Little Wenlock is a rural parish stretching from the western fringe of the Telford conurbation to the Wrekin hill and the northern rim of Ironbridge Gorge (Map 1).
It is bounded to the north by the M54 motorway and the parishes of Wrockwardine and Wellington. It shares responsibility for the Wrekin to the west with the parish of Eaton Constantine. To the south lie the Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale parishes of the Gorge and Buildwas, and to the east the more suburban parishes of Lawley & Overdale and Dawley Hamlets.
The present parish includes sections of the previous Wellington Urban and Wellington Rural parishes, incorporated as part of the 1974 local government boundary revisions.
The population of some 550 is concentrated into two main settlements - the villages of Little Wenlock and New Works - with small groups of houses at Huntington, Coalmoor, Arleston Hill, Little Worth, the Steeraway, Willowmoor, Spout Lane and the Moors.
The Bronze Age burial mounds at Willowmoor and Iron Age hill fort on the Wrekin are the earliest evidence of human activity in the parish.
Little Wenlock derives its name from the fact that the settlement was originally an outlying estate of the religious foundation at Much Wenlock (perhaps from the Celtic ëgwyn-loch' meaning white place or monastery).
In the Domesday Book (1086) Little Wenlock is described as a manor with three hides (around 500 acres) of arable land and woods for fattening pigs and hunting. It bordered the Royal Forest of the Wrekin, one boundary of which may still be preserved in the line of New Works Lane.
The parish of Little Wenlock was included in the new Borough of Wenlock, incorporated in 1468. By the beginning of the 16th Century there were 16 tenements and a mill in the main settlement with a further four tenements at Huntington.
The manor of Little Wenlock developed more fully after the dissolution of the monasteries. Following the closure of Wenlock Priory in 1540, Little Wenlock was acquired by the Hayward family. In the 17th Century it was taken over by the Foresters of Watling Street (Wellington), descendants of Hugh le Forester, the local 12th Century protector of the Royal Forest.
Although the coal outcrops of the district are known to have been utilised by the Romans and lime-burning was recorded locally as early as the 13th Century, the mineral wealth of the parish was only really exploited from the 17th Century. Ironstone and coal-working were in existence in the 1680s; coal from local pits fuelled the Darby furnaces at Coalbrookdale in the 18th Century; three limeworks operated in the parish into the 19th Century; one of the earliest railways in the country ran from Little Wenlock to Strethill in 1728; and basalt was quarried along the Lydebrook as recently as the last Century.
Opencast mining of coal and fireclay developed on a large scale during and after the Second World War. Pits at the Shortwood, New Works finally closed in 1970, by which time a new phase of opencasting had started, drawing to a close only from the mid-1990s.
Although it has seen considerable industrial activity in the past, little of this is immediately evident in the peaceful countryside of the parish, which combines mixed farmland with a relatively high proportion of diverse, species-rich woodland.
Including, as it does, the bulk of the Wrekin itself as well as the Ercall in the north and west, and the slopes of Ironbridge Gorge above Buildwas to the south, more than a third of the land area of the parish is wooded. Much of this woodland has particular value as a prime example of post-industrial natural regeneration. Indeed, large tracts of it are classed as ancient semi-natural woodland of a notably high conservation status.
The importance of this landscape is underlined by the inclusion of the entire north western quarter of the parish in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The thin finger of land that the AONB is in this part of the county and its close proximity to the urban area of Telford makes it especially vulnerable and valuable. The entire parish is included within the AONB Advisory Plan Area.
The value of much of the wooded area in the north and south of the parish, as well as isolated woods with fields, brooks and quarries throughout, is made greater by the fact that large areas of the original post-industrial landscape have been completely lost through widespread opencast coal mining in the past 50 years.
In addition to the AONB and ancient woodlands, the parish contains a number of recognised areas of special conservation and historical importance, including Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Wildlife Sites, Nature Reserves and Ancient Monuments. These are described in more detail in Section 2:10 with their locations shown in Maps 2-6.
The mixed nature of the farmland, interspersed by woodland and a large number of thick hedgerows and green lanes, not to mention several areas of open water and brooks, creates an excellent habitat for animals and birds. All the more so for the quietness and relative inaccessibility of some of the more valuable areas of land.
Several recent open cast mining sites have been very poorly reclaimed, reducing the land's potential contribution to the flora and fauna of the parish.
No trunk routes or A roads pass through the parish, which is almost exclusively served by narrow country lanes with sharp bends, steep hills and limited visibility.
The parish contains one of the highest numbers of public rights of way in the Telford & Wrekin area - a total of 74 separate paths, of which seven are Roads Used as Public Paths (RUPPs) and four are bridleways.
In addition to two long-distance footpaths - the Shropshire Way and Hutchison Way - the Much Wenlock loop of the National By-way heritage cycle route also passes through the parish.
The main current rights of way are detailed in Map 7.
Over the centuries, the settlements of the parish have changed considerably, reflecting changes in local industry and employment.
A church built to serve the original settlement of Little Wenlock was probably in existence by the late 12th Century; the list of incumbents goes back to 1260. The original chancel and north aisle of the present building are obviously medieval in origin. The church was enlarged in 1822 and 1875/76 to accommodate a substantial increase in the population.
The oldest surviving domestic building in Little Wenlock village (Rose Cottage) dates from the late 15th Century. A fine group of buildings (including the Old Hall, Stone House and Manor House) reflect the development of the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. Home Farm, the original workhouse (Little Worth), the school (Church Lane) and the parish rooms (Wenboro Cottage) date from the 18th and 19th Century agricultural and mineral exploitation of the parish. In the early 19th Century there were a total of five public houses in the village alone.
An area of Huntington Heath was already known as New Works by the early 18th Century, with the present settlement developing from a group of squatters cottages associated with the local mineral workings.
Individual farmhouses across the parish (Upper and Lower Huntington Farms, Upper and Lower Coalmoor Farms, Steeraway Farm, Willowmoor Farm, Wrekin Farm, Gibbons Farm, Spout Lane Farm, Moors Farm and Leasowes Farm) mainly date from the 17th and 18th Centuries. As recently as the 1950s the parish supported 24 working farms.
The majority of houses in Little Wenlock village are of 20th Century construction, as are those in most of the rest of the parish.
There are currently a total of 221 houses in the parish - 135 in Little Wenlock, 54 in New Works and 32 in the outlying settlements. Of these over 80% are detached, and under 20% semi-detached or terraced. The majority of the houses are relatively large, with half having four or more bedrooms, a third three bedrooms and only around 10% two bedrooms or less.
Not surprisingly, given the location and relative size of properties, more than 60% of them are Council Tax rated Band D or above. This compares with around 20% in the Borough as a whole.
The balance between owned and rented properties is approximately 90:10, with the overwhelming majority of houses having central heating and mains drainage.
While mains gas supplies are available in New Works, the lack of gas means most central heating in Little Wenlock is oil-fired, although a number of properties have electric heating systems or LPG.
Apart from six working farms and a further agricultural holding converted to a contracting business there are less than 10 business premises in the parish.
Of the 550 people living in the parish (estimated from the 1998 Population survey) 66% are of working age, 18% are under 15 years of age and 16% are pensioners.
The children are almost equally divided between the 0-4, 5-9 and 10-14 age groups; the working age population is skewed in favour of the over 40s; and there are more pensioners in the 60-70 age group than in the over 70s (Figure 1).
The proportion of males to females in each age group is very similar. While the proportion of working age people is identical to that of Telford & Wrekin as a whole, the parish contains a relatively higher proportion of pensioners and lower proportion of children under 15 than the Borough.
The average household size is 2.72, with around a third of households having three or more people, more than half two people and approximately one in 10 just a single person.
Employment opportunities within the parish are limited to the working farms, the agricultural and industrial contractor, several small building and haulage businesses, two golf courses, several B&Bs, a pub/restaurant and a landfill site.
Reflecting both the lack of employers in the parish itself and the proximity of Telford and Wolverhampton, the majority of employed people work in or beyond the Telford & Wrekin area rather than within the parish.
Of the working age population, the majority (60%) are employed full time, with 20% self employed and 10% in part-time employment. A sizeable minority of the employed people (around 10%) work from home.
Little Wenlock is the only settlement in the parish to have community facilities. The village school closed in the early 1960s and the shop and post office in the late 1980's. A pub/restaurant (the Huntsman) remains, together with St Lawrence Church (Church of England) and a village hall (rebuilt in 2002 courtesy of substantial grants from the National Lottery Community Fund and Onyx Landfill Trust).
Little Wenlock village also has a playing field with a small football pitch and hard surface tennis court with multi-sport play wall plus a small amount of out-dated children's play equipment.
A bottle bank is located at the Huntsman pub and paper and cans banks at the village hall.
As might be expected in a rural area with limited facilities, car ownership is relatively high, at an average 1.8 cars per household. Only a minority of households (less than 5%) have no car, 30% have one car and two thirds have two or more cars.
Bus services have declined substantially over the years to such an extent that only Little Wenlock village is currently served; and even then by just three non-school buses to and from the village each week.
This, and the large proportion of residents working outside the parish, means that the significant number of families with only a single car can suffer serious transport difficulties during the working week.
Despite the lack of employment and facilities, an excellent sense of community has been preserved throughout the parish. A number of active community organisations and groups continue to thrive, including the Parochial Church Council, the Village Hall and Playing Field Committee, and the Women's Institute. Less formally, a gardening club, indoor bowls club and tennis club organise regular activities in which young and old alike participate. Together with the community organisations, these clubs also run a large number of social and fund-raising events throughout the year, involving large sections of the community.
The majority of open land in the parish is devoted to mixed farming. It comprises grassland, forage crops for livestock feeding (primarily maize) and some arable cropping (cereals, sugarbeet and potatoes). With such a large proportion of the land previously opencasted for coal, much is of rather intermediate agricultural quality with particularly poor drainage.
The substantial area of tree cover is primarily mixed deciduous woodland which has regenerated on sites of old industrial activity. The bulk of it is not commercially exploited, although relatively large numbers of game birds are reared within it for local shoots.
The legacy of old industrial activity is evident in several abandoned stone and lime quarries, most of which are in an advanced state of natural regeneration. Others have formed pools and bodies of open water, the largest of which have been stocked for coarse fishing.
More recent opencast coal mining has created a number of voids which have been exploited for waste disposal over the past 50 years. A single landfill site continues to operate in the last remaining void (Dog in the Lane). This has an anticipated lifetime of a further 4-5 years, after which it will be reclaimed to a mixture of agricultural land and amenity woodland.
Relatively large areas of the woodland within the parish are extensively used for public access by walkers, cyclists and horse-riders.
Recreational land use includes two golf courses - the long-established private Wrekin Golf Club abutting the Ercall on the northern edge of the parish, and the newly-created public Horsehay Golf Centre on reclaimed opencast land on its eastern fringe.
With the exception of the landfill site, there is no longer any industrial activity within the parish. Almost uniquely in the Borough of Telford and Wrekin, this and the complete absence of major roads ensures it remains a tranquil and relatively unspoilt rural area.
The parish contains a relatively large number of designated nationally and locally important areas and sites of landscape, wildlife and historical value, together with many listed buildings. The locations of the main environmental features are identified in Maps 2-5.
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
The Wrekin and adjoining Ercall hills, together with Gibbons Coppice, Wenlock Wood, Maddocks Hill, Limekiln Wood, Black Hayes and Birch Coppice on the edge of New Works are included within the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (Map 2). The whole parish is, further, included within the AONB Advisory Plan, recognising the importance that the setting plays in preserving the Area itself.
Sites of Special Scientific Interest
The parish contains three SSSIs - the Wrekin, the Ercall and Lydebrook Dingle (Map 3).
The prominent ridge that is the Wrekin and Ercall has a combination of geological and biological importance that justifies its designation as a SSSI. The deciduous woodland flora varies with the underlying geology and levels of drainage. Sessile oak dominates on the thin acid soils overlying the Wrekin Quartzite, accompanied by holly, downy birch and rowan. The ground flora includes wavy hair-grass, heather, bilberry, creeping soft-grass and the uncommon climbing fumitory.
Oak and hazel occur on the more fertile soils whilst ash and wych elm are found on the damper, richer, less acidic land. Where the ground is permanently wet alder dominates. In the more fertile areas ransoms, yellow archangel, woodruff, dog's mercury and sanicle make up the ground flora.
Towards the summit of the Wrekin there are areas of heather and acidic grassland with wavy hair-grass, early hair-grass, sheep's sorrel and heath bedstraw. The bird population includes sparrowhaw; woodcock; all three woodpeckers; seven species of warbler; redstart; and, pied flycatchers.
The Wrekin ridge provides the best and most varied exposures of Uriconian rocks in England and is of great historical importance as the place where the uncomformable relationship between the Uriconian and Cambrian and the volcanic nature of the Uriconian were first demonstrated.
Lydebrook Dingle is a narrow, steep-sided, wooded dingle on coal measures and basalt, through which flows the Lyde Brook, a tributary of the Severn. It is valuable as one of the best examples of ancient, relatively undisturbed woodland in this part of Shropshire.
Lower down it merges into the equally valuable Loamhole Dingle - originally a source of loam for the Iron foundries of Coalbrookdale - which emerges by the Museum of Iron and Abraham Darby's first furnace.
The woodland vegetation consists of three distinct stand types - ash and wych elm; oak and birch; and alder - depending upon the underlying geology.
The oak/birch stands are characterised by a flora of abundant great woodrush, wavy hair-grass and bilberry. The areas of ash/wych elm (the latter badly affected by Dutch elm disease) have dog's mercury, tufted hair-grass and woodruff. The alder stands have pendulous sedge and giant horsetail together with opposite-leaved golden saxifrage.
The lime-rich water from the springs along the valley sides have caused the accumulation of large deposits of tufa. Other particularly interesting plants in the Dingle include uncommon species like wood barley, wood horsetail and the moss Hookeria lucens. Small-leaved lime, yew and field maple trees are present too.
Nature Reserves
The Wrekin is also designated as a Telford and Wrekin Council Nature Reserve, while the Ercall is a Nature Reserve run by the Shropshire Wildlife Trust. (Map 4).
The other official Nature Reserve in the parish is Limekiln and Black Hayes Wood which is a extensive area of mixed ash and hazel woodlands on alkaline soils with particularly rich ground flora and grassland around old limekilns.
Wildlife Sites
The entire area surrounding the Wrekin nature reserve from Wrekin Farm at Cluddley to the north, including Neves Castle to the south west, Morrells Wood, Gibbons Coppice and Wrekin Farm to the south is also designated as a Wildlife Site (Map 5).
This is effectively a buffer area around the Nature Reserve which, in part, reflects the habitats found within the SSSI. Several of the woodlands are on the Ancient Woodlands Register.
Limekiln Wood and Black Hayes - including the bulk of Maddocks Hill quarry is a Wildlife Site too. The disused quarry with some geologically interesting exposures was previously a SSSI but remains on the Wildlife Site register pending re-assessment.
The two further Wildlife Sites in the parish are Marmers Covert (on Spout Lane) and the north western arm of Lydebrook Dingle stretching towards Little Worth.
Marmers Covert is an area of scrub (primarily hazel, wych elm, hawthorn and elder) which is very bare below with patches of common nettle. It also has areas of open, less dense scrub with much silver birch and dog rose which is grassy below and grazed. There are small tufa formations.
The arm of Lydebrook Dingle represents a species-rich continuation of the SSSI considered worthy of Wildlife Site status.
Ancient Monuments
The Wrekin has long been designated an Ancient Monument as one of relatively few local examples of a large, prominent hill fort. It has evidence of domestic Iron Age occupation over several hundred years up to the 1st Century AD.
More recently English Heritage has also designated an area of historic coal mining remains to the north and north west of New Works village (primarily New Works Wood) as an Ancient Monument (Map 6).
This is designed to preserve an area which has been worked for coal intensively but on a relatively small scale over a period of at least 500 years as a representation of the coal industry's development up to the 20th Century.
Other Areas of Historical Interest
Extensive opencast mining has destroyed most of the unprotected historic features of the landscape to the north and east of the parish.
One particularly interesting area, however, remains on the eastern slope of Little Wenlock village at Spread Eagles (Map 6). A field survey of this site identifies three bell-pit mounds likely to be survivors of late 17th to mid-18th century mining and suggests that it is probably the last place in the parish in which remains of the 1728 Little Wenlock to Strethill timber railway may be found.
Listed Buildings
There are a total of 15 listed buildings in the parish, as follows: