Parish Plan
Past, Present and Future
From the Three Forked Pole on the slopes of Titterstone Clee Hill, the Parish reaches down to Coreley Coppice, covering approximately 10 square miles.
Registered as CORNELIE, (meaning "Cranes clearing") in the Domesday Book of 1086, Coreley has been an agricultural parish for over a thousand years.
Coreley has an industrial past too, with brick makers and coal mining due to the diverse geology of the landscape. The Dhustone Quarry, now under ownership of Hansons, is still extracting the black coloured dolorite from the Hill as people have done for centuries.
In recent memory, Coreley had its own school, Post Office and shop. The local public houses were the Talbot, the Smoking Dragon, the Kremlin (then known as the Craven Arms), the Victoria and the Colliers. Boundary changes in 1980s meant that the Kremlin and the Victoria were moved into Caynham Parish.
On Hoar Edge there are four burial cairns, thought to date from the early Bronze Age, placing them in the same era as the stone wall that encloses the summit of Titterstone Clee.
The Church dedicated to St Peter has a long history too, with a Robber taking sanctuary there in 1261. In 1757 the chancel and nave were rebuilt, with the stone tower and foundations being the only remaining part of the original building.
The Three Forked Pole was a Parish Boundary marker, which appears on a map of 1571 supposedly "nearer to a place whence an old Stone Crosse stood formerly". The wooden structure has been replaced many times.
A pipe-line to carry water from the Elan Valley to Birmingham was built through and under Coreley in the 19th century, the water travels by way of an aqueduct and two tunnels called the Studley Tunnel and Brick House Tunnel. Part of the structure was renewed in the 1980s.
Today the Parish has 154 dwellings and an approximate population of 300 including pensioners, and young families alike.
The Parish Plan was undertaken so that the voice of those residents can be heard when it comes to planning decisions, and to take Coreley into a future that benefits its residents.
- The Place-Names of Shropshire by Margaret Gelling (English Place-Name Society)
- Documents Concerning the Parish of Caynham with Coreley and Hope Bagot. (Shropshire Archives)