BROOK VESSONS

An extraordinarily atmospheric place, Brook Vessons has a wonderful feeling of antiquity, with towering hedgerows, many gnarled old trees, a tangled woodland, tiny meadows and boggy, tussocky grazing pastures.

It lies on the northern slopes of the Stiperstones, on the edge of The Paddock - a village that grew up with the local mining industry as people took on smallholdings to supplement their income. It was finally abandoned early in the 20th century, when the industry declined, but the remnants of fields and cottage walls remain.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Brook Vessons is its cluster of giant trees. Here you
 

will find a cluster of extraordinarily broad-girthed rowans, the fattest of them matched in the UK only by a portly old monster in Hampshire. The wood also holds Shropshire's biggest holly and crab apple trees.