Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire

Description
Cleobury Mortimer, a small market-town, a parish, the head of a poor law union and county court district in Salop. The town stands on the river Rea, near the boundary with. Worcestershire, Wire Forest, and the Clee Hills, 8 miles NE by E of Tenbury, 8 W of Bewdley, and 11 E of Ludlow. It has a railway station 2 miles from the town on the Tenbury and Bewdley branch of the G.W.R. A strong castle of the Mortimers stood here, and was reduced by Henry II., but no traces of it now exist. The parish church is Early English, and was restored in 1874; it was attached to a religious house of the character of a mitred abbey. An endowed school, founded by Sir L. W. Childe in 1740, is now an agricultural and commercial college. The town comprises one long street, has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.), a market hall containing an assembly room, and a workhouse. An Oddfellows hall, built in 1891, has a large room for meetings, and a reading-room. The town is a seat of petty sessions. A weekly market is held on Wednesday, a sale of cattle on the 2nd Wednesday in each month, and a hiring and pleasure fair on 2 May. Some trade is carried on in connection with the mineral produce of the Clee Hills. The parish includes also part of the ecclesiastical parish of Doddington. Acreage, 7218; population of the civil parish, 1463; of the ecclesiastical, 1236. Mawley Hall, 1 1/2 mile SE of the town, is a fine mansion, situated in a thickly-wooded park, at the head of a picturesque glen. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Hereford; value, £410 with residence. There is a Roman Catholic chapel attached to Mawley Hall, and there is also a Wesleyan chapel. Robert Langland, author of " The Vision of Piers Plowman," and friend of Wickliffe, was a native.