The "world famous Wenlock Limestone outcrops" are amongst "Britain’s most important geological sites". The limestone quarries in the North "demonstrate the best examples of reef development during the Silurian Period in Britain." Many species of brachiopods, trilobites and ostracod were first found at Wenlock and most of the known Wenlock group Silurian fauna comes from here. Richard Corfield also gave Wenlock edge as an example of the most spectacular reef building the world has ever known.
The reef was formed in shallow subtropical seas about 425 million years ago when the area was south of the equator at about the same latitude as the Seychelles is today. A walk by a BBC journalist in 2008 found abundant fossilised crinoids and brachiopods. The Wenlock Epoch of the Silurian Period is named for the rocks of Wenlock Edge.
Legends
Ippikin Local legend tells of a local robber and bandit named Ippikin, who buried his ill-gotten gains in the vicinity of the edge. Tales tell that should anyone stand on the escarpment and say "Ippikin, Ippikin, keep away with your long chin" that they will be pushed over the edge by the ghost of the erstwhile villain. Major's Leap In the English Civil War a Major Thomas Smallman of nearby Wilderhope Manor was a Royalist officer who was forced to flee from Cromwell's approaching troops after escaping from his manor. As he was carrying important dispatches, he was cornered on the Wenlock Edge. Rather than surrender, he galloped his horse off the edge falling some 200 feet. His horse was killed but the Major was saved by falling into an apple tree. He made his way on foot to Shrewsbury where he delivered the despatches. The area where he made the jump is known as Major's Leap and is said to be haunted by the Major and his horse.
2012 sees the introduction of a Shropshire Hills Shuttle service that operates at weekends and on bank holidays during the spring and summer. The route, called the "Wenlock Wanderer", connects the towns of Much Wenlock and Church Stretton, and operates mostly along the B4371 which runs atop the Wenlock Edge. It also calls at Ticklerton, Acton Scott and Marshbrook to the south of Church Stretton. The Shrewsbury road down Wenlock Hill is one of the steepest main roads in the United Kingdom, with a gradient of 1 in 6.
Cultural references
It is the setting for A. E. Housman's poem "On Wenlock Edge the Wood's in Trouble", poem XXXI in his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad. In 1909, Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a song cycle called On Wenlock Edge, which comprises settings of that and five other Housman poems. It is also the subject of several works by the famous artist L. S. Lowry, with his piece "A Bit of Wenlock Edge", which is a fine pencil drawing of the escarpment, detailing the woodland. Housman's poem, in turn, is at the centre of a discussion in Alice Munro's short story "Wenlock Edge." In his alternate history novelSS-GB, set in a German-occupied Great Britain during World War II, Len Deighton places a Gestapo concentration camp in Wenlock Edge.
