HARTON HOLLOW

Walk in the woods along Wenlock Edge and you tread on an ancient barrier reef.

Plants such as herb paris, sanicle and sweet woodruff grow here because they thrive on the limestone that formed from the fossilised remains of those ancient shelled creatures, making this one of the richest stands of woodland in the county. Multitudes of corals and other limy-shelled beings lived here 400 million years ago, in a warm clear sea, when this bit of land destined to become Shropshire lay in the southern tropics.

As part of the Marches Way, footpaths twist and turn through the wind-blown woodlands along the top of the Edge, much of which is owned by the National Trust.

"On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble", wrote the poet, A.E.Housman. Disturbed these woods certainly have been and by more than high winds. Large swathes of them were replaced with exotic trees and conifers in the last century. Now though, these in turn are being felled, with oak, ash and other natives restored in their place.