Myths & legends
"All around the Wrekin"
A living archive of the Wrekin hill and the people who have always called its shadow home.
From the 566-million-year-old rhyolite under your boots to the cobbler who tricked a giant, the families who sheltered kings, the ironmasters who lit the world, and the new-town dreamers of Telford, every layer of time is still here.
Through short, beautifully crafted videos we tell the real stories:
- the geology that made the hill
- the ice-age lakes and wetlands
- the first hunter-gatherers, the Cornovii, Romans, Wreocensæte, Normans, Civil War struggles, the Darbys, the Reynolds family, and everyone since through industrial genius and enlightenment.
- the folklore, mysteries, UFOs, and ghost tales that locals still whisper
You’ll also find in-depth articles, guest insights from archaeologists, historians, geologists, storytellers, and lifelong Wrekin dwellers – a range of knowledge from academic papers to pub-heard legends.
New episodes and stories added regularly.
Looking for help with your own project?
I’m available for freelance work:
- transcription & subtitling
- proofreading & copy-editing
- video editing & colour grading
- scriptwriting & voice-over
Get in touch → chris@wrekinsets.co.uk
The hill has watched everything. Come stand in its shadow.
Folklore and local custom
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The Wrekin is the subject of a well-known legend in Shropshire folklore. One version of the story runs as follows:
A giant called Gwendol Wrekin ap Shenkin ap Mynyddmawr with a grudge against the town of Shrewsbury decided to flood the town and kill all its inhabitants. So he collected a giant-sized spadeful of earth and set off towards the town. When in the vicinity of Wellington he met a cobbler returning from Shrewsbury market with a large sackful of shoes for repair. The giant asked him for directions, adding that he was going to dump his spadeful of earth in the River Severn and flood the town. "It's a very long way to Shrewsbury," replied the quick-thinking shoemaker. "Look at all these shoes I've worn out walking back from there!" The giant immediately decided to abandon his enterprise and dumped the earth on the ground beside him, where it became the Wrekin. The giant also scraped the mud off his boots, which became the smaller hill Ercall Hill nearby. Ironically Shrewsbury is subjected to flooding from the River Severn on frequent occasions naturally.
"All around the Wrekin",
"Right 'round the Wrekin" or
"Running round the Wrekin"
is a phrase common in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, the Black Country, Birmingham to mean "the long way round", in the same way that "round the houses" is used more widely. "To all friends around the Wrekin", meanwhile, is a toast traditionally used in Shropshire, especially at Christmas and New Year.
The amount of inclement weather in the area can also be said to be predicted by the visibility of the Wrekin. The saying being, "If you can see the Wrekin, it's going to rain. And if you can't see the Wrekin, it's already raining."
Another well known local legend has it that you cannot be a true Salopian (person born in Shropshire) unless you have passed through the Needle's Eye – a split between two large rocks close to the summit.
In 1981, an event was undertaken by local school pupils and adults called "Hands around the Wrekin", whereby a large group of people all held hands, surrounding the hill at the base.
The Wrekin has a cheese named after it called Wrekin White, which is produced and sold in a dairy in Newport, Shropshire.
In September 2010, Wiccans conducted a wicker man burning ceremony at the Wrekin to celebrate the autumnal equinox.
In popular culture
The Wrekin is mentioned in Poem XXXI of A.E. Housman's collection A Shropshire Lad. The first stanza runs:
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
In the 1969 novel A Pelican at Blandings, The Wrekin can be seen from P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, which was based on Apley Park.
The Wrekin is also mentioned in Half Man Half Biscuit's 1987 song, "Rod Hull Is Alive, Why?", with the line: "Halfway up the Wrekin with an empty flask of tea, a fog descends and takes away my visibility..." In Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense, one of the limericks starts:
There was an Old Man of the Wrekin
Whose shoes made a horrible creaking
In 2017, during an attempt by the high-street chain Poundland to challenge the trademark of Mondelēz's Toblerone bar with their own Twin Peaks confectionery, they claimed that the latter was inspired by the shape of the Wrekin, which is situated in the region of Poundland's head office in Willenhall. The chocolate bar was launched that year, and is said to be based on the Wrekin and Ercall hills. Poundland's founder, Steve Smith, lives near Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
The Wrekin is a location in the 2020 computer game Assassin's Creed Valhalla, as "The Wroeken".
Christian Bale (playing racing driver Ken Miles, from Sutton Coldfield) uses the phrase "It’s just a quick ride round The Wrekin" in 2019 film "Le Mans '66".