Cantlop is a small village in the English 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 ...

. It is part of the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of Berrington. Nearby villages include

Condover Condover is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is about south of the county town of Shrewsbury, and just east of the A49. The Cound Brook flows through the village on its way from the Stretton Hills to a confluence with th ...

, to the west of Cantlop, and the village of Berrington to the north-west, on the other side of the Cound Brook which flows to the north of Cantlop, and

Pitchford Pitchford is a small village in the English county of Shropshire. It is located between Cantlop and Acton Burnell and stands on an affluent of the River Severn. Pitchford takes its name from a bituminous spring/pitch in the village, located nea ...

to the south. The area is largely agricultural. The elevation at Cantlop Cross is above sea level.

Etymology

Various meanings have been suggested for the name, such as an enclosed or cut-off valleyBowcock, E. ''Shropshire place names'', Wilding & Son, 1923, p.61 or an enclosure in a waste or

common Common may refer to: As an Irish surname, it is anglicised from Irish Gaelic surname Ó Comáin. Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Com ...

.Gelling and Foxall, ''The place-names of Shropshire, Volume 1'', English Place-Name Society, 1990, p.69 Ekwall proposes a twofold origin: 'Cant' for being located on the Cound Brook, where Cound could be a name, and '-lop' from Old English 'hop', or valley.Ekwall, E. ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names'', 4th Ed., Oxford University Press, 1987 But being first recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

as ''Cantelop'', and in an area highly coveted by Norman knights, it is very possible that the name comes from the Old French chante lou, lit. sing wolf (wolf song), for a place where wolves could be heard howling. This would be supported by the frequent occurrence the toponym in France today as well as its various alternative spellings, ''Chanteloup'', ''Canteloup'', ''Chantelouve'', ''Canteleu'' and ''Canteleux''.

History

To the north of the village there is a

cast-iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content of more than 2% and silicon content around 1–3%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloying elements determine the form in which its car ...

single-span bridge — the Cantlop Bridge — now generally accepted to have been designed by

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well ...

, who was the County Surveyor of Shropshire.Cragg, R. ''Civil Engineering Heritage: Wales and west central England'', Telford, 1997, p.242. The bridge crosses the Cound Brook and was built in 1818. Today it no longer takes road traffic, as a modern bridge exists adjacent to it, but is open to pedestrians. The bridge carried the 1797 turnpike road from Shrewsbury to

Acton Burnell Acton Burnell () is a village and parish in the English county of Shropshire. Home to Concord College, it is also famous for an early meeting of Parliament where the Statute of Acton Burnell was passed in 1283. The population at the 2011 cen ...

, which continued through Cantlop itself. A late 18th-century

milestone A milestone is a numbered marker placed on a route such as a road, railway, railway line, canal or border, boundary. They can indicate the distance to towns, cities, and other places or landmarks like Mileage sign, mileage signs; or they c ...

exists just to the north of Cantlop Cross (the crossroad junction at Cantlop) which marks from (the centre 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 ...

(written on the milestone as "Salop"); it is now Grade II listed.

Centre of Shropshire

On 1 August 2014, on BBC Radio Shropshire, it was confirmed by Andy Stegall from

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

that Cantlop is the geographic centre of the

ceremonial county Ceremonial counties, formally known as ''counties for the purposes of the lieutenancies'', are areas of England to which lord-lieutenant, lord-lieutenants are appointed. A lord-lieutenant is the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, monarch's repres ...

of Shropshire. This is also shown on the Ordnance Survey's mapping of the ceremonial counties, where the name of Shropshire is centred immediately to the southwest of Cantlop Cross.Ordnance Survey
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References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Shropshire Extremities of Shropshire