This 533m-high hill near Ludlow has a long, fascinating human history. Evidence suggests that hunting parties roamed the area some 7,000 years ago, and it’s home to both a Bronze Age burial cairn and an Iron Age fort. It’s even one of the few hills marked on the 13th-century Mappa Mundi map housed in Hereford Cathedral.
Titterstone Clee Hill is one of Shropshire's most prominent hills, and ironstone and coal were worked here from the Middle Ages. In the 19th century, large-scale quarrying of olive dolerite developed for road building. With true Victorian zeal, a railway was built from Ludlow to Bitterley, just below the summit, to transport the heavy stone. The quarry operated until the 1960s and many of its buildings, including large concrete sorting bays, still stud the landscape. Gamers may recognise the hill from its appearance in the 2020 game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
More futuristic buildings also gaze down from the hill: bizarre-looking weather stations and air traffic control installations known as ‘golf balls’ – weatherproof radomes.
Clee Hill is about five miles north-east of Ludlow. Walk up from the village of Cleehill, or park on the hill close to the quarry and summit.
