The Register of Ratlinghope

Transcribed from the 1909 Shropshire Parish Register Society edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
Ratlinghope is a parish situate on the road from Shrewsbury to Bishop’s Castle, four miles west from Church Stretton and twelve miles south from Shrewsbury, in the hundred of Purslow, rural deanery of Bishop’s Castle, archdeaconry of Ludlow, and diocese of Hereford. The township of Gatten is in Ford hundred. Its area is 5,456 acres, of which 3,756 are arable and pasture, 200 woodland, and about 1,500 common. The population in 1901 was 197. The surface is hilly, and the soil is sand and clay, on a rocky subsoil. An old Roman road, the Portway, runs between Ratlinghope and Church Stretton, and is continued along the crest of the Longmynd in a north-easterly direction. In the neighbourhood are some British camps and tumuli.
In 1845 the manor and advowson of Ratlinghope were purchased by Robert Scott, Esq., of Great Barr, M.P. for Walsall, and at his death in 1856 they passed to his son John Charles Addyes Scott, Esq., who died in 1888, and on the death of his widow in 1907, their son, James Robert Scott, Esq., became lord of the manor and patron of Ratlinghope.
Stitt and Gatten, two miles north-west, were members of the Domesday manor of Ratlinghope. Between 1204 and 1210, William de Botterell confirmed a moiety of Stitt to Haughmond Abbey. Robert Corbet, of Caus, also gave to the Canons of Haughmond his culture of Gateden, and an assart situate near their culture of Gatteden. There was a church at Stitt in the reign of Henry II., but since the dissolution of Haughmond Abbey nothing more is heard of it, and its district with Gatten was annexed to the parish of Ratlinghope. W. E. M. Hulton-Harrop, Esq., is lord of the manor of Gatten, which, he inherited in 1866 from his maternal grandfather, Jonah Harrop, Esq.
The south and only door was made in 1625, and erected by Humfrey Bigge and Thomas Bright, then Churchwardens. The roof may be of the same date. There are two fonts. In 1341, Ratlinghope Church was in the Deanery of Clun. It was afterwards held to be in the Deanery of Pontesbury. It is not named in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1534-5. Until the dissolution of the Priory it was considered as extra-parochial and extra-diocesan.