Bomere Pool is a large
mere lying between the villages of
Bayston Hill and
Condover in the county of
Shropshire
Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...
,
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, south of the
county town
In Great Britain and Ireland, a county town is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county, and the place where public representatives are elected to parliament. Following the establishment of county councils in ...
of
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...
. The pool is classified as a
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...
as the most oligotrophic (nutrient poor) body of water on the Shropshire - Cheshire plain.
Once open to the public, Bomere Pool and the surrounding woodlands are now privately owned and operate a centre of towed water sports throughout the year. A public right of way runs close to the Northern Shore for much of its length. There is a small resident population housed in a number of flats.
History
Geology
Vast tracts of Shropshire were covered with ice sheets during the
last ice age about 18,000 years ago. When the ice sheets retreated large ice blocks were left isolated, often surrounded and covered by the
moraine
A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris (regolith and Rock (geology), rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a gla ...
, gravels and clays left behind by the
glacier
A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...
s. When this glacial ice eventually melted sediments collapsed into holes or depressions referred to as '
kettle holes'. These holes had no means of drainage and would either turn into steep sided lakes, usually referred to as meres in Shropshire or, if the lake completely filled with clay and peat, became a
moss bog. Bomere Pool is a particularly fine example of a kettle hole mere.
Use by humans
Bomere Pool has been utilised by humans for thousands of years. There is the archaeological mounded remains of a suspected
Iron Age
The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...
settlement at the south east corner of the mere. Two thousand years ago there was a substantial
Roman army camp and an associated
civilian settlement on the pool side. Shropshire's oldest ghost of a Roman soldier seeking his lover who was lost in a sudden flood has been sighted on Easter Day, in the years when
Easter
Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...
falls on the same day as it did the year he died.
Literary connections
The 1920s romantic novelist
Mary Webb
Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her ...
located the action of her most famous novel
Precious Bane around Bomere Pool, which she called ''Sarn Mere'' in the book. Webb wrote the book while living in Spring Cottage on Lyth Hill near
Bayston Hill and at her London home. The travel writer
S.P.B. Mais wrote of being taken to Bomere Pool to see Webb's setting for Sarn in the 1930s.
Bomere Pool also featured in several of the
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
detective novels about
Brother Cadfael
Brother Cadfael is the main fictional character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name Ellis Peters. The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedic ...
by novelist
Ellis Peters
Edith Mary Pargeter (28 September 1913 – 14 October 1995), also known by her pen name Ellis Peters, was an English author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of ...
.
Recent history
Between the 1960s and 1980s the pool was a popular destination for local residents, particularly on warmer days when families with children enjoyed splashing about in the water, with a cafe and ice-cream stall providing refreshments. There was also a free squash court, built by a local farmer, and a
public house
A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...
open to all.
In 1986 a woman out for a walk discovered the bones of a
woolly mammoth
The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African ...
and three juvenile mammoths in an associated nearby moss and gravel bog sink hole.
The Bomere Mammoths
Bomere Pool today
In 1989 the property changed hands; the lake, beach and facilities were closed to the general public and made available exclusively only for residents, members and guests of the private Wakeboard & Water Skiing
Water skiing (also waterskiing or water-skiing) is a surface water sport in which an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation over a body of water, skimming the surface on one or two skis. The sport requires sufficien ...
Club that use the pool for regular water sports. Public access is now restricted to the right of way close to the Northern shore. There are of pool nestled in a secluded traditional forest of a further , woodland that once formed part of Bayston Hill and Condover Royal hunting forest. The closed public house has now been converted into multiple occupancy, individual private flats.
See also
* Condover
References
External links
Bomere Wakeboard and Water Ski Club Webpage
Bomere, a site of Special Scientific Interest
Photo of the Lake
{{authority control
Towed water sports
Lakes of Shropshire
Kettle lakes in the United Kingdom