Ghost
The Major's Leap
Surrender, or the edge. He took the edge.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Wooded limestone escarpment with steep drop
- Legend from
- Civil War tradition
- Tone
- Eerie
Cornered by Cromwell's men, he spurred his horse straight off the edge.
Wenlock Edge is a long wooded limestone escarpment. In the Civil War, Major Thomas Smallman of Wilderhope Manor, a Royalist carrying dispatches, escaped from Cromwell's troops and was cornered on the Edge. Rather than surrender, he spurred his horse over the steep drop. The horse was killed, but Smallman's fall was broken by a tree and he got away. Burne, writing in 1883, calls it a crab tree; the Wilderhope page says an apple tree. The spot is known as Major's Leap, and the ghosts of Smallman and his horse are said to appear there. Wilderhope, built in 1585 for Francis Smallman, still stands below the Edge.