Baschurch Church

Baschurch is a large village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. grid reference SJ425220

It lies in North Shropshire, north of Shrewsbury. Population: 1,475 (2001 census). The village has strong links to Shrewsbury to the south-east, Oswestry to the north-west, and Wem to the north-east. Baschurch is twinned with the town of Giat in the French département of Puy-de-Dôme, in the Auvergne région. There is a large village not far from Baschurch called Ruyton-XI-Towns.

A major feature of the village is All Saints' Church (Church of England)[1] which is one of the oldest standing structures in the village (perhaps the oldest). A timber church which burnt down is believed to have stood on the same site previously. Leading industrialist and builder Thomas Telford made numerous major alterations to the modern sandstone church.

The village has two schools including Baschurch Church of England Primary School, and the Corbet School formerly known as Baschurch Secondary Modern School. Just outside the village is Walford College, an agricultural and sports college which in 2002 merged with Oswestry-based North Shropshire College to form Walford and North Shropshire College.

In 2000 a large stone made of local sandstone was erected in the modern centre of the village to commemorate the Millennium. Similar smaller stones were erected in neighbouring communities.

The Shrewsbury to Chester Line passes through the village, though the Victorian Railway Station was closed under the Beeching Axe. There have been repeated efforts to bring the station back into use, most recently in Autumn 2008, with the support of Baschurch Parish Council and the Shrewsbury-Chester Rail Users' Association. In September 2009, a public meeting organised by the Baschurch Station Group, was attended by 250 local people and received extensive media coverage.^[1][2]

History [link]

Earliest references to Baschurch are under the Welsh name Eglwyssau Bassa (Churches of Bassa) where the king or prince Cynddylan of the region or town of Pengwern is said to have been buried in the early 7th century. This comes from a poem entitled Canu Heledd possibly written between the 10th and 12th centuries.^[3]. It is believed that Baschurch may have been the capital of this Kingdom. The poem also refers to a battle occurring between the Welsh and the invading Saxons at the ancient fort, The Berth, just outside the village.

Local tradition holds that the Berth Pool and its ancient earthworks outside the village are the resting place of the legendary King Arthur.

Baschurch appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Bascherche. In medieval times, several properties in the parish, including Adcote Mill, were owned by Haughmond Abbey near Shrewsbury^[4].

The world's first Orthopaedic Hospital was established at Florence House in Baschurch by Sir Robert Jones and Dame Agnes Hunt in 1900 as a convalescent home for crippled children and later to treat wounded from the First World War. The hospital moved to Oswestry in the 1921.

On February 13, 1961 a passenger train travelling from Shrewsbury to Chester collided with a freight train which was partially shunted into a siding in Baschurch. Three people died in the accident. Television footage of the wreckage is available from the BBC.

Broadband internet [link]

Baschurch was one of just six places in the United Kingdom to succeed in a competition held by BT to get super-fast broadband. The winners of the "Race to Infinity" competition were announced on 6 January 2011 and Baschurch came sixth. BT originally promised that only the top 5 places would go through with the upgrade (involving optic fibre-based infrastructure), but were impressed enough by the response in Baschurch.^[5]

References [link]

Coordinates: 52°47′33″N 2°51′15″W / 52.79249°N 2.85414°W / 52.79249; -2.85414

External links [link]

Media related to Baschurch at Wikimedia Commons