformist miners, many of whom came up from Cornwall when the tin mines began to close.

I was once bitten by a Jack Russell in White Grit. I later complained to Lembit about it, but he seemed singularly unconcerned.