Wheaton Aston

Mottey Meadows National Nature Reserve (NNR) consists of a series of alluvial flood meadows near the village of Wheaton Aston in Staffordshire, England. The meadows have been managed for hay making for many centuries. They support over 240 species of flowering plants, including the rare snake's-head fritillary. The site is an outstanding floristically-diverse mesotrophic grassland where traditional late hay cutting and aftermath grazing has been perpetuated, largely unaffected by modern agricultural practices. The site is important because of its large size, variety of grassland community types and presence of rare species. Further more it contains an extensive example of an alluvial flood meadow.Examples of grassland types found on the site include MG4 and MG8. The meadows are rich with a variety of orchids during the late spring and summer. The site is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a European Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and is carefully managed by Natural England with support from the Friends of Mottey Meadows and the Floodplain Meadows Partnership Full details of the site designations can be found on the Natural England register of Designated Sites

Lapley, Stretton and Wheaton Aston is a civil parish in the South Staffordshire district, in the county of Staffordshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 2,548.It contains, and is named for, the three villages of Lapley, Stretton and Wheaton Aston (which is by far the largest settlement). The area is rural, with the Shropshire Union Canal passing through, and the A5 road ("Watling Street") forms the parish's southern border.

Royal Air Force Wheaton Aston, or more simply RAF Wheaton Aston, was a Royal Air Force station located just outside of the village of Wheaton Aston in Staffordshire, England. The base was actually in the hamlet of Little Onn which is 1.2 miles (2 km) north west of Wheaton Aston. The base was known locally as Little Onn or RAF Little Onn, but the policy of naming Royal Air Force stations was down to which parish the Station Headquarters was in. The airfield was one of the Royal Air Force's largest training environments in the Second World War with an average of 11,000+ flying hours per month by 1944.

Little Onn is a hamlet in Staffordshire, England located in open countryside 1 mile (2 km) north of Wheaton Aston. It is the location of the former Second World War airfield RAF Wheaton Aston, a training school - one of the busiest in the country - that operated between 1941 and 1947. Since being abandoned the airfield has become a pig farm but many of the original buildings remain.

Woollaston is a small hamlet near Bradley, Staffordshire, England, four miles northwest of Penkridge and two miles southeast of Church Eaton. It lies in quite flat dairy farming countryside a mile south of Shredicote and a mile west of Mitton. All three villages consist of only a couple of farms and a few cottages scattered along the Church Eaton Road, which runs from Mitton to Church Eaton parallel to Church Eaton Brook, which runs southeastwards towards Penkridge, being a tributary of the River Penk.

Black Ladies Priory was a house of Benedictine nuns, located about 4 km west of Brewood in Staffordshire, on the northern edge of the hamlet of Kiddemore Green. Founded in the mid-12th century, it was a small, often struggling, house. It was dissolved in 1538, and a large house was built on the site in Tudor and Jacobean styles by the Giffard family of Chillington Hall. Much of this is incorporated in the present Black Ladies, a large, Grade II*-listed, private residence.

Lapley Priory was a priory in Staffordshire, England. Founded at the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it was an alien priory, a satellite house of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Remi or Saint-Rémy at Reims in Northern France. After great fluctuations in fortune, resulting from changing relations between the rulers of England and France, it was finally dissolved in 1415 and its assets transferred to the collegiate church at Tong, Shropshire.

Bishops Wood, or Bishopswood (grid reference SJ835097) is a small village on the Staffordshire border with Shropshire. It is home to the Royal Oak public house, the first to be named after the nearby oak tree at Boscobel House in which King Charles II hid after the Battle of Worcester. The population for this village taken at the 2011 census can be found under Brewood and Coven. Bishop's Wood (grid reference SJ753310) is a 352 hectare wood 4 miles west north west of Eccleshall, Staffordshire. The village, in the parish of Brewood, may derive its name from the country residence of the early Bishops of Lichfield: Boscobel House. The King Charles II Royal Oak tree, White Ladies Priory, Blackladies (another former priory, now a private residence) and Weston Park are all within easy walking distance.

Lapley is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lapley, Stretton and Wheaton Aston, in the South Staffordshire district, in the county of Staffordshire, England. It is some 3.5 miles WSW of Penkridge, 1.5 miles east of Wheaton Aston, 0.5 miles northeast of the Shropshire Union Canal, 1.5 miles north of Watling Street, and 6 miles SSW of Stafford. In 1961 the parish had a population of 840. On 1 April 1986 the parish was abolished and merged with Stretton to form "Lapley and Stretton", part also went to Penkridge.

Stretton Aqueduct is a short cast iron canal aqueduct between Stretton and Brewood, and near to Belvide Reservoir, in south Staffordshire, England. Designed by Thomas Telford and bearing his name plus its date of construction, 1832, it carries the Shropshire Union Canal (formerly the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal) 30 feet (9.1 m) over the A5 road at a skewed angle.The aqueduct has five sections, each 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) long, held together by bolts and supported by six cast iron arch ribs, each in two sections and joined at the centre of the arch. It was cast by William Hazledine of Shrewsbury. The trough is 21 feet (6.4 m) wide with an 11 feet (3.4 m) wide channel of water and a towpath on either side. The Staffordshire blue brick abutments have stone dressings.During 1961–62, the road under the aqueduct was lowered by about 4 feet (1.2 m) to allow taller vehicles to pass underneath.It was one of Telford's last aqueducts and has been grade II listed since 1985.

Belvide Reservoir is a reservoir in South Staffordshire, England. It was built in 1833 to supply the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal, and has been managed as a nature reserve since 1977. It has been used to study the effect of water level changes on bird populations.

Brockhurst is a hamlet in Staffordshire, England, 1 mile sorth-west of Blymhill. It is part of Blymhill and Weston-under-Lizard civil parish within South Staffordshire district.Today the hamlet consists of Brockhurst farm, a red brick 18th farmhouse, and two blocks of semi-detached houses built in 1954. The buildings rest on the site of a much earlier settlement, as evidenced by medieval earthworks. These include a square moat to the south-eastern side of the farmhouse, with raised mound within, and the line of a second moat seventy-five yards to the south-west.Raven speculates on the origin of the name 'Brockhurst': 'Broc' in a place name usually means either stream or badger. 'Hurst' can mean either a wood or a hill, or a wooded hill or even a sandbank in a river. As there are no streams, hills or sandbanks here it might be fair to interpret the name 'Brockhurst' as meaning 'the wood (or clearing in the wood) which has a badger sett'.