Ancestral Places - Shropshire, how wonderful!

Wenlock Priory

I've written previously about my paternal 2 x great grandmother, Clara Williams and my quest to find her father.  I've had much more success locating Clara's maternal family who were from Shropshire. I was lucky to spend a week in Shropshire in July 2017 and was able to visit several of my ancestral villages.   

Charles Plimmer, my 6 x great grandfather was baptised 7 February 1764 at Holy Trinity Church, Much Wenlock.  Charles was the eldest child of seven known children of Thomas Plimmer and his wife, Rebecca Jones. Much Wenlock is a market town and parish in Shropshire, situated between Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth.  

Much Wenlock contains 104 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England, including many early 15th century timber framed buildings, the Guildhall and Wenlock Priory. 

Much Wenlock township (above) Wenlock Priory (below)

To the modern day visitor it is a lovely well maintained historic town, however a visit to the local museum revealed that at the beginning of the 19th century Much Wenlock was described as a small poor town full of unsanitary cottages. Few local children attended school and one of the few pastimes, apart from the occasional horse race meeting, was the local alehouse. In 1797 the Universal British Directory described the town as “...an ill-built dirty little place, consisting only of two ordinary streets.”

Over the course of the century the town’s population had almost doubled as new quarries opened to provide lime to the Ironworks in the Severn Gorge. Many families lived in badly built single room cottages on the edge of the town. Sanitation was poor with an open drain (known as Schitte Brook) running through the town’s main street carrying “...all manner of scum and rottenness”. Even the local doctor succumbed to typhoid in 1831.

The Victorian period saw greater prosperity for the town as it benefitted from the Industrial Revolution. A thriving market town developed and while chiefly agricultural there was a considerable trade in malting and tanning and in lime and limestone. 

Much Wenlock 

The Wenlock Olympian Games established by William Penny Brookes in 1850 are centred in the town. Brookes is credited as a founding father of the modern Olympic Games, and one of the London 2012 Summer Olympics mascots was named Wenlock after the town.

Much Wenlock Museum and Olympic Mascot, Wenlock

Charles Plimmer married Adah Harris on 9 February 1784 at St John the Baptist, Ditton Priors, a village located about 13 kilometres south of Much Wenlock. Adah was baptised in the same church on 9 July 1764, the daughter of John Harris and Anne Smallman. 

Ditton Priors

Charles and Adah's youngest son, John was my 5 x great grandfather. He was born at Netchwood and baptised at St John the Baptist, Ditton Priors on 15 July 1792. There are really no landmarks at Netchwood despite a water tower that is being converted to a rather bizarre family home. 

John became an Edge Tool Maker and married Hannah Smith on 29 September 1813 at St. Bartholomew, Wednesbury, Staffordshire and their seven children were born there between 1816 and 1830. By 1841 they had moved to Birmingham where John died in 1876, aged 84 years.    

While we were in Shropshire we stayed at the lovely Cottage Farm, in the small hamlet of Church Preen. 

Cottage Farm, Church Preen

We also managed a few tourist stops to Ironbridge Gorge, the market town of Ludlow and Wroxeter - the site of Viroconium Cornoviorum, the fourth largest city in Roman Britain.

Clockwise: River Severn, Ironbridge, Wroxeter, Ludlow Castle  

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Do you recall a TV ad for Moccona coffee?  The ad was out from about 1997 for several years. At the time, despite many years of family history research, I had no idea of any connections with Shropshire, but nowadays I can't help think of it when I think of my Shropshire ancestors!