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Rowton is a sleepy hamlet of just 27 houses several miles to the north of the New Town of Telford. It can’t boast a shop or even a pub but it can trace its history back to Anglo-Saxon times and possibly even earlier.
However, on the afternoon of April 20th 1876 the peace was shattered when a meteorite fell to earth close to the (now abandoned) railway line. The meteorite was recovered and now resides in the Natural History Museum in Kensington, London.
In 2008 local microbrewer, Jim Preston, launched his organic ‘Rowton Meteorite’ ale which can be sampled at some of the local hostelries.
A contemporary account of the meteorite follows:
Extract from a Report of an examination of the Meteorites of Cranbourne in Australia, of Rowton in Shropshire, and of Middlesbrough in Yorkshire by Walter Flight. Published in 1882 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Roya l Society of London 173, pages 885-897.
X. THE ROWTON SIDERITE.
The metallic mass which I shall next proceed to describe is one of unusual interest in more than one respect: in the first place, before it fell only one iron meteorite was known to have fallen in Great Britain, while eight stony meteorites that have fallen in the British islands are in the national collection; and, secondly, of the more than 300 meteorites which are contained in the collection in the Natural History Museum, more than 100 are unquestionably iron meteorites, and of these the fall of seven only has been witnessed.
The circumstances attending the fall of the Rowton iron are as follows. At about 20 minutes to 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the 20th of April, 1876, a strange rumbling noise was heard in the atmosphere, followed almost instantaneously by a startling explosion resembling a discharge of heavy artillery. There was neither lightning nor thunder, but rain was falling heavily, the sky being obscured with dark clouds for some time both before and after the incident related. About an hour after the explosion Mr. George Brooks had occasion to go to a turf field in his occupation adjoining the Wellington and Market Drayton Railway, when his attention was attracted to a hole cut in the ground. The land where it fell, it should be stated, is part of the property of the Duke of Cleveland, at Rowton, in Shropshire; and Mr. Ashdown, the agent of the Duke, exerted himself in the matter, and obtained his Grace's assent to the meteorite being presented to the trustees of the British Museum.
As regards the hole which was found in the field, Mr. Brooks probed the opening with a stick and discovered a lump of metal of irregular shape, which proved to be a meteorite, weighing 7 ¾ lbs. It had penetrated to a depth of 18 inches, passing through 4 inches of soil and 14 inches of solid clay down to the gravel. The hole is nearly perpendicular, but the stone appears to have fallen in a south-easterly direction. Some men were at work at the time within a short distance, and they, together with many other people in the neighbourhood, heard the noise of explosion. According to other observers, the sound was heard as of something falling during a heavy shower of rain, accompanied by a hissing and then a rumbling noise. It is, moreover, stated that when Mr. Brooks found the mass "it was quite warm." Mr. Wills described it as being black on the surface and apparently covered with a scale of metallic oxides; but at the point where it impinged on the earth the oxides had been removed, and the metallic character of the mass had been revealed.
Cache Details
Our cache has been placed to commemorate this singular highspot in the rather uneventful history of Rowton and can be combined with our other local caches or as a diversion on the excellent Oh! Dr BEEching series.
You are looking for a small plastic container, similar in size to a film canister. There is insufficient room inside for swaps and it just contains a pencil and log. The container has been carefully hidden but should be a fairly easy find for experienced cachers. Good luck.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Lbh qba’g arrq n uvag, guvf bar’f n oerrmr