2. Ancient Origins

In 1956, whilst ploughing in a field known as Ferney Bank, farmer Jim Brookshaw turned up two polished flint axes, one golden stained. Both were Neolithic, making them at least 4000 years old. Jim donated them to the Shrewsbury Museum were they can be found in their collections.

Earlier, in 1915, two other Neolithic stone axes were found elsewhere in Harley and there are a total of eight Neolithic finds in the Archaeological Record, these being stone axes and stone implements. There is a scatter of such related implements all over Shropshire, some fairly local. 

In 1952, an archaeologist named Lilly Chitty found an adze of the same age in land about 100m to the rear of Forge Farm. Adzes are hand held chisel like tools, which are used for shaping wood and trimming logs. This find was rather special as the very hard stone it was made of was Porcellanite, naturally derived from volcanic basalt. This type of rock is found at Tievebulliagh, in Co Antrim, Ulster, in North-east Ireland. There were Neolithic axe factories sited nearby at Rathlin Island and Cushendall.

Axes were in great demand for tree felling and woodworking to make houses, fences, palisades, henges and ritual processional routes. The axe trade was vital to the embryonic economy. Large quantities of axes were brought across the Irish Sea in dugout canoes, branch and skin boats without sails, towing wooden rafts to the Anglesey area, subject to the vagaries of tides, currents and weather. From there, there were trackways across North Wales to Oswestry, and on to Shrewsbury and the Severn Valley. Porcellanite axe heads have even been found on the south coast.

The Severn Valley from Shrewsbury to Buildwas is the earliest known area of Shropshire to have been farmed, aerial photographs showing a concentration of farmstead crop marks. Harley is only two miles from the fertile flood plain of the River Severn and would have been accessible from this area. There was an ancient track, now a road, from the Severn Valley plain, though Wigwig which went south to Domas.                                                                                                               

It can be presumed that about five millennia ago, people in small numbers roamed the area, hunting, gathering and fishing the Harley brook, which was then a river. More than anything else like all people of that revolutionary age they were looking for a place to settle. Firstly and of prime importance was to find a place where the soil was easy to work, and near a river. They would have been travelling either on barren uplands or along the rivers as the entire region was impenetrable, dense, primeval forest. 

The valley on the Harley (West) side of Wenlock Edge is glacial in origin. It was formed by the action of the Onny Valley and Clee Valley glaciers which combined on their way north to form the Severn Gorge This resulted in areas of easily worked sandy soils, including in the Domas area next to the river, a much sought after combination by the Neolithic groups seeking a place to settle.

Harley Village stands at 325 ft. on the southern slope of an extensive bed of sand and gravel. There are smaller areas of sand and gravel near Domas and Rowley. Harley Brook is bordered by a wide belt of boulder clay (the base of the glacier).

Glaciers in the Ice Age – Approx 18,000 years ago

The Shropshire Uplands