Give this town a medal! Everyone wins on a visit to the Shropshire spot that inspired the fashionable Olympics
- Rob Crossan visits Much Wenlock where, within the 1850s, a neighborhood doctor established the Olympian Games
- This event, which featured athletics and greased pig catching, is what inspired the fashionable Olympic Games
- Rob explores Wenlock Priory, which was sacked by Henry VIII, and stops for cottage pie on the Gaskell Arms
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‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble’ wrote A. E. Housman in his epic poetic tale A Shropshire Lad. Meandering along a slim footpath, beech and maple trees form a cover against the sunshine.
Those self same woods, 126 years on, don’t appear like they’re in any immediate peril.
An immense hazel tree has parted its lower branches to present me sight of poppy fields glinting crimson red in the space.
Medieval marvel: Rob Crossan visits the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock, pictured. Above is the town’s Holy Trinity Church and the Guildhall
Above is a bird’s eye view of the trees of Wenlock Edge. Walking the path to Much Wenlock, Rob finds that ‘beech and maple trees form a cover against the sunshine’
The squat steeple of the village of Harley in the center distance is the tallest thing on the horizon, while the loudest thing on my walk is the groaning squeak of the kissing gates I wriggle through to make my way back to the road which winds down for a mile or so to the town of Much Wenlock.
The narrow streets, lined with chocolate-box cottages and Tudor beams, lead me to Gaskell Field, an unimposing expanse of flat grass where a game of cricket is going down. It’s only an indication at the sting of the footpath that tells me the incredible back story. For it was here, within the 1850s, that local doctor William Penny Brookes established the Olympian Games.
Inspired by excavations of ancient Olympic sites in Greece, Brookes began a tournament that included athletics in addition to knitting and greased pig catching. It still runs every year, though pigs and needles at the moment are noticeably absent. The event inspired the fashionable Olympic Games (Wenlock was the 2012 Games mascot).
Above is the birthplace of William Penny Brookes who, within the 1850s, established the town’s Olympian Games, a tournament that included athletics in addition to knitting and greased pig catching. The event inspired the fashionable Olympic Games
On the sting of town, I prowl round Wenlock Priory, sacked by Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monasteries. Ruins show what an immense retreat this once was for the 80 or so monks of the Cluniac order. Straining my neck, I can just see over the Priory partitions to glimpse the privately owned Wenlock Abbey. This was where Thomas Hardy and Henry James stayed on visits to the town, the latter using it as inspiration for his ghost story The Turn Of The Screw.
My room is in a converted barn adjoining a pottery workshop and pottery shop. Co-owner Mike Fletcher is one among the last craftsmen in Britain to make flagon jugs, while Shelagh serves huge full English breakfasts amid the shelves of ceramics.
The town’s most garlanded bar and restaurant, The Raven, gave the look of an important stop-off, but on a fast afternoon visit I used to be met with haughty staff and a soundtrack of Shania Twain at 1,000,000 decibels from the kitchen.
Rob prowls around Wenlock Priory (above), which was sacked by Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monasteries
It sent me fleeing to the pubs; all of that are low-ceilinged, beamed affairs filled with nooks, crannies, fireplaces and great food: a ‘smokie’ of haddock, cheese and cream at The Talbot, homemade Scotch eggs in The George And Dragon and, better of all, a cottage pie in a seemingly bottomless tin tray on the Gaskell Arms.
Strolling past the medieval Guildhall the following morning, I spot a set of iron manacles dangling from a beam. This was the town’s ‘whipping post’ in the times when the constructing was also the courthouse and when justice was swift, merciless and way more painful.
The town’s unique Games aren’t staged again until next summer. But within the difficult size of pub meal portions and strenuousness of the uphill climbing along the Edge, the Olympian spirit seems to continue to exist on this corner of Shropshire day-after-day.
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