Wheaton Aston
Introduction
| It is believed that the village of Wheaton Aston would have been in existence at the time of the Domesday Book |
| It is said that two of the major events in Wheaton Aston’s history directly affecting the size of the village, have been the great fire in 1777 which destroyed half of the village houses and the installation of better sewerage in the 1960s and 70s which had the opposite effect of allowing more houses to be built. |
| Wheaton Aston has grown over the past few years and is now a popular place to live for people working in nearby Wolverhampton, The Black Country and Telford. |
| Wheaton Aston has in the past been famous for its Timber Fellers who travelled great distances to carry out this skilled work. |
| Wheaton Aston was also well known for the high quality of its hay and wheat, said to be the best in the country, and it is from this that the village’s name derives. |
| In the 1830s Telford’s Liverpool and Junction canal (now known as the Shropshire Union canal) was constructed on the eastern side of Wheaton Aston, bringing with it the Bargees who worked their way from Liverpool to London with their cargoes. Today the canal is popular for tourists cruising throughout the area. |
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Up to the 18th century, Wheaton Aston was regarded as something of a ‘Spa’ due to the existence of a mineral spring in one of the village gardens.
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One interesting link with the past is the village’s unofficial flower emblem - The Snake’s Head Fritillary – known locally as ‘Folfallarum’. This pretty but very rare flower grows in damp, uncultivated meadows and grows wild in only a few places in the country, with Wheaton Aston being the most northerly. In the past when it grew more prolifically it was an annual event on the first Sunday in May for the villagers to pick the flower. Luckily this habit no longer exists and Mottey Meadows – the folfallarum’s natural habitat – is now in the care of English Nature.
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| Wheaton Aston provides the visitor with a range of facilities including a garage, newsagents, post office, supermarket, hairdressers, dentist, two public houses, together with a Church and a Chapel. |
| Medical services are also available on weekday mornings at the village surgery |