Church Stretton

St Laurence's Church is in Church Street, Church Stretton, Shropshire, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Condover, the archdeaconry of Ludlow, and the diocese of Hereford. Its benefice is united with those of St Michael and All Angels, All Stretton, and All Saints, Little Stretton to form the parish of Church Stretton. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building.

Church Stretton railway station serves the town of Church Stretton, in Shropshire, England. It is on the Welsh Marches line, 12+3⁄4 miles (20.5 km) south of Shrewsbury; trains on the Heart of Wales line also serve the station. All services are operated by Transport for Wales, which also manages the station. The station is the highest point of the line between Shrewsbury and Craven Arms and is the highest station in Shropshire; on the northbound platform, a small plinth notes the station's altitude: 613 ft (187 m) above sea level.

Church Stretton School is an 11–16 mixed secondary school with academy status in Church Stretton, Shropshire, England. Previously a community school administered by Shropshire Council, Church Stretton School converted to academy status in April 2013. The school is now part of the TrustEd Schools Partnership (previously the South Shropshire Academy Trust), which runs five secondary and four primary academies. The school became comprehensive in 1977.

All Stretton is a village and a now separate civil parish in Shropshire, England. Much of it is covered by a Conservation Area.

All Stretton Halt was a minor railway station on the Welsh Marches Line between Shrewsbury and Church Stretton in the English county of Shropshire.

Little Stretton Halt was a minor railway station on the Welsh Marches Line between Craven Arms and Church Stretton in Shropshire, England.

Little Stretton is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Church Stretton, in the Shropshire district, in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. In 1961 the parish had a population of 80. Little Stretton became a civil parish in 1899 being formed from Church Stretton, on 1 April 1966 the parish was abolished and merged with Church Stretton. It is located in the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty between the Long Mynd and Ragleth Hill. Lying on the B5477 south of the market town of Church Stretton; similarly, the small village of All Stretton lies to the north of Church Stretton on the same road. A milestone in the centre of the village on the B5477, which is called Ludlow Road at this point, indicates that Ludlow is 14 miles (23 km) away, to the south. The centre of Church Stretton is 1.3 miles (2.1 km) away via the B5477. The Quinny Brook runs from Ashes Hollow through the village and it is a popular place to begin walks up the Long Mynd. The village lies between 590 and 616 feet above sea level. Ragleth Hill lies immediately to the east of the village, on the other side of the Welsh Marches Line and A49. Little Stretton once had its own railway halt: Little Stretton Halt railway station. To the southwest are the hamlets of Minton and Hamperley, which are part of Church Stretton parish and are included within the parish ward of Little Stretton. The modern-day parish of Church Stretton is sometimes referred to as "Church Stretton and Little Stretton".

The Longmyndian Supergroup is a 6,000-metre-thick (20,000 ft) sequence of Ediacaran (late Precambrian) rocks that outcrop between the Pontesford–Linley Fault System and the Church Stretton Fault System in the Welsh Borderland Fault System of England and Wales. The supergroup consists of two major geological groups, the Stretton Group and the overlying Wentnor Group. The successions represented by these two groups have also been referred to as the Eastern Longymndian and Western Longmyndian respectively, forming as they do the bedrock of the east and west parts of the Long Mynd in Shropshire. The rocks are a generally regressive sequence from basinal facies to clastic sedimentation. The rocks are thought to be derived from Uriconian mountains that were formed during the southward subduction of an oceanic plate beneath a continental block (ocean closure). The rocks have since been folded due to fault movements and plunge gently to the south. The Longmyndian rocks were deposited in northeast–southwest trending faulted rift basins. These were deposited on top of the Uriconian volcaniclastic deposits. Subsequent ocean closure squeezed these rocks together to provide sub-vertical bedding in the synclinal sequence seen in exposed rocks today. The deposited rocks of the Longmyndian show a variety of depositional facies that tell a story of ocean closure. The Longmyndian deposits rest upon Uriconian rocks but different sections are exposed exclusively between the Church Stretton Fault and the Pontesford-Linley Lineament.

The Long Mynd (Welsh: Cefn Hirfynydd) is a heath and moorland plateau that forms part of the Shropshire Hills in Shropshire, England. The high ground, which is common land and designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, lies between the Stiperstones range to the west and the Stretton Hills and Wenlock Edge to the east. Much of it is owned by the National Trust, and is managed by the Longmynd Commoners.The Long Mynd is approximately 7 miles (11 km) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide, and is broadly characterised by steep valleys on its eastern flanks, and a long slope to the western side rising in a steep escarpment. In its vicinity are the principal settlements of Church Stretton, Little Stretton and All Stretton, Pulverbatch, Smethcott, Woolstaston, Asterton, Myndtown, Wentnor and Ratlinghope. The highest point on the Long Mynd is Pole Bank (1,693 ft, 516 m); this and the adjacent hill of Caer Caradoc (1,506 ft, 459 m) are classed as Marilyns.

Hope Bowdler is a small village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is situated on the B4371, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of the market town of Church Stretton. The village is at 222 metres (728 ft) above sea level. There is a parish church in the village, dedicated to St Andrew. The parish is rural and hilly; other settlements within the parish are the hamlets of Ragdon and Chelmick.

Acton Scott is a village and parish near Church Stretton in Shropshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 104. It lies in the Shropshire Hills area of outstanding natural beauty. The settlement was recorded as Actune in the 1086 Domesday Book. The Acton family live on the 1,500-acre (6.1 km2) manorial estate and have worked it since the twelfth century. It is most well known for the 30-acre (120,000 m2) Acton Scott Historic Working Farm, founded by the estate's then owner, Tom Acton, in 1975. A Victorian living museum, it featured in the 2009 Victorian Farm BBC TV series. Visitors to the farm could take part in various workshops and courses on such activities as turning butter, hand-milking cows and herding live-stock. Many skills such as bodging, forging, pole-lathing, wheel and brick-making were demonstrated. The museum, which was run by Shropshire Council on lease from the Acton Scott manor estate, closed in June 2021 for economic reasons. The Council relinquished the lease to the estate in 2023. The museum was reopened on 18 April 2025, funded by a charity, under the title of Acton Scott Heritage Farm.

Caer Caradoc (Welsh: Caer Caradog, the fort of Caradog) is a hill in the English county of Shropshire. It overlooks the town of Church Stretton and the village of All Stretton and offers panoramic views to the north towards the Wrekin, east to Wenlock Edge, and west over the nearby Long Mynd. It is not to be confused with another hillfort of the same name 1 km west of Chapel Lawn near Bucknell. Caer Caradoc rises sharply out of a narrow valley known as the Stretton Gap. It is the highest point on a high, narrow, northeast–southwest "whaleback ridge", sometimes called a hogsback ridge. The Wrekin is a very similarly shaped hill and on the same alignment, some 10 miles (16 km) to the north-east. Caer Caradoc can be fairly easily climbed from Church Stretton but the ascent/descent is steep; a more gentle climb is from the village of Cardington, which lies two miles (3 km) east. Much of the hill is composed from volcanic rocks, like the Wrekin and other hills, formed of narrow ridges of resistant Precambrian rock thrust upwards by movements deep down along the Church Stretton Fault. This fault line runs from Staffordshire in England to Pembrokeshire in Wales and can be seen on Ordnance Survey maps as a line of springs on this hill. The summit has an Ancient British Iron Age or late Bronze Age hill fort. It is this which the hill is named after – Caer Caradog in Welsh meaning Caradog's fort. Local legend has it that this was the site of Caratacus' last battle against the Roman legions during the Roman conquest of Britain, and that after the battle he hid in the cave near its summit. However, there is no river nearby and Tacitus refers to a river in his description of the site.