A new blog - this one about helping to preserve a C19th Ordnance Survey Bench Mark in Telford, Shropshire rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/08/07/p...

Preservation

Late last year, I gave a Talk & Presentation to Shropshire’s Newport History Society about Ordnance Survey Bench Marks. The Talk was based on a walk that had created that used OS Bench Ma…

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The 2026 Wellington Walking Festival takes place in September. For the third year I'll be leading a walk based around Ordnance Survey Bench Marks This year's Bench Mark Walk is is centred on, up & around the Wrekin For details on all the walks see > www.wellingtonwalkersarewelcome.org.uk/festival

Church Crawling and Bench Mark bagging mean that I spend alot of time looking at walls, which means that any help in deciphering the multitude of shapes on display is always welcomed.. www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

No evidence for ‘witches’ marks’ claims at old English buildings, historian says

Author argues symbols such as daisy wheels are no more than the working marks of stonemasons

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Top of the Wrekin for this morning's Solistice Sunrise. It was stunning! I used the Toposcope for some reflection photos of the rising sun; then there was an added bonus of mist lying over the town to the east that provided a spectacular natural reflection of the sun when walking through Heaven Gate

Balls to Telford A blog on social and local history based around the tale of a destroyed Ordnance Survey Bench Mark rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/06/20/b...

BARKSY - drawn by an unknown artist onto the exposed collar of a tree on the Cockshutt, Oakengates. With a nod to the Street Artist, Midlands' Brewery (shame its not Banks), the tree's Cortex and some of the local wildlife. #Banksy #ansellsbrewery #oakengates #cockshutt #forestart

A new blog - detailing the Deconstructed Ordnance Survey Bench Mark on the High Street Bridge in Coalport, Telford. rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/c...

Coalport’s Deconstructed Bench Mark

There is no definitive record of the Bench Marks that are located in the United Kingdom – even the Ordnance Survey’s own records aren’t complete. There are plenty of Bench Marks t…

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For #benchmarkmonday two for the price of one - Rivets within the towpath of the Grand Union Canal between Cape Lock and Hatton Locks near Warwick. The Rivet at the Budbrooke Junction has lost its accompanying Pheon with the crumbling of the edge of the towpath

For #postboxsaturday the Victorian Pillar Box sited alongside St Peter's Chapel in Warwick. Cast in 1856 in the shape of a Doric Column by Smith & Hawkes of Birmingham Grid Reference: SP 28400 64987 W3W ///lime.taken.tiger

Accepted the opportunity for a late-morning slow amble along both sides of Sabrina's banks at Coalport. Familiar stomping ground, but no less enjoyable because of that and maybe more so as the area is quiet with the Museums still closed

The petition is live to save our Trig Pillars and make them protected status. Please consider signing and sharing the linked petition to reach the required 100K signatures! PETITION > petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76... #saveourtrigs

A new blog - this one discussing why the 255-metre Snedshill Tunnel of the C18th & C19th Shropshire Canal wasn't located where one of the newishly built housing estates in Telford might suggest rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/05/12/w...

What’s in a Name – The Snedshill Tunnel

To one side of the Holyhead Road (B5061) in Snedshill, Telford stand some newish housing estates. Two of these are William Reynolds Way and Tunnel Close. A extract of the Ordnance Survey’s Ma…

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A new blog about a section of the 18th Century tub-boat Shropshire Canal that can still be found - nearly 200-years after it closed - in front of the Cockshutt, Oakengates in Telford next to the Silkin Way. rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/05/10/t...

The Shropshire Canal – Oakengates, the Silkin Way & the Cockshutt

Within this blog I hope to describe how (on a section of the Silkin Way that runs near Oakengates) that you are not passing along the route of the of the former Coalport Railway – which the S…

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Tiles from Wenlock Priory rediscovered in a toffee tin... www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

Man who pocketed tiles from medieval priory as boy returns them 60 years later

Simon White comes clean after finding clay pieces in toffee tin, saying he took them as souvenir from Wenlock Priory

theguardian.com

For #benchmarkmonday Flush Bracket S5429 that is set into Trig Pillar TP1879 on Callow Hill that overlooks Craven Arms in Shropshire. The Pillar's neighbour is Flounders Folly tower that was an OS Trigonometrical Station in the C19th

Coalbrookdale - standing on the edge of the village green is the memorial to the workers of the former Coalbrookdale Company 1709 - 2017 The Memorial is easily missed by visitors to the area, but it is worth a stroll off the main tourist route to see - ///canyons.dolly.restrict

One of two 19th-Century Board of Ordnance iron troughs that sit on the edges of the Museum of Iron's car-park in Coalbrookdale. Now used as planters for crocus, they would have been used to hold & store more potent materiel in the past... ...swords to ploughshares

A new blog highlighting the wanderings of the Overley Hill Trig Pillar, how it's new position links in with Telford's industrial heritage and a little known connection to a South Wales village's sports teams rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/a...

A Wandering Trig Pillar, a Lost Trig, a Welsh Village’s Cricket & Football Teams and Woodscrews

Overley Hill stands 2-miles west of the Shropshire town of Wellington, between the famous Wrekin Hill to the south & the village of Wrockwardine to the north. The historic Roman Road of Watling…

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Joining in with #gritsaltbinmonday & #mapsonmonday - sitting proud on the upper reaches of the Wrockwardine Wood Incline Plane of the (once) Shropshire (tub-boat) Canal

A new blog about the history of the Wrekin's Rifle Range from it's establishment because of the threat of French invasion in 1859; it's connection to the Olympic Games; the drive to close it from the 1970s; and fun & frivolities in the 2000s. rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/01/31/t...

The Wrekin’s Danger Zones

When you stand at the Wrekin’s summit, the hill’s military connections & history aren’t obvious. Pedants may state that the summit’s Ordnance Survey’s Trig Pillar …

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A new (short) blog that highlights a 'forgotten' WWI memorial hidden in plain sight on Church Street, St Georges, Telford rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/01/15/s...

St Georges ‘Forgotten’ War Memorial

Standing on Church Street, St Georges in Telford is the former Primitive Methodist Chapel that was opened in 1860. Its adjacent neighbour is the Chapel’s Jubilee Sunday School that was added …

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Another MACE video about Telford - this an ATV piece from 1979 on the (largely) positive work of TDC in Ironbridge to rejuvenate the town It includes interviews with Eustace Rogers; the director of Blists Hill; and the late, great Billy Wright www.macearchive.org/films/atv-to...

A new blog providing a transcript of the Illustrated London News Article that reported on a visit to the Wrekin (Shropshire) in Sept-1865 to study the Silurian Period geology and to sample the food & beer at the Wrekin Cottage rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2026/01/10/s...

Sept-1865 – An Excursion to the Wrekin

On 23rd September 1865, The Illustrated London News carried an article that reported on the excursions of the British Association from Birmingham to Malvern and the Wrekin. Below is a transcript of…

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Hosted by the Media Archive for Central England: 'Dawley: The New Town Before Development' Filmed in 1963, it is 22-mins of silent footage of the area around Dawley, Madeley & Ironbridge, towns that would subsequently form the southern extent of Telford New Town www.macearchive.org/films/dawley...

Oakengates Fellowship FC - an amateur football team that competed in the Wellington League before WWII The linked blog contains a selection of the team's match reports from '37 & '38 when subs weren't allowed & goalies could be shunted over the goal-line rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2025/12/29/o...

Oakengates Fellowship FC

The photo below was published in the Telford Journal in May 1986 under the ‘Do You Remember When?’ regular feature. It shows two local football teams from 1936 – Wrockwardine Wood…

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A new blog - this one is about a hidden Ordnance Survey Bench Mark in Oakengates, Telford and how it is a part of & a witness to the ever-changing development & rejuvenation of my home town rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2025/12/22/o...

A selection of the Christmas trees within @nationaltrust.org.uk Attingham House - photos from last weekend

On the lower slopes of the south side of the Wrekin (near to the Permissive Path) lies a toppled Boundary Stone that dates from at least the C19th The BS marked the boundaries between the Duke of Cleveland's estate (now managed as the Raby Estate) to the west and the Orleton Estate to the east

Not a 'ghost sign', more a 'ghost instruction' - noticed this on the wall in the courtyard at Attingham Park "DRY SWILL | TEA LEAVES | PEELINGS| WET SWILL" which presumably went down the drain to be collected as food for the animals or used as compost.

The Wrekin's Half-Way Stone - a blog about a piece of the Wrekin's history that is forgotten, if not unknown, that could one day return to its former standing... rowleyanth.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/t...

The Wrekin’s Half-Way Stone

In their account of a climb of the Wrekin that was published in The Examiner on 5th June 1875, under the title ‘Original Sketches by G.T.L – No.3 The Wrekin’, the correspondent wr…

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