Ruckley and Langley

Langley Chapel is an Anglican church, built in 1601, located in a remote area (the parish of Ruckley and Langley) approximately 1.5 miles to the south of Acton Burnell, Shropshire, England. It is now in the care of English Heritage, and is notable for having a complete set of original 17th-century wooden furniture, and its lack of a chancel, in line both with its small size and Protestant attitudes to worship. It is one of the few new churches built in England in the Elizabethan period. Despite being built at the start of the 17th century, the east window tracery is in a simplified Gothic style, though the doorways are in plain vernacular styles, one with a flat lintel and another round-headed. The window on the north side is also plain and rectangular. It is a Grade I listed building.Built on the site of an earlier medieval chapel, it provided worship for the nearby Langley Hall, whose ruins are contained within a nearby private farm. The Chapel was built with wooden box pews, a musicians desk and Communion table bench seats. It has no known dedication. The 19th century saw the disappearance of Langley Hall, followed by the loss of the local population. The chapel became disused. In 1914, it became one of the first buildings to be taken into the care of the state, the Ministry of Works as it was. The fact it was abandoned meant it escaped modernisation and remains a rare time capsule of the 17th century.

Acton Burnell Castle is a 13th-century fortified manor house, located near the village of Acton Burnell, Shropshire, England (grid reference SJ534019). It is believed that the first Parliament of England at which the Commons were fully represented was held here in 1283. Today all that remains is the outer shell of the manor house and the gable ends of the barn. It is a Grade I listed building on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest.

St Mary's Church is in the village of Acton Burnell, Shropshire, England, and stands near the ruins of Acton Burnell Castle. 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 Andrew and St Mary, Condover, St Mark, Frodesley, and St Michael and All Angels, Pitchford. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building.

Concord College is an independent co-educational international day/boarding school in Shropshire, England situated in the grounds of Acton Burnell Castle. The college admits students aged between 12 and 19; the majority of whom come from overseas. Concord College excels in academic results with an 85% A*-A at A-level and 82% A*-A at GCSE level.In 2009, to celebrate its 60th year, Concord was visited by the Princess Royal.

Acton Burnell Hall is a 19th-century country house, now used as a private school, located near the village of Acton Burnell, Shropshire, England. This house was built near to the castle in 1814 by the Smythe family. The hall is in classical style and is a Grade II* listed building. It is surrounded by parkland, with two lakes and a Gothic folly (Sham Castle). This folly has round towers, gothic windows and dates to 1780, standing on a mound in a field surrounded by trees. It was built for Sir Edward Smythe by Joseph Bromfield and used by the Smythe family as a music room.Acton Burnell Castle was another folly in the grounds. Large entrance doors were knocked through the private residence buildings. A pyramid roof structure was placed on top of a tower, turning it into a dovecote.Monks from the monastery of St Gregory’s, Douai, took refuge with Edward Smythe, the 5th baronet, until his death, whereupon they moved to Downside, Somerset in 1814. The relatively modern Hall and surrounding land is now a privately owned college, Concord College. The gable ends of the great barn, where the parliament sat, survive and are situated on the private land.

Church Preen is a dispersed hamlet and small civil parish in central Shropshire, England. The county town of Shropshire is Shrewsbury, which is located to the North and by road is 12 miles. It is located near Plaish, Kenley and Hughley. The nearest towns are Much Wenlock and Church Stretton; both are approximately 7 miles by road. The nearest city is Birmingham, which is located to the East of Church Preen. It is approximately 49 miles by road and takes just over 1 hour to get there. The A49 runs 6 miles to the West and the nearest train station is at Church Stretton, which is 7.4 miles away. Church Preen has a total of 30 different households, 6 of which are semi-detached and the others are groups of buildings, mostly farms. Located in the centre of the hamlet is St. John the Baptist parish church, a separate graveyard, a post box, telephone box, a pump cottage, Preen Manor, a well, Church Preen pre-school, Church Preen (disused) quarry and just on the outskirts is Church Preen Primary School. The primary employment sectors are education and agriculture. The primary school at Church Preen, called Church Preen Primary School, serves the local, rural communities. There are currently around 40 pupils at the school spread over 3 classes from the ages of 5 to 11. More can be read on the school in the education section. There is also a preschool called Church Preen Preschool. It is held at The Village Hall, Church Preen and children from 2 up to 5 years old are welcome.

Acton Pigott is a hamlet in the English county of Shropshire. It lies just outside the village of Acton Burnell.

Pitchford is a small village in the English county of Shropshire. It is located between Cantlop and Acton Burnell and stands on an affluent of the River Severn. Pitchford takes its name from a bituminous spring/pitch in the village, located near The Row Brook. It is home to Pitchford Hall, one of the most notable Elizabethan houses in Britain. The Church of St Michael and All Angels stands near to the house which contains a carved oak 13th century effigy of Sir John de Pitchford. It is also the name for the civil parish.

Plaish Hall is a country house in Plaish, in the civil parish of Cardington, in the Shropshire district, in the ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building.Plaish Hall was the house of the Jacobean poet, composer and politician Sir William Leighton, who was most probably born there in c.1565.

Shropshire (; historically Salop and abbreviated Shrops) is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, on the Welsh border. It is bordered by Wrexham County Borough and Cheshire to the north, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south and Powys to the west. The largest settlement is Telford, and Shrewsbury is the county town. The county has an area of 3,487 square kilometres (1,346 sq mi) and a population of 498,073. Telford (155,570), in the east of the county, and Shrewsbury (76,782), in the centre, are the only large towns. Shropshire is otherwise rural, containing market towns such as Oswestry (15,613), Bridgnorth (12,212) and Newport (11,387). The county contains two districts, Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin, which are both unitary areas. Shropshire is generally flat in the north and hilly in the south, where the Shropshire Hills AONB covers about a quarter of the county, including The Wrekin, Clee Hills, Stiperstones, Long Mynd and Wenlock Edge. Part of the Fenn's, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, which extends into Wales, occupies the low-lying north west of the county. The River Severn, Great Britain's longest river, runs through the county in a wide, flat valley before exiting into Worcestershire south of Bridgnorth. The village of Edgmond, near Newport, is the location of the lowest recorded temperature (in terms of weather) in England and Wales.There is evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age human occupation in Shropshire, including the Shropshire bulla pendant. The hillfort at Old Oswestry dates from the Iron Age, and the remains of the city of Viroconium Cornoviorum date from the Roman period. During the Anglo-Saxon era the area was part of Mercia. During the High Middle Ages the county was part of the Welsh Marches, the border region between Wales and England; from 1472 to 1689 Ludlow was the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which administered justice in Wales and Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. During the English Civil War Shropshire was Royalist, and Charles II fled through the county—famously hiding in an oak tree—after his final defeat at the Battle of Worcester. The area around Coalbrookdale is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Kenley is a small village and civil parish in the English county of Shropshire. It is located in remote countryside, atop a ridge at around 180 metres (590 ft) above sea level. It is near the larger villages of Acton Burnell, about three miles to the north-west, and Harley, about two miles to the east. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 258. The name is probably formed from the Old English personal name Cenna with -ley, meaning a clearing in a wood.To the west are the hamlets of Ruckley and Langley, which form a separate civil parish. The historian Archibald Alison and statistician William Farr were born in Kenley.

Pitchford Hall is a Grade I listed Tudor country house in the village of Pitchford, Shropshire, 6 miles south east of Shrewsbury. It was built c.1560 on the site of a medieval building and has been modified several times since, particularly in the 1870s and 1880s when it was substantially restored, remodelled and extended. It is a timber-framed two-storey building with rendered red sandstone panels, a stone roof and brick chimneys. The floor plan is E-shaped round a courtyard to the south with a Victorian service wing to the west. There is also an orangery and walled garden on the grounds. A deer park established in 1638 was disparked in 1790. 100 metres north of the hall is a bitumen well, near a ford across the Row Brook, from which the village gets its name. The bitumen or pitch was once used for waterproofing the timbers of the house. A 17th-century tree house in a large lime tree is one of the oldest in the world. A stretch of the Roman Watling Street runs through the estate. The hall and its contents were sold at auction in 1992. The hall was repurchased in 2016 by the Colthurst family, who had retained the estate, and is under restoration after falling derelict.