Notable People
Residents of the town did include Pete Postlethwaite, who used to live in Minton, near Little Stretton, which was the home of Oliver Sandys. Also, the Olympic bronze-medal archer, Alison Williamson lives in All Stretton and is a member of the town's archery club. In the 1930s, E. M. Almedingen, the biographer and children's writer, lived in the town, and, following retirement, the writer Kenneth Bird moved to Church Stretton.
The 'White House' nursing home on Sandford Avenue, demolished in 2006 to make way for a housing development, was previously the family home of Silvester Horne a Congregationalist minister, Liberal MP for Ipswich, and father of the BBC broadcaster Kenneth Horne. The town's Silvester Horne Institute, on the south end of High Street, commemorates his name. He is buried in the cemetery on Cunnery Road, as also is amateur footballer Frederick Green (1851-1928), who died at his last home in the town, The Uplands.
Hesba Stretton came to Church Stretton often before moving away from Shropshire, becoming an established author. There is a plaque to her memory in St. Laurence's Church together with a window depicting the figure of "Jessica" from her immensely popular story Jessica's First Prayer. A sister owned a house, Caradoc Lodge in neighbouring All Stretton, the latter village (within Church Stretton parish) said to be the source of her pen-surname.
Stephen Laurie, a notable amateur astronomer, lives in the area and has discovered a number of asteroids from observatories at Church Stretton and nearby Ragdon (the area not suffering from much light pollution). One of the asteroids discovered has been named after the town — 11626 Church Stretton.
Although officially listed as living at Southampton, the port from which he worked, Leopold Turner, a steward on board R.M.S. Titanic, had his family home in Church Stretton, according to a newspaper report also identifying him as the one Shropshire person lost in the ship's sinking in 1912.
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