This addition to The Victoria History of the Counties of England series presents an authoritative history from early times to the 1980s of the 27 ancient parishes that formed the borough of Wenlock and the adjoining parts of Munslow hundred: the south Shropshire region including Wenlock, upper Corve Dale, and the Stretton Hills. Three towns are dealt with: the ancient ecclesiastical and administrative center of Wenlock; the 18th Century industrial town of Broseley with its satellite mining and eathernware manufacturing settlements; and the resort of Church Stretton.

The themes of Volume III are the government and parliamentary representation of Shropshire from their beginnings up to 1974. The long perspective allows the vicissi-tudes of successive institutions of county government to be examined thoroughly. For example, the rise of the justices of the peace is fully chronicled from their in-conspicuous origins under Edward I to the amplitude of their powers and duties in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Shropshire's medieval government had a number of peculiarities, caused by the county's fron-tier position opposite the hostile Welsh. Accordingly its...