Rectory Wood & Fields

“By a series of twisty byways and capricious diagonals, I’d discovered the least stressful location in England: its name is Rectory Wood, Church Stretton.”

John Walsh, The Independent 19th May 2009

Rectory Wood and Field is as close to the centre of Church Stretton as you can get, located near to the Visitor Information Centre and Library on Church Street.

As the site name suggests, the area is part woodland and part meadow. Both the wood and field comprise steep banks adjoining and rising to meet the Long Mynd to the west.

It was formally declared a Local Nature Reserve in March 2022.

Rectory Wood once formed part of the grounds of the Rectory in Church Stretton. In around 1770 the Rector, the Rev. John Mainwaring, made great changes to create a designed woodland landscape garden.

Capability Brown

We know that Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, a friend of Mainwaring and arguably the greatest British landscape gardener, visited Church Stretton and probably inspired the design at Rectory Wood.

A ‘Capability Brown’ landscape was usually on a grand scale, and involved re-shaping the terrain and enhancing rivers to create lakes and waterfalls. He was responsible for landscaping some of the finest parks in Britain, including locally Weston Park (Staffordshire) and Berrington Hall (Herefordshire).
Tong Castle was Brown’s only creation in Shropshire, now destroyed and partly under the M54. So Rectory Wood is Shropshire’s nearest connection to the work of this great designer.

Preserved Landscape

Here the dramatic landscape of a valley with steep hillsides already existed, so the designing lay in the planting of a variety of trees and flowering shrubs, creating winding paths, and including surprising features such as fanciful buildings or opening up spectacular views. The partially preserved remains of this designed landscape can still be discovered: there are winding walks, a stream and a yew-ringed pool, the remains of small buildings, and a variety of views out into the valley and beyond.

From the gate (7) an open grassy bank leads down to the site of the former picturesque Tiger Hall on the right, whilst straight ahead is a small car park and beyond the Allen Coppice Sculpture Trail (green route) and down the hill to the left lies Church Stretton.

We hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of an 18th century pleasure ground. The landscapes that Capability Brown and his contemporaries created took many years to mature. Most of his clients would probably not have lived to see the best results of his creations. Things have grown and changed since the original planting, and timber from these woods was always used in part for commercial purposes – for ship-building in the 18th century, or props in the mines, or for the First World War trenches. Now volunteers work to maintain this attractive and historic landscape.