Return to introduction or Go to next location Fairoak GrangeA rainstorm roles along Fairoak Grange valley. The persistent rain soaks into the sandstone ground and into the water table. A fracture or feature in the ground allows the water table to break through to the surface, under pressure this appears as a spring. This is how the River Sow is born. As it emerges it flows into a collecting pool to be slowly released on its way.
As the Sow makes its journey eastward towards Fairoak it is a small stream, in places it is only a trickle giving a false impression of the strength, size and power it will have as it reaches the end of its journey near Shugborough. This small stream can quickly change in size and power when in flood.
In this valley there are still traces of mediaeval and later industry if you know where to look. Old tracks in the woods are still to be seen where iron ore and the finished product iron was transported. Furnaces that once glowed red hot now lie cold, buried beneath the centuries of leaf mould. Where men once toiled in the red hot heat all traces have gone except for the clinker that lies under feet. Mounds are the only evidence of these furnaces today. How many men worked in this valley and for how long is impossible to say. Few people know just how important this area was in early days.
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