Corndon Hill () is a hill in

Powys Powys ( , ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county and Preserved counties of Wales, preserved county in Wales. It borders Gwynedd, Denbighshire, and Wrexham County Borough, Wrexham to the north; the English Ceremonial counties of England, ceremo ...

Mid Wales Mid Wales ( or simply ''Y Canolbarth'', meaning "the midlands"), or Central Wales, is a region of Wales, encompassing its midlands, in-between North Wales and South Wales. The Mid Wales Regional Committee of the Senedd covered the unitary autho ...

, whose summit rises to

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

. It has a

topographic prominence In topography, prominence or relative height (also referred to as autonomous height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling ...

of , so is listed as a Marilyn. Montgomery

It is surrounded on three sides by 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 ...

, and forms a prominent landmark in the

England–Wales border The England–Wales border, sometimes referred to as the Wales–England border or the Anglo-Welsh border, runs for from the Dee estuary, in the north, to the Severn estuary in the south, separating England and Wales. It has followed broadly ...

. Corndon's prominent western edge appears to form a separate hill and is known locally as ''Lan Fawr'' (Welsh: 'Big Hill'). It is frequented by walkers and ramblers from car parks nearby, at

Mitchell's Fold Mitchell's Fold (sometimes called Medgel's Fold or Madges Pinfold) is a Bronze Age stone circle in southwest Shropshire, located near the small village of White Grit on dry heathland at the southwest end of Stapeley Hill in the Civil parishes i ...

for example. There are spectacular panoramic views from the summit, and it is itself an important

landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern-day use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures ...

for the surrounding countryside and towns like Montgomery. It is close to villages such as Church Stoke and Hyssington. The hill is

geologically Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth s ...

part of the

Shropshire Hills The Shropshire Hills are a dissected Highland, upland area and one of the natural regions of England. They lie wholly within the county of Shropshire and encompass several distinctive and well-known landmarks, such as the Long Mynd, Wenlock Edge ...

range, which lies mainly to the north, east and south of the summit. The immediate area to the west is the Vale of Montgomery and the

River Severn The River Severn (, ), at long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in t ...

. The

Cambrian Mountains The Cambrian Mountains (, in a narrower sense: ''Elenydd'') are a series of mountain ranges in Wales. The term ''Cambrian Mountains'' used to apply to most of the upland of Wales, and comes from the country's Latin name . Since the 1950s, it ...

are visible beyond to the far west. The

Stiperstones The Stiperstones () is a distinctive hill in Shropshire, England. The quartzite rock of the ridge formed some 480 million years ago. During the last Ice Age Stiperstones lay on the eastern margin of the Welsh ice sheet. The hill itself was no ...

and Shelve lie to the immediate north-east, with

Caer Caradoc Caer Caradoc (, the fort of Caradog) is a hill in the English county of Shropshire. It overlooks the town of Church Stretton and the village of All Stretton and offers panoramic views to the north towards the Wrekin, east to Wenlock Edge, a ...

and the

Long Mynd The Long Mynd is a heath and moorland plateau that forms part of the Shropshire Hills in Shropshire, England. The high ground, which is common land and designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, lies between the Stiperstones range t ...

to the east.

Archaeology

Cairn at summit of Corndon Hill - geograph

There is a large

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

near the hill summit, and several more exist in the area around the summit. Such circular stone burial cairns are common on most summits in Wales, and they commonly date from ca 2500 BC until ca 700 BC, when

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

slowly started to displace

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

for tools and other goods. Such cairns usually contain one or more cremation urns, which are often placed within a stone cyst or box within the mound. The

stone circle A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being ...

s of

and the now largely destroyed The Whetstones lie at the foot of the hill within Shropshire and Powys respectively. There is another circle nearby in Shropshire, the Hoarstones. The hill lies about east of

Offa's Dyke Offa's Dyke () is a large linear Earthworks (Archaeology), earthwork that roughly follows the England–Wales border, border between England and Wales. The structure is named after Offa of Mercia, Offa, the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon king of Mer ...

, built during the 8th century to mark the border between Wales and England (or

Mercia Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...

Stone Axe Factory (Group XII)

In 1951 Professor F W Shotton of

Birmingham University The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

identified the source of the rock used for shaft-hole

battle axe A battle axe (also battle-axe, battle ax, or battle-ax) is an axe specifically designed for combat. Battle axes were designed differently to utility axes, with blades more akin to cleavers than to wood axes. Many were suitable for use in one ha ...

splitting maul A splitting maul also known as a ''block buster'', ''block splitter'', ''chop and maul'', ''sledge axe'', ''go-devil'' or ''hamaxe'' is a heavy, long-handled axe used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of its head is like a ...

s and axe

hammer A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nail (fastener), nails into wood, to sh ...

s as

picrite Picrite basalt or picrobasalt is a variety of high-magnesium olivine basalt that is very rich in the mineral olivine. It is dark with yellow-green olivine phenocrysts (20-50%) and black to dark brown pyroxene, mostly augite. The olivine-rich ...

which had been quarried from Corndon Hill. Picrite is a hard volcanic or

igneous Igneous rock ( ), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. The magma can be derived from partial ...

rock. Production sites of stone hand axes and shaft-hole implements have been grouped by

petrology Petrology () is the branch of geology that studies rocks, their mineralogy, composition, texture, structure and the conditions under which they form. Petrology has three subdivisions: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology. Igneous ...

, and the Hyssington/Corndon Hill implements are known as Group XII. As the production of these implements in the Late

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

and Early

did not employ the same flaking techniques as flint stone axes, which leave recognisable flaking debris, the site or sites of the Corndon Group XII implements production will be harder to identify. However, the

Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust The Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT; ; YACP) was an educational charity, the objective of which was ‘to advance the education of the public in archaeology’. CPAT was established in 1975 and dissolved in 2024, when it merged with the th ...

did excavate several small quarry depressions in 2008, but found only evidence of fairly recent disturbance. A stone slab with striations, which was suggested was an example of

art, could equally well have been early plough marks or a hone for sharpening stone edges The main distribution of Group XII implements is in mid-Wales, the Midlands, the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds ( ) is a region of central South West England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper River Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham. The area is defined by the bedroc ...

, and stretching across to East Anglia. By 1988, 93 examples of these implements had been identified; all of these implements have shaft holes for

hafting Hafting is a process by which an Artifact (archaeology), artifact, often made of bone tool, bone, stone tool, stone, or tool steel, metal is attached to a ''haft'' (handle or strap). This makes the artifact more useful by allowing it to be launch ...

, and there are no examples of picrite being used to produce axes.

Quarrying

The Corndon flagstone quarries are on the south-western slopes of Corndon Hill and date from

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 ...

times. From the air, the quarries are still a prominent feature in the landscape. In this area, the altered Hope Shales of the

Ordovician The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era, and the second of twelve periods of the Phanerozoic Eon (geology), Eon. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years f ...

Period on the margin of the dolerite (

diabase Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-gra ...

) produce finely laminated flagstones, which were widely used on building on the Shropshire–Montgomeryshire border. Only a few buildings still have the flagstones as roofing slates, including the Old Post Office at Church Stoke and the porch to Hurdley Farmhouse.Moran M., (2003), ''Vernacular Buildings of Shropshire'', pg.42

References

External links

www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Corndon Hill and surrounding area
* {{coord, 52.56548, N, 3.02528, W, region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(SO306969), display=title Mountains and hills of Powys Marilyns of Wales Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Montgomery Landforms of Shropshire Mountains and hills of England