Claverley is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

in east

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

, England. The parish also includes the hamlets of Beobridge, Hopstone, Upper Aston, Ludstone, Heathton and a number of other small settlements. Claverley village is east of the

market town A market town is a Human settlement, settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular marketplace, market; this distinguished it from a village or ...

Bridgnorth Bridgnorth is a town in Shropshire, England. The River Severn splits it into High Town and Low Town, the upper town on the right bank and the lower on the left bank of the River Severn. The population at the 2011 Census was 12,079. Histor ...

, near the Staffordshire county boundary. The village has three

public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

s, although one is currently unoccupied and its future unclear. On the edge of the village is the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

style mansion, Brook House; it was built in 1937 for the Gibbons family, who made their money as lock and window merchants in

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city, metropolitan borough and administrative centre in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. The population size has increased by 5.7%, from around 249,500 in 2011 United ...

Church

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

of All Saints dates from the 11th century and has a rare 13th-century

wall painting A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

. On the north side of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-typ ...

, and dated to around 1200, a frieze of painted scenes some long shows a series of 15 knights in

armour Armour (British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specificall ...

, mostly engaged in single combat. It has been suggested that this portrays scenes from the 5th-century poem ''

Psychomachia The ''Psychomachia'' (''Battle of Spirits'' or ''Soul War'') is a poem by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius, from the early fifth century AD. It has been considered to be the first and most influential "pure" medieval allegory, the first in ...

'', a battle between virtues and vices, by

Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens () was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis (now Northern Spain) in 348.H. J. Rose, ''A Handbook of Classical Literature'' (1967) p. 508 He probably died in the Iberian Peninsula some ...

. A recent theory is that the knight with the horn is Roland (the only surviving medieval mural of this hero) and that the Holy Cross is the unifying theme of the mural scheme. There are also a number of tombs of the Gatacre family, who dominated the parish from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. In the Tudor period they were closely associated with religiously conservative and

recusant Recusancy (from la, recusare, translation=to refuse) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation. The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign ...

circles. The chapels in the church were originally their private preserve.

Notable people

*Sir

Robert Broke Sir Robert Broke SL (died 5 or 6 September 1558) was an English judge, politician and legal writer. Although a landowner in rural Shropshire, he made his fortune through more than 20 years' service to the City of London. MP for the City in fi ...

(died 1558), Tudor-era judge and politician was son of a Claverley family and has tomb in Claverley Church.The History of Parliament: Members 1509–1558 – BROKE, Robert (Author: Helen Miller)
/ref> *

Thomas Gatacre Thomas Gatacre (by 1533–1593) was an English politician and cleric. He was the third son of William Gatacre, and was an MP of the Parliament of England for Gatton in April 1554. His background was a strongly Catholic family at Gatacre Hall ...

(died 1593), politician, later Protestant cleric, member of family seated at Gatacre in Claverley parish. *Lieutenant-General Sir

William Forbes Gatacre Lieutenant-General Sir William Forbes Gatacre (3 December 1843 – 18 January 1906) was a British soldier who served between 1862 and 1904 in India and Africa. He commanded the British Army Division at the Battle of Omdurman and the 3 ...

(1843-1906) was a son of the family seated at Gatacre. *

Mary Whitehouse Constance Mary Whitehouse (; 13 June 1910 – 23 November 2001) was a British teacher and conservative activist. She campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permis ...

(1910-2001), the tv/radio clean-up campaigner, lived in Claverley at time she set up the National Viewers and Listeners Association in 1965, using her home as its office.Report by Toby Neal, part of 'Great Lives' series on Midlands worthies. She was reportedly living there 1965 and 1968.

References

External links

Villages in Shropshire Civil parishes in Shropshire {{Shropshire-geo-stub

Church

Notable people

See also

References

External links