h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Hawkstone Park, Shropshire, UK - A8490116
Author: Cyzaki - U223973

I've ground to a bit of a halt with this one - what else do people think I should include?

Oooo, somewhere I have local knowledge of .

All this is from memory and needs verifying but might give some pointers for searching, and if I have time I’ll have a look around at what I can find too.

There are said to be mines on top of one of the sandstone outcrops. Went on a tour once, the guide said Roman but I’m not sure whether it’s hard fact. I think these may be the caves you mention? Much of the space had been enlarged and ‘follyised’ but the guide pointed to pick marks in places and also took us, in pitch dark, down a narrow passage he said wasn’t usually open to the public.

The geology could be included to give more of a sense of place. What strikes me most about the place, (as a non golfer ), are the high sandstone cliffs, the passageways between them, the wide wooded valley from Paradise and the view of the Shropshire plains.

Apparently it was a well known and popular place for people from the Potteries at one time, 1800s, early 1900s – they came in coach loads. Probably what gave rise to the need for the inn you mentioned.

There are Ravens there. They’re not that common. The groundsman liases with wildlife bods to manage areas for wildlife. They put up nest boxes for all sorts of birds but have particular success with spotted flycatchers, again not that common anymore and another species that I can’t recall but which was out of its normal range there. They also have bird-ringing and badger watching sessions.

The BBC Narnia tv series was filmed there. Must be some links around for that.

There’s an old ruined mill – great place for bats.

Some enterprising person who went diving in the lake for golf balls and found a staggering number, was successfully charged with theft. (I thought that was mean.)

Hope some of that might be of some use ,
Waz

Thanks, I'll try and work some (or most ) of that in to the entry.

Did some looking up. Hawkestone's frustrating - you know it has history but no one seems to have really done much fact finding.

http://www.shropshirerocks.org/geologicaltime/triassic some nice descriptions of Hawkestone’s red sandstone origins.

http://www.serve.com/scmc/hawkstone.html has a little on the mines – says traces of azurite and malachite were found .

Have you seen this!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/panoramas/hawkstone_park_view_one_360.shtml ‘Panoramic vista’s’. Very . It includes what Dr Johnson called the ‘awful precipice’. You can speed it up and zoom in and get quite sea-sick…

http://www.mythstories.com/foxknobA.html A bit about Fox’s Knob, in the park and the legend of twin giants at Red Castle, on the opposite ridge.

http://www.showcaves.com/english/gb/misc/Hawkstone.html fingers the two Miss Hills for the shell and fossil pebble-dashing vandalism of the caves/mines.

There may be some bits in British History Online’s pages – my pc ran into problems with edit/find and I lost the links. I got them by searching on Weston-under-Redcastle though, rather than Hawkstone if you want to track them down.

My Shropshire Geology book had nothing to offer. The trouble with this NW quarter of Shropshire is that it’s so dull compared to the rest of the county which contains almost all geological timezones. The new red sandstone of NW is also the least interesting of them.

The rest of shropshire's really , geologically speaking.

Other than that I’ve one of those ‘King Arthur woz ‘ere’ leaflets that most English counties seem to have, which said in 1920 an early Roman scent jar was found hidden in the base of an eagle statue in the Grotto. It’s been suggested it may have been the start of the legend of the Grail. The Roman vase in the statue’s true enough – what’s not at all sure is who put it there and when.


On the wildlife thing – it’s the Shropshire Ornithological Society that the wildlife bods come from – they organise Dawn Chorus walks in spring. I’ve been on a couple of those, that's the best time to see Hawkestone (no golfers) and they include a very full English Breakfast . They say they’ve 201 species of birds.

Waz

Thanks for all that! I'll get down to writing some more as soon as I have a bit of free time (might not be for a couple of days now).

Nope, it's not happening. I've completely run out of steam with this, can't find the motivation to add your suggestions! I'll remove it from the EGWW for now, and I'll see if I do more work on it later.