The Much Wenlock Olympian Society Games and Heritage Trail

Much Wenlock is one of the oldest settlements in Shropshire and William Penny Brookes gave the town the distinction of links with the modern Olympic movement. However, Brookes began his work, not with sport, but with literacy when he set up the Agricultural Reading Society in 1841. Brookes was born in 1809 in the house where he lived, and later died in 1895, the subject of a blue plaque in the town today.

Brookes trained as a doctor, like his father and two brothers but he also had many other interests from international botany, to local projects like the establishment of the Wenlock Gas Company, and more importantly the Wenlock and Severn Railway Company, which also built the local railway station in 1864. After studying at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and qualifying in medicine and surgery, Brookes furthered his education in Padua, Italy and Paris, France before the death of his father in 1830 required him to return home and take over the family practice.

So the Agricultural Reading Society was more like an early lending library, part of Brookes’ wider commitment to the welfare of all classes. After many donations of books and other cultural objects, the classes diversified to botany, art and music. A separate Wenlock Olympian class was established in 1850 to hold an annual Games:

​‘To promote the moral physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town of Wenlock, and especially the working classes, by the encouragement of out-door recreation and by the award of prizes annually at public meetings for skill in athletic exercises, and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments.’

We can see the idea of a healthy body and a healthy mind linked by Brookes’ philosophy. Although pre-dated by earlier examples of Ho-lympic, Olimpick, and Olympian Games in Britain, Penny Brookes inaugurated his Wenlock Olympian class at an important time in the development of modern sport, as increased codification of rules standardized different codes with their own bureaucracy, and regimes.

The first Wenlock Olympian Games in October 1850 were a mixture of reinterpreted classical activities, like Tilting at the Ring, and traditional country sports, with some athletic contests that we would recognize today. There were often deliberately ‘fun’ events such as a blindfold wheelbarrow race, or ‘old women’ racing over a set distance to win a pound of tea, which was quite a prestigious reward in the context of the times. Importantly though, all sections of the population were included, which made the events nationally and internationally famous, although at least one event was restricted to residents of Wenlock Borough, to keep local participants happy.

Internationally, Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Albanian exiled in Romania, had begun to fund his own Athens Olympian Games in 1859, open to subjects of the Greek nation. Brookes sent £10 in support on behalf of the Wenlock Olympian Committee and the Greek Committee reciprocated by naming a Wenlock Prize to be awarded to the important victorious ‘long’ or ‘Sevenfold’ race. Zappas’ Games were held until 1896 and interchanges remained cordial with Much Wenlock. By 1860 the name had changed to the Wenlock Olympian Society with Petros Velissarios, winner of the first Wenlock prize in Athens becoming an honorary member. Expansion also followed as the Shropshire Olympian Games took place the same year in Shrewsbury, also overseen by Brookes. The idea of a touring games, moving between different venues, staged and funded by the hosts was important here. By 1867, crowds could number in the tens of thousands. John Hulley of Liverpool and Ernst Ravenstein of the German Gymnasium in London helped Brookes to form a National Olypian Association in 1865.

Baron De Coubertin became interested in physical and mental fitness, and sport as a way of international collaboration, after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. In 1889 de Coubertin, organizer of the International Congress on Physical Education, was in England looking at education and health regimes. Brookes invited the young nobleman to Wenlock, as he shared De Coubertin’s interest in physical education as a compulsory subject in national schools, for the many, as well as in private schools for the few. While De Coubertin was to form the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at a meeting at The Sorbonne in 1894, and stage the first version of his own games in Athens in 1896, he credited Dr William Penny Brookes as amongst his most important influences. If you’d like to look at the history of the IOC Olympic Games, then every official report can be accessed for free via the digital library at LA84.

This historical link between Much Wenlock and the IOC Olympic Games was made in a variety of ways when London became the first city to host the IOC version of the Olympic Summer Games in 2012. The previous occasions had been in 1908, and 1948. Until 1924 there were no separate Summer and Winter Games. One of the mascots for 2012 was called Wenlock, and the second mascot, Mandeville, commemorated the first Stoke Mandeville Games, held in 1948, which went on to become the Paralympic Games. Today, the Wenlock Olympian trail provides a way of marking key sites of development in this picturesque town, and of course the history and heritage of the Games. Unlike the IOC Games for elite athletes, Wenlock Games enable everyone the opportunity to become a potential Olympian! Some elements, like the live Arts Festival, remind us of the ancient history of the Olympic Games, while others like Kwik Cricket and Under 11s hockey remind us that Penny Brookes, like De Coubertin, wanted the youth of the world to be united by sport, rather than divided by war. If you can’t wait until July 2017 for most events, the half marathon takes place on May 14th 2017, and the route will take in Ironbridge – the birthplace of modern industry and a World Heritage Site. Read more about Olympic History and the sites of modern sport in Jean’s new book.