The weighbridge building at Bishop's Castle railway station has been restored

I went to Bishop's Castle today and found it visibly less prosperous than when I was last there eight years ago. But let's concentrate first on something that has improved out of all recognition.

When I first blogged about the plans to restore the weighbridge building that survived at the site of Bishop's Castle station, it looked as it does in the photograph below.

Today I found it restored and acting as the home for the Bishop's Castle Railway Society and some of its relics of the line. You can see it in the photo above.

There is a model of the station site in its heyday - the weighbridge building was at the entrance to it, and there was still a walk from there to the only passenger platform. And there are books for sale.

I bought an irresistible one - The Bishop’s Castle Railways That Never Were by Nicholas Harding -  on all the failed schemes to extend the Bishop's Castle Railway and make it more useful and more commercial. My favourite is the one to extend it southwards to Clun.

Pair of beavers released on the River Clun in Shropshire

BBC News reports:

Beavers have returned to a Shropshire river for the first time in 400 years.

The Severn Rivers Trust introduced a pair to the River Clun in the south of the county on Monday afternoon.

It hopes the pair will have offspring and can help transform the natural environment through their dam building.

The beavers have been released into an enclosure, but the story quotes Joe Pimblett, the chief executive of the Severn Rivers Trust

"If you're a nature lover and you've got an interest in the rural environment this is huge, this could be the precursor to beavers living here naturally in Shropshire."

The Clun rises near the hamlet of Anchor, close to the border with Wales. It flows east through the little town of Clun, before turnings south and joining the Teme just over the Herefordshire border in Leintwardine.

My photo shows the medieval bridge over the River Clun in the town on Clun.

The 10 best Shropshire hills

Just a little Shropshire hill porn while I plan my holidays.

Tory cuts threaten Shropshire's rural buses

Shropshire Lib Dems' shadow lead for communities, culture, leisure and tourism says bus services in the county are under threat because of cuts in government funding.

Nigel Hartin, the councillor for Clun, told the Shropshire Star:

“The central plank to government's 'levelling up' strategy was called the 'Bus Back Better' strategy published last year. It promised £3bn in funding to transform bus services across the country.

"However, a Department of Transport letter recently leaked to the press shows that this pot has now been shrunk by more than 50 per cent by the Treasury to £1.4bn.

"This letter makes clear the lack of funding by saying 'prioritisation is inevitable, given the scale of ambition across the country greatly exceeds the amount'."

He said bids for government money under 'Bus Back Better' are likely to exceed £9bn.

As an earlier post here suggested, if there are cuts in Shropshire's rural services then the 553 from Bishop's Castle to Shrewsbury is unlikely to survive.

Bishop's Castle Town Council declares a climate emergency

The Shropshire Star reports:

Following in the footsteps of other councils across Shropshire including Shrewsbury, Clun and Ludlow, the Bishop's Castle Town Council declared a climate emergency at a meeting this week after a public led campaign.

Going by my experience of Bishop's Castle, the important thing is that they got there before Church Stretton.

A reader adds dismissively: You're just blogging this so you can post another photograph of Bishop's Castle.

Cuts to Shropshire buses - and a better idea from Europe

£450,000 cuts could see Shropshire bus services slashed

says a headline in the Shropshire Star.

Reading the small print, the Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle bus may be cut from five round trips a day to two.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who read a post on this blog two years ago.

And to those who see demand-led services as the future, it is worth noting that:

The Clun Valley Shrewsbury Dial-a-Ride will withdraw its Saturday service.

All very depressing.

But it happens that today I also came across a report from the Foundation for Integrated Transport on Shropshire's rural buses.

It emphasises how inadequate the county's buses are even before this new round of cuts and points to schemes across Europe that integrate rail and bus services in rural areas.

A bus link between Bishop's Castle and the railway station at Craven Arms is one of its recommendations.

Yes, it would cost money, but we cannot go on cutting public transport like this. The Liberal Democrats must make the case for funding services at a reasonable level again.

Broome: The least used station in Shropshire

Broome, a request stop, is the first station out of Craven Arms on the Heart of Wales line. It is also the least used station in Shropshire.

I got off there many years ago so I could walk to Bishop's Castle (or it may have been Clun).

As well as celebrating its rural location, this film has something serious to say about the railway companies' claims about accessibility.

Should South Shropshire be a national park?

The idea that South Shropshire should be a national park seems to be gaining momentum.

The Shropshire Star reports that the man tasked by Michael Gove with look at whether any new parks should be created, thinks so.

Julian Glover, a former speechwriter for David Cameron and the first person to commission me to write for the Guardian, says:

"I know Shropshire very well. 

"I partly grew up in the Shropshire Hills, and they are as beautiful as anywhere in a national park."

Indeed they are. Someone once described them to me as being like the Lake District without all the visitors.

Andy Boddington, the Lib Dem councillor from Ludlow, also supports the idea.

He writes on his blog:

We live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country. We have so much beauty surrounding us that we often forget its there. It is ordinary to us but astonishing to people who come here. 

My view is that national park will be beneficial for South Shropshire. It will promote the economy. But there could be downsides like too many visitors or rising house price. There could be upsides like more affordable housing. More businesses within and around the national park.

And he concludes:

My view is that we should at that point submit a bid for national park status. 

A national park that stretches from Ironbridge to the Mortimer Forest. Embracing the Titterstone Clee, the Long Mynd, the Stiperstones, Bishop’s Castle and Clun.

He urges people in the county to attend a debate organised by the Shropshire Council's Ludlow and Clee local joint committee on 29 November.

I welcome the idea, but I can think at once of a couple of problems that need to be tackled if it is to be a success.

The first is affordable housing. When I discovered the county more than 30 years ago I used to wonder at how cheap houses were. Then the weekending classes discovered the restaurants of Ludlow and everything changed.

Two years ago it was announced that Hope primary school near the Stiperstones was to close. Heather Kidd, the Lib Dem councillor for the ward, saw no alternative because young families cannot could to move to the area - see her comment on that post too.

The second issue is bus services, which being cut in Shropshire just as they are everywhere else.

The Secret Hills shuttle bus that runs at weekends is a shadow of what it was a few years ago, when you could use it to reach Bishop's Castle, Clun and Much Wenlock.

And the bus from Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle is under threat of withdrawal.

I support the idea of giving my favourite landscape national park status, but unless something is done about these and other issues in the area, I am not sure how much it will really achieve.

Ludlow Lib Dem councillor Andy Boddington on the buses

Andy Boddington, the Liberal Democrat councillor for the Ludlow North ward of Shropshire Council, has submitted written evidence to the House of Commons transport select committee's inquiry into the health of the bus market.

His evidence addresses the committee's interest in "how bus services are provided to isolated rural and urban communities and their dependence on services."

It argues that buses are "a social service that promotes wellbeing and should be funded on this basis, not just as a means of getting people from A to B".

Andy writes:

Clun with population approaching 700 people has only two bus services a week, both in the middle of the day. Ditton Priors is a similar size and has no bus services. This is leading to premature ageing of the populations in these settlements as young people leave our smallest towns and villages because they have no access to transport. 

Buses are vital to the wellbeing of our rural communities. In a rural town like Ludlow, buses are a social service acting as a "community centre on wheels". They provide access to shops and medical facilities, and to a lesser extent employment. They are an important part of the social fabric of our town of 11,000 people.

He goes on to give examples from his experiences of life in Ludlow to support his contention that:

If people are isolated in their homes, if they can’t socialise, their wellbeing suffers. Buses make a significant contribution to wellbeing in our area. I have no doubt that the contribution to wellbeing exceeds the annual subsidy of £89,000 for services in Ludlow.  

You can read Andy's full submission to the inquiry on his blog.

Malcolm Saville at Clun Castle in 1947

This aerial photograph of Clun Castle was taken in 1947, which was the same year taht Malcolm Saville sent his young heroes there in The Secret of Grey Walls - an exciting story of sheep rustling:

Ten minutes later the Lone Piners passed down Clun's main street towards Castle Hill. The twins, side by side, and in step, led the way with Mackie at their heels. Peter walked between the two boys wile Jenny danced around the party until David complained that she was making him giddy. 

They climbed the hill, trying to guess where the drawbridge would have been when the castle was manned, until they were actually in the shadow of the mighty walls of the keep. 

From here they could look down over the roofs of the little town in one direction, over the river which curled around three sides of the hill in another, and, when they turned right round, they saw the rolling hills and woods which were all that now remained ot Clun Forest, and in the far distance, the gaunt line of the Black Mountains and the other tumbled hilltops over the Welsh border.

Note that Peter was a girl (Petronella) and David could be a bit of a square.

Lib Dem lifetime achievement award for Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips, the former Liberal Democrat councillor for Bishop's Castle, has received a lifetime achievement award from the West Midlands region of the party.

Its secretary, Kathryn Ball, spells out his achievements:

Peter Phillips first stood for election in 1973 and joined the parish council in 1979. He fought the Bishops Castle (Shropshire) seat 3 times before finally being elected. He toppled the Tories who have never taken it back since 1993. 

Chirbury and Worthen Unitary Division was part of his Shropshire County Council Division and has also remained Lib Dem since his stewardship. 

He served on Shropshire County Council between 1981 and 1985 before spending a period overseas. He continued to send out Focus from the Middle East!! 

On his return he was re-elected to Shropshire County Council in1993. He also served on the former South Shropshire District Council from 1995 until its abolition to make way for the unitary authority in 2009. Peter was then elected to the Unitary Shropshire Council. 

He served as leader of the group and Vice Chairman of both Shropshire County Council and South Shropshire District Council. 

He has served both as Ludlow Constituency chairman and Bishops Castle branch chairman several times. He has been a huge fund raiser for the party locally running jumble sales, table top sales and arranging visits of top Lib Dem Peers and MP’s frequently for press and fundraising. He was single-minded in making sure these things all happened for the good of local PPC’s and Council candidates. 

He has been by far the best member recruiter over the last few years. At one stage Peter recruited enough members to make Bishops Castle and Clun Branch top our membership in Ludlow Constituency – we had 100 members.

I once met Peter in the pub now known as The Bridges at Ratlinghope, but don't seem to have blogged about the experience.

First Clun now Madeley? Wild boar in Shropshire

A wild boar yesterday. Photo by
Thimindu Goonatillake

Important news from the Shropshire Star. Someone believes his garden in Madeley is being dug up by wild boar:

Jan Mckelvey, conservation manager at Shropshire Wildlife Trust, said they have already had confirmed sightings of boar in the Clun Valley, with one recently caught on a camera trap. 

She said the Severn Valley woodland that surrounds Madeley would offer excellent habitat for the boar. 

But she said that the damage caused by boar can be confused with that of a very active badger. 

She has urged people who have actual sightings of wild boar to contact officials at the trust.

You often see very active badgers jogging in Shropshire parks, so she could well be right.

A Shropshire slideshow

Embed from Getty Images

Following Music in Leicester, here is another slideshow using a new Getty Images feature.

The Somme Tunnel at The Bog, Shropshire

The BBC's World War One At Home site suggests there is a mystery about the Somme Tunnel which, as the name suggests, was driven into the side of the Stiperstones in 1915.

Was it a spurious, make-work scheme devised to keep the miners in Shropshire and away from the Western Front?

I think this is unlikely for two reasons.

First, because I have a book with a wartime photograph, taken outside the mine buildings, of the Bog Mines Platoon of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry.

Second, because just about every attempt to find new lodes of lead ore in the Shropshire hills came to nothing in the 20th century. The deposits were rich, but they proved to be quite localised and had been more or less worked out by 1900.

Still, such an approach would be in line with that taken in the county by the clubmen of Clun and Bishop's Castle in the English Civil War.

And mention of The Bog, now an abandoned village, gives me an excuse to recommend again this guest post on its visitor centre by Paul Davis.

Political correctness with bells on

Just another Market Harborough street scene, you will say, but there is a point of interest here.

On St George's Day last year I posted a video of Border morris dancers - "from the English-Welsh border: a simpler, looser, more vigorous style" - at Clun and discussed where their traditional blackened faces came from.

Another Border morris side was in town on Saturday and I noticed that its members had got around this ticklish debate by painting their faces blue - think Avatar or a bunch of Smurfs with a love of accordion music.

Political correctness gone mad? No, but it may be political correctness with bells on.

Shropshire Hills Shuttles 2013

The timetables for this summer's shuttle bus services in the Shropshire hills have been published. These services will run on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays from 4 May to 29 September. You can find maps and timetables on the Shropshire Hills AONB website.

The Long Mynd and Stiperstones service will run this summer, as will the one (new last year) from Church Stretton to Much Wenlock.

The really good news is that a new service will run from Ludlow via Bromfield, Leintwardine, Brampton Bryan, Bucknell, Knighton and Clun to Bishop’s Castle. I am particularly pleased to see these buses reaching Clun again.

Many of these towns will be familiar to people who grew up reading the children's books of Malcolm Saville. Leintwardine appears in The Secret of the Gorge (1958) as Bringewood Chase.

Saville describes it as follows:

The village of Bringewood Chase, on the borders of Hereford and Shropshire, had been there a long time. The straight road running due north after crossing the river was built above the foundations of one made by the Romas of the use of their legions. The church  a white-walled inn, a tiny post office and a few shops all faced the village street.

I don't suppose there are so many facilities there today, but I hope to visit Leintwardine this summer.

The White Horse Inn, Pulverbatch

The Shropshire Hills Shuttle buses were diminished last summer. There was a new service, for Olympic year, from Church Stretton via Acton Scott to Much Wenlock, but the buses no longer served Clun, Craven Arms or Bishop's Castle.

Still, we are promised a service to Ludlow next summer.

I did, of course, make use of the buses while I was in Shropshire. On one Sunday I was able to go into the mines at Snailbeach, have tea at The Bog and still find time for a pint at the White Horse Inn, Pulverbatch.

There were a lot of pub closures in this part of Shropshire a few years ago, but this is one of several to have bucked the national trend and reopened recently. And I can certainly recommend it.

For St George's Day: Morris dancing at Clun

It's St George's Day. And what could be more English than morris dancing?

The blackened faces here, suggests Wikipedia, are either a reminder that morris dancing was originally known as Moorish dancing, a form of disguise adopted by 17th- and 18th-century labourers supplementing their wages with a spot of dancing and begging, or a remnant of the 19th-century craze for Black minstrels. (That last explanation seems to be the one Roy Palmer favours in The Folklore of Shropshire.)

Whatever the explanation, the faces are typical of Border morris - "from the English-Welsh border: a simpler, looser, more vigorous style". (That's Wikipedia again.)

This video was filmed in The Square at Clun. The pub on the right is the friendly White Horse. The sign on the left is for the long-closed Buffalo, which will be familiar to readers of Malcolm Saville's The Neglected Mountain.

Shropshire Hills Shuttle comes to Much Wenlock

Good news from the Shropshire Hills website:

We are able to confirm that in 2012 we have the funding in place to operate a new linear Shuttle bus service between Much Wenlock, Acton Scott Historic Working Farm and Church Stretton. 

The new Shuttle route will be called the ‘Wenlock Wanderer’ and will travel along the famed limestone escarpment of Wenlock Edge, through ancient woodland and into the majestic folds of the Stretton hills and the Long Mynd. There are some great walking opportunities from this Shuttle bus, as well as fantastic views, welcoming country pubs and the chance to experience life on a Victorian Farm at Acton Scott Historic Working Farm. 

The ‘Long Mynd & Stiperstones’ Shuttle, which has run each season for over ten years, remains the same. As the name suggests, this Shuttle bus takes you over these two distinctive ‘hill tops’ with key stops at Church Stretton, Cardingmill Valley, Pontesbury and Minsterley.

I still mourn the loss of the Shuttle service to Bishop's Castle and Clun, though you can reach the former on the Minsterley Motors service.

Defending property against looters: Clun and Bishop's Castle show the way

Reports of residents banding together to drive looters out of an area put me in mind of how the south of Shropshire coped with the Civil War.

As the Bishop's Castle town website records it:

The town ... set up a roster of armed burgesses, nicknamed Clubmen, to defend any property under attack and records show that around a thousand men in the Clun and Bishop's Castle area carried arms, "standing out against both sides, neither for the King nor Parliament, but only for the preservation of their own lives and fortunes".