West Midlands (region)

The Great Fountain, Enville, was a fountain created in the mid-19th century by the Earl of Stamford in the middle of a lake on his Enville Hall estate, in Enville, Staffordshire, England. The fountain was described by English artist, E. Adveno Brooke, who visited and made a chronolithograph of the fountain in 1857: "As we stood admiring the beauty and tranquility of the scene, a bubbling sound of water, at first gentle and gathering force by degrees, broke out and we beheld the commencement of one of the most beautiful aquatic displays it is possible to conceive. This, the large fountain, is on a level with the surface of the lake, and composed of five jets, the central one throwing a column of water 150 feet high; the supply being obtained from a large reservoir on the hill, to which it is first pumped by the united action of two engines, each of thirty horsepower." The water continued to jet for several minutes, until the water in the reservoir was exhausted. The Great Fountain was the early ancestor of similar fountains located in lakes or bays, such as the Jet d'Eau in Geneva, Switzerland, which was first created in 1886, and more modern fountains, such as King Fahd's Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, opened in 1985, which uses mechanical pumps to jet water upwards 312 metres (1,024 ft) above the surface of the Red Sea. It is not known if the fountain still exists or operates today.

Enville Hall is an English Tudor country house in the village of Enville, Staffordshire. It is a Grade II listed building.The house has a 16th and 17th-century U-shaped core formed by the hall range and two flanking wings enclosing a south facing main courtyard. An 18th-century extension to the east encloses a second courtyard. A further extension c.1770 created a north-west wing, when at the same time the south front was remodelled in the Gothic style. It is constructed in 3 storeys of rough cast bricks with a hipped slate roof and stands in an estate of some 6,500 acres of park and farmland.

Enville is a village and civil parish in rural Staffordshire, England, on the A458 road between Stourbridge and Bridgnorth. Enville is in the South Staffordshire district. The largest village nearby is Kinver, with the smaller villages of Bobbington and Six Ashes, "The Sheepwalks" — a popular walking area nearby, as is Kinver Edge. Enville Golf Course is just outside the village. The hamlet of Six Ashes marks the old border of two counties — Staffordshire and Shropshire, and was the centre of the division of land as drawn up by the 1405 Tripartite Indenture between Owain Glyndŵr, Edmund Mortimer, and Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland. Enville is the nearest village to Highgate Common.

Castle Hill or Baron Hill is about a mile from the hamlet of Kingsford in the civil parish of Wolverley and Cookley, Worcestershire. In 1912 the site consisted of "a small ruinous timber-framed building, used as a cowshed, mainly of 15th century date but bearing traces of earlier features. On the hillside itself is a segment of a moat encircling a third of the hill and the embankments of three communicating fishponds covering about 4 acres. The two lower ponds still contain water while the upper is used as an orchard". In 1913 it was thought to be the ruins of a castle, a possibility which David Cathcart-King mentions in his 1983 work Castellarium anglicanum.After surveying the site, Duignan (publishing in 1912) suggested that it was the remains of a late 12th century hunting lodge, but Brown, Colvin and Taylor publishing in 1963 showed that Duigan was mistaken, and the royal hunting lodge to which he referred—one in the Forest of Kinver (recorded in documents of 1195–96)—was located at Stourton Castle. However, there was another earlier royal hunting lodge at Kinver, (recorded in 1184–85) the site of which is unknown and which could have been at Castle Hill.Inspectors from English Heritage visited the site in 1997 and although the site is very ruinous confirmed its importance and "regarded as having a high archaeological potential".

Six Ashes is a small village in Shropshire, England, on the Shropshire side of the border with Staffordshire.

The Mid Severn Sandstone Plateau is a rural landscape and one of the natural regions of central England, straddling the border between the counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire. It stretches from the western fringes of the Birmingham conurbation to Telford in the north and Kidderminster in the south. The major feature of the plateau is the valley of the River Severn, which cuts through it from north to south. It consists of Permian and Triassic-age New Red Sandstone getting older as one goes west until one reaches Silurian and Carboniferous-age siltstones and coals west of the river.

Romsley (grid reference SO783826) is a hamlet and civil parish in southeast Shropshire, England. It is bounded on the north and west by Alveley and on the south by Upper Arley in Worcestershire. On its short eastern boundary it meets Compton on Kinver. It is a dispersed settlement and there is no church in the parish. The parish is mainly a farming community, comprising only 36 houses in 1961.

Bobbington is a village and civil parish in the South Staffordshire district of Staffordshire, England, about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Wombourne. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 506, increasing to 588 at the 2011 Census. Bobbington is just on the county border with Shropshire (to the west), and is about 8 miles (13 km) east of Bridgnorth in Shropshire. It is only about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of the border with West Midlands, and during World War II was home to Bobbington Airfield, renamed during the war as Halfpenny Green, and now known as Wolverhampton Halfpenny Green Airport. On the 12 November 1943 a Royal Air Force, Handley Page Halifax Mk II (BB326) crashed shortly after taking off from Bobbington airfield due a mechanical failure, killing seven of the eight crew.In recent years Bobbington has seen favour in the commuter culture being roughly equidistant from many of the region's business centres Wolverhampton (9.5 miles (15.3 km)) Dudley (9.4 miles (15.1 km)), Stourbridge (10.5 miles (16.9 km)) and Bridgnorth (8.6 miles (13.8 km)).

Shatterford is a village in the Wyre Forest District of Worcestershire, England, located north-west of Bewdley and lies less than a mile from the county border with Shropshire. The Bewdley School and Sixth Form Centre provides secondary education for pupils from the area. The village hall always has local events taking place, from charity fundraising to the Shatterford show. Robert Plant, the lead singer and frontman of rock band Led Zeppelin, lives nearby.

Kingsford is a large hamlet in Worcestershire, England.

Coton is located northeast of Alveley, Shropshire and was associated with the manor Coton Hall. The ancestors of General Robert E. Lee left Coton near Alveley during the 17th century. At that time the Lee family had been there for some six centuries, and another branch of the Lee family remained in Coton until 1821.

Kingsnordley is a manor in the northern part of the parish of Alveley. This part of the parish has no nucleated village, but there is a Church of England chapel of ease at Tuckhill.