Bomere Pool is a large mere lying between the villages of

Bayston Hill Bayston Hill is a large village and civil parish in central Shropshire, England. It is south of the county town Shrewsbury and located on the main A49 road, the Shrewsbury to Hereford road. Occupied continuously since before the Middle Ages, ...

and

Condover Condover is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is about south of the county town of Shrewsbury, and just east of the A49. The Cound Brook flows through the village on its way from the Stretton Hills to a confluence with the R ...

in the county of

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, 4.7 miles (7.5 kilometres) south of the county town of Shrewsbury. The pool is classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest as the most oligotrophic (nutrient poor) body of water on the Shropshire - Cheshire plain. Once open to the public, Bomere Pool and the surrounding woodlands are now privately owned and operate a centre of towed water sports throughout the year. A public right of way runs close to the Northern Shore for much of its length. There is a small resident population housed in a number of flats.

History

Geology

Vast tracts of Shropshire were covered with ice sheets during the last ice age about 18,000 years ago. When the ice sheets retreated large ice blocks were left isolated, often surrounded and covered by the moraine, gravels and clays left behind by the

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...

s. When this glacial ice eventually melted sediments collapsed into holes or depressions referred to as ' Kettle Holes'. These holes had no means of drainage and would either turn into steep sided lakes, usually referred to as Meres in Shropshire or, if the lake completely filled with clay and peat, became a moss bog. Bomere Pool is a particularly fine example of a kettle hole mere.

Use by humans

Bomere Pool has been utilised by humans for thousands of years. There is the archaeological mounded remains of a suspected

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

settlement at the south east corner of the mere. Two thousand years ago there was a substantial Roman army camp and an associated civilian settlement on the pool side. Shropshire's oldest ghost of a Roman soldier seeking his lover who was lost in a sudden flood has been sighted on Easter Day, in the years when

Easter Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...

falls on the same day as it did the year he died.

Literary connections

The 1920s romantic novelist

Mary Webb Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and people whom she knew. Her ...

located the action of her most famous novel

Precious Bane ''Precious Bane'' is a historical romance by Mary Webb, first published in 1924. It won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1926. Synopsis The story is set in rural Shropshire during the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central charac ...

around Bomere Pool, which she called ''Sarn Mere'' in the book. Webb wrote the book while living in Spring Cottage on Lyth Hill near

and at her London home. The travel writer S.P.B. Mais wrote of being taken to Bomere Pool to see Webb’s setting for Sarn in the 1930s. Bomere Pool also featured in several of the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

detective novels about

Brother Cadfael Brother Cadfael is the main fictional character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters". The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedic ...

by novelist

Ellis Peters Edith Mary Pargeter (28 September 1913 – 14 October 1995), also known by her ''nom de plume'' Ellis Peters, was an English author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her transla ...

Recent history

Between the 1960s and 1980s the pool was a popular destination for local residents who visited on hot summer days with their young children to splash about in the water and eat meals nearby from a small cafe and ice cream stall. A free squash court built by a local farmer and a

public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

were also open to the public. In 1986 a woman out for a walk discovered the bones of a

woolly mammoth The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with '' Mammuthus s ...

and three juvenile mammoths in an associated nearby moss and gravel bog sink hole.The Bomere Mammoths

Bomere Pool today

In 1989 the property changed hands and the lake, beach and facilities were closed to the general public and made available exclusively for residents, members and guests of the private Wakeboard &

Water Skiing Water skiing (also waterskiing or water-skiing) is a surface water sport in which an individual is pulled behind a boat or a cable ski installation over a body of water, skimming the surface on two skis or one ski. The sport requires suffic ...

Club that use the pool for regular water sports. Public access is restricted to the right of way close to the Northern shore. There are of pool nestled in a secluded traditional forest of a further , woodland that once formed part of Bayston Hill and Condover Royal hunting forest. The closed public house has now been converted into multiple occupancy, individual private flats.

References

External links

Bomere Wakeboard and Water Ski Club WebpageBomere, a site of Special Scientific InterestPhoto of the Lake
{{authority control Towed water sports Lakes of Shropshire