A town is known for William Penny Brookes' version of the Olympic Games, founded in 1850; they step by step grew around importance & he renamed a two the National Olympian Games. A Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games are still contested in the town.

Nearby is Wenlock Edge, an important geological feature. Two a Edge & a town come a subject of many verse form by A.E. Housman in his famous volume [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/HouShro.html A Shropshire Lad]: ''On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble... & Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town.... Around 1909 these were set to music by Vaughan Williams as On Wenlock Edge, Song period for tenor & soft quintet.

A Victorian era romantic painter & sculptor Robert Bateman (1842-1922) lived near Much Wenlock, at the 16th-Century Benthall Hall. Within 1907 Walter Crane described his painting as of... "a magic world of romance and pictured poetry ... a twilight world of dark mysterious woodlands, haunted streams, meads of deep green starred with burning flowers, vieled in a dim and mystic light."

Within 1950 a town & its surrounding countryside were the locations of the film Gone to Earth by Powell and Pressburger. Within 1985 the film was fully restored by the British Film Archive, & premiered to smashing plaudits. A Future Statesman view claimed a restored film to become... "One of the great British regional films ...(and)... one of the most beautiful films ever to be shot of the English countryside". A film was according to a 1917 [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7055 novel] of the same title by local creator Mary Webb, a novel part inspired per Diary of Francis Kilvert''.

View as well: Little Wenlock - nearby village.