Introduction to Stottesdon

This page provides an introduction to the history of Stottesdon. For further information, look at the related webpages menu

History of Stottesdon

Stottesdon is a large parish, situated on either side of the River Rea. The current parish is somewhat smaller than the ancient parish which included Ingardine and Oreton on the eastern slopes of the Clee Hill. On its east side it once included detached portions at Kingswood and Dowles in the Wyre Forest; the latter is now in Worcestershire.

The earliest phase of history in Stottesdon is represented by a substantial collection of flints found in Oreton. At this date, most of South Shropshire is likely to have been wooded; any permanent settlers would have had to clear the woodland to establish a farm. By bronze age times, there were burials on top of the Clee Hill and the work of woodland clearance in Stottesdon was probably underway. This must have continued into the iron age and by the Roman period much of the parish is likely to have been settled and cultivated. There are a few scattered Roman finds throughout Stottesdon and a possible farmstead is apparent on aerial photographs north of the current village.

The withdrawal of the Romans at the end of the 4th Century took place against a backdrop of economic and political upheaval that lead to very considerable depopulation. It is likely that much of Stottesdon reverted to woodland. In a process that is poorly understood, south Shropshire eventually emerges from the Dark Ages as part of the kingdom of the Magonsaete in the 7th Century. This in turn was rapidly absorbed into Mercia, then the dominant power in Anglo-Saxon England. Stottesdon as we know it, was established at this time; albeit perhaps based an older estate. It was one of the most important estates in the area as it was home to a minister church, from where priests could be based to serve the surrounding villages and hamlets. It also became the centre of local government for the area when this was first established. The county of Shropshire was created around 1000 and like all counties, was divided into districts termed hundreds. In theory each contained 100 hides, a unit initially of land containing between 60 and 120 acres. At the time of the Domesday book, Stottesdon was the head of Condertree Hundred; the name appears to have come from a prominent tree near Walton Farm which served as the meeting place where the official business of the hundred was conducted.

Stottesdon stood roughly in the centre of its parish. The land closest to the village was probably cultivated. In the Rea Valley there were (at least at one point) dairy farms at Hardwick and Duddlewick (“wick” means a dairy farm). Towards the fringes of the parish, particularly at Ingardine and in the Wyre Forest, the land is likely to have been used for grazing or hunting; particularly in the forest, the woodland would have been a valuable resource for fuel and building.

As the economy recovered from the disasters of the 4th-6th Centuries, the population grew again. This is reflected in Stottesdon by the way that by the time of Domesday, the original estate, as reflected in the parish boundaries, had been split into a number of distinct holdings, each with different owners. There was a thriving land market in later Anglo-Saxon times and most large estates found themselves subdivided with parts either given away or sold. Thus the village itself, with Chorley, belonged to Edwin, Earl of Mercia. It is possible that Stottesdon had once belonged to the rulers of the Magonsaete and had passed down to Edwin via the Mercian royal family; however it may have passed in and out of the hands of many royal favourites as part of this line of descent. Pickthorn belonged to the monastery of St Mildburh in Much Wenlock and may have been part of the monastery’s original endowment by the ruler of the Magonsaete in the late 7th Century. Walton and Overton were both held by one Edric, possibly Edric the Wild (Edric Sylvaticus), a representative of another branch of the earls of Mercia. Ingardine was held by Edwin “a free man”. This Edwin was almost certainly distinct from Earl Edwin. Harcourt was owned by another free man, Alward. Alward and Edwin might be considered to be the Saxon equivalent of the lessor-landed gentry; prosperous but of no more than local significance. This process of division and dispersal was to continue to be a feature of the post-conquest period.

Earl Edwin died c1071, having twice rebelled against William the Conqueror. To establish firmer Norman control over Shropshire, William installed Roger de Montgomery as Earl of Shrewsbury. Roger held Stottesdon directly. One of his first acts was to give the church and the estate of Duddlewick to Shrewsbury Abbey, which he had recently founded. Between 1066 and 1086, the value of Stottesdon fell by nearly a half; it probably suffered in the aftermath of Edwin’s ill-judged rebellion of 1069. Whilst Roger remained loyal to the Conqueror and his heirs, Roger’s second son, Robert de Belleme, showed no such loyalty and rebelled in 1102 against Henry I. This was crushed and Belleme expelled; Stottesdon was confiscated and became a royal manor. Around 1159 it was awarded to Geoffrey de Gamaches; it was subsequently given to John de Plesstis, Earl of Warwick in 1240 and then passed by marriage to the Segrave family and the Dukes of Norfolk. These were all families of wealth and power; for the most part Stottesdon would simply have been another estate to them. The process of division (sub-infeudation) continued, with the removal of Bardley, Northwood, Dowles, Wricton and Newton, largely in the 12th Century.

Stottesdon remained a place of significance for some period after the Conquest. At the start of the 12th Century, King Henry I rearranged the Shropshire hundreds; Condertree hundred was turned into Stottesdon Hundred (a unit of local government that was not to totally vanish until the 19th Century). However, Stottesdon found itself squeezed by the growth of towns with castles at Bridgnorth and Cleobury Mortimer. In 1244 John de Plesstis tried to fight back when he was given a grant of weekly market and a yearly fair on the 14th-16th August (either side of the Feast of the Assumption). However, his attempt to reinvent Stottesdon as a market town failed; it was probably too far off the main roads to compete against Bridgnorth and Cleobury. By the late medieval period, Stottesdon was probably no more than a large village.

Throughout most of its history, agriculture was probably the driving force behind Stottesdon’s economy. The Old Red sandstone rocks that underlie much of the parish produce a fair quality soil for arable farming that is superior to the coal measure clays found to the east. The valley of the Rea has good grassland for pasture and meadow. The medieval open fields were probably largely enclosed in the 17th Century, to give something like the present pattern of farms. The woods around Chorley in the east were coppiced for charcoal production in the 17th and 18th centuries; previous to that woodland in Stottesdon had been used for a deer park. There was also scattered industry. The Rea provided power for several corn mills, a fulling mill (for woollen cloth), iron forges and even a cotton mill. At Oreton limestone was quarried until the 1950s, with the industry probably reaching its peak in the 19th Century. More scattered limestone quarrying took place around Stottesdon village. Ironstone was mined in Chorley and was smelted in medieval times. However, it is likely that from around 1600, coal mining was more important than ironstone mining. The last deep mine, Chorley Colliery, closed in 1938. A small patch of coal was also worked at Prescott.

From late Victorian times there were significant changes to the boundaries of Stottesdon, beginning with the transfer of Kingswood to Kinlet. Much more recently, Oreton has been joined to Farlow.

At the start of the 20th Century, the Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway passed through Stottesdon. For a brief period this flourished; however, following the First World War, improvements in road transport meant that its influence on the village was no more than fleeting. Stottesdon remains a significant village in south-east Shropshire retaining facilities such as its school and doctors’ surgery.