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A 'Hidden Story' at the peaceful little church in Ratlinghope:  In 1856 Revd E Donald Carr agreed to look after Ratlinghope, in addition to his home church of Woolstaston. He wrote: 

'Poor Ratlinghope was in sore need of someone to look after it when the living was offered to me in September 1856.  It had been left for many Sundays without a service, the late incumbent residing in Shrewsbury, twelve miles distant, and often unable to come over due to his bad health.  There is no house in the parish where a clergyman could live, or even procure tolerable lodgings; and if there were, there is next to nothing, as one of the parishioners said to me the other day, “to find coals to warm it with.”  

So Revd Donald agreed to take over, and every Sunday he walked from Woolstaston over the Long Mynd to take an afternoon service at Ratlinghope, then back home, over the mountain again, to lead an evening service.  

In January 1865, he was walking back from Ratlinghope when he was caught in a ferocious blizzard, with freezing winds, and was lost for 22 hours.  He was snow-blinded and his boots came off in the snowdrifts, but by then he had lost all feeling in his hands and feet.  He was tempted to lie down and rest but he knew this would mean certain death, so he battled on in the freezing cold and emerged in the Cardingmill Valley, several miles south of Woolstaston.  His account of the ordeal was published as a short book - 'A Night in the Snow'.  It causes astonishment in summer, with its tale of the reverend gentleman sheltering beneath a dead and frozen horse.  Plummeting down near-vertical snow glissades clutching his bible.  But it's a memorable reminder of the dangers of this area in winter.  What is also remarkable is that he had been on skiing holidays in Switzerland (this was 1865!) so he knew to rub his frostbitten hands and feet with snow, and not to immerse them in warm water.

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