Once Upon a Hill - Shropshire’s Victorian mining story
13 September 2010
An exciting project to reconnect local communities with their history and the heritage of mining in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is now well underway
'Once Upon a Hill' aims to rediscover how the mining communities once lived on The Stiperstones, through the renovation of two of the cottages near Blakemoorgate and the conservation of the natural and social history of the area.
This partnership project has been made possible thanks to funding from The Heritage Lottery Fund, LEADER in the Shropshire Hills (Project part financed by the European Agricultural Fund for European Development 2007-2013: Europe investing in rural areas), English Heritage and Natural England, as well support from the Upper Onny Guidebook Fund.
History
There has been settlement in the Stiperstones area of Shropshire since prehistoric times and lead mining in the hills above Snailbeach, near Shrewsbury, since the Romans. Indeed, ‘pigs’ of lead have been discovered with ‘Hadrian’ inscribed on them.
The most recent active mining was in the late 1800s, and it was around this time that small settlements began to spread up the hills and across the common land of what is now the Stiperstones National Nature Reserve.
Small cottages were built by ‘squatters’, who were allowed to stay if, it’s said, they could build a house and have smoke out of the chimney by nightfall. They paid a small rent to the estate. They would often need walk for two hours or more, across the steep bleak hills to reach the mines, the church or the school.
Small whitewashed stone cottages and clearly marked cart tracks to the rows of dwellings quickly appeared as the small communities developed. Each cottage was built to a similar design, with a garden, a rootstore and a byre for a cow or pig.
These remote and inhospitable settlements were inhabited as recently as the 1950s, and today there are still local residents whose families came from ‘up on the hill’.
The project
Simon Cooter from Natural England, which manages the Stiperstones National Nature Reserve said:
“Restoring the cottages themselves will be fascinating, but the project is about much more than that.”
“We shall be finding out about the lives of the people who lived here, through collecting oral recollections, and we shall be conserving this precious natural environment, training volunteers to help with the restoration of stone banks around the settlements and holding community events and educational visits.”
Traditional building methods are being used to restore the cottages with a team from Conservation Building Services now on site.
It is hoped that the settlement at Blakemoorgate will be open to the general public by late autumn.
Project update from Simon
“The restoration work is progressing well. Cooks cottage has scaffolding up. The back wall has required complete re-building, as has most of the chimney. It is now being re-pointed and windows should go back in a week or two.
“Davies’s cottage has been cleared and scaffolding should go up shortly. It’s been a bit delayed as we have added to the project the rebuild of some of the attached annexes such as the wash house with bread oven (a new discovery!) and the dairy. A lot of structural engineering advice has also been required to stabilise the existing building.
“The outbuildings pig sties etc have now been consolidated. The cattle byre which is being re-built as a shelter is coming on well and the walls should be finished this week.”
