Weald Moors

The River Strine, here south of Cherrington, drains part of the Weald Moors.

The Weald Moors are located in the ceremonial county of Shropshire north of Telford, stretching from north and west of the town of Newport towards Wellington, with the village of Kynnersley lying roughly at their centre.

Etymology

Although the Weald Moors are now largely agricultural land, they were among the last parts of the area to come into cultivation. The word weald (which elsewhere means open uplands or waste) in this context means "wild" or uncultivated: the "wild moors". A moor, in Shropshire usage, was a marsh.

History

The historic marsh or fenland character of the area was formed after the last Ice Age, when it was a part of the glacial Lake Newport, connected to the larger Lake Lapworth. An underlying accumulation of peat led to waterlogged land, with the result that by the mediaeval period larger settlements had only developed on its edges. Most of the area became classified as "waste", but between the mid 16th and mid 17th centuries, there were a series of lawsuits as attempts were made to drain and enclose sections of the moor, leading to disputes over parish and township boundaries. For example, in 1583 Thomas Cherrington took a neighbouring landowner, Thurston Woodcock, to court alleging that Woodcock had employed "diverse desperate and lewd persons" to dig a drainage ditch across land claimed by Cherrington. Woodcock responded by arguing that the land was waste, and part of Meeson Moor.

A late 17th century parson of Kinnardsey (Kynnersley), the Rev. George Plaxton, wrote an account of the Weald Moors in 1673 in which he described much of it as still an impassable bog, and suggested that the entire area had until recently been a marsh other than those hamlets having the Anglo-Saxon word ey ("island") in their names. Plaxton was informed by elderly residents of the parish that the Moors had formerly been so overgrown with willow, alder and other marshland trees that they had customarily hung bells around the necks of their cattle to prevent losing them. Peat digging was carried out on parts of the Moors, and the inhabitants of villages on the edge of the area, such as Wrockwardine, used some areas as summer pasture under historic rights of common.

In 1801 an Enclosure act, the "Wildmoors Inclosure Act", was passed, enabling local landowners (principally the Leveson-Gower family) to begin further drainage works. Although during the early 19th century most of the area was reclaimed as farmland through the use of drainage ditches, some of the land remained suitable only as sheep pasture, being too boggy to bear cattle or grow other crops. Settlements remained small and scattered, and even now, the villages on the Moors are relatively small and isolated, although the northern suburbs of Telford are encroaching onto the area. The Weald Moors are still referenced in the names of the villages Eyton upon the Weald Moors and Preston upon the Weald Moors.

The Birch Moors, near the hamlet of Adeney.

Some parts of the moors are known by local names, such as the Tibberton and Cherrington Moors near the villages of the same name. Others are the Birch Moors around Adeney, the Rough or Preston Moors north of Preston, the Dayhouse Moor near Rodway, and the Sleap Moor east of Crudgington.

The Shrewsbury Canal (a branch of the Shropshire Union Canal) was constructed across the area, but is today derelict.

Wildlife

The farmland of the Weald Moors is a habitat for many birds which have now become rare elsewhere, such as the Barn Owl and Lapwing. In recent years there has been some reflooding and restoration of fenland habitat in the area of Kynnersley.