Cleeton St Mary (or Cleeton) is a small village in south

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. It lies on the northeast slope of

Titterstone Clee Hill Titterstone Clee Hill, sometimes referred to as Titterstone Clee or Clee Hill, is a prominent hill in the rural English county of Shropshire, rising at the summit to above sea level. It is one of the Clee Hills, in the Shropshire Hills Are ...

, at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of above sea level. Cleeton forms 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 ...

Bitterley Bitterley is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Shropshire, England. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 802, increasing to 902 at the 2011 Census. The village is about east of Ludlow on the west ...

, even though the parish largely exists on the other side of Titterstone Clee, and Cleeton is effectively detached (by road). Cleeton St Mary is a parish

ward Ward may refer to: Division or unit * Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward * Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...

. Large areas of

common land Common land is collective land (sometimes only open to those whose nation governs the land) in which all persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person ...

remain around the village; the countryside here is largely

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Types of pasture Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, c ...

(for grazing of sheep and horses), woodland and

moorland Moorland or moor is a type of Habitat (ecology), habitat found in upland (geology), upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands and the biomes of montane grasslands and shrublands, characterised by low-growing vegetation on So ...

. The

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

of Saint Mary (

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

) is situated here but is relatively new, being built in the second half of the 19th century (along with the schoolhouse). It is grade II listed. Cleeton is mentioned in the

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 ...

novel ''

The Virgin in the Ice ''The Virgin in the Ice'' is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, set in late 1139. It is the sixth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles, first published in 1982 ( 1982 in literature). It was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4 in 1992 and for ...

'' which is set in 1139.

References

Villages in Shropshire {{Shropshire-geo-stub

See also

References