The Wenlock Olympian Games: A Victorian Era Festival in a Small English Town that Created Today's Modern Olympics in 1850

 The founding charter of the Wenlock Olympian Games, written by a group of concerned citizens who wished, above all else, to improve their small town’s physical and moral health stated that the Games were established for, “the promotion of the moral, physical and the intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town and neighborhood of Wenlock and especially of the working classes, by the encouragement of outdoor recreation and by the award of prizes annually at public meetings for skill in Athletic exercise and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments.”  

The founding charter of the Wenlock Olympian games was authored by members of a group that called themselves the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS) in February of 1850 and its main aim was to establish something, in a true Victorian Era caste-system way of thinking that they called “The Olympian Class”.  Though, the idea of creating a so-called Olympian Class of citizens to us today conjures up images of a totalitarian state’s social engineering program gone crazy--in 1850’s England the ideas of the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society and the impetus behind the creation of the Wenlock Olympian Games was considered quite progressive and maybe even too forward thinking and controversial for many class-conscious straightlaced Victorian Era citizens in smalltown Shropshire, England.  Most well-to-do Victorians wanted nothing whatsoever to do with anything at all that pertained to the “working classes” especially when it involved playing in so-called silly games.

Wenlock is a very small town located in a largely rural area of Shropshire.  In the 19th century Wenlock was a market town, a vital agrarian crossroads, where Shropshire farmers would meet to sell their produce and exchange gossip and the news of the day, but despite its status as a market town, never in its long history which dates back to the early medieval period did the population of Wenlock ever exceed more than a few thousand citizens.

Despite its small size the Wenlock Olympian Games--the precursor to the international spectacle that just took place this summer in Paris--was largely the creation and brainchild of one remarkable man who spent his entire life of over eighty years living and working in that rural Shropshire market town--William Penny Brookes.

During his lifetime William Penny Brookes was so many different things, he wore so many different hats and played so many different roles, that it could be said that Brookes is almost like the true personification of the Victorian Era renaissance gentleman brought to life.  He was both an educator and a trained lawyer and a certified physician who spent his entire life in Wenlock, after a brief sojourn in continental Europe during his teen years and early twenties to earn his medical degree, working for nearly six decades as Wenlock’s primary physician and only surgeon.

William Penny Brookes

Many of his published works on botany (of all things!) are still consulted by researchers in the field today, and on top of all of that, during the 19th century Brookes was England’s foremost proponent of the value of physical education, and public education in general, for Great Britain’s ever growing poor and working class during the height of England’s Industrial Revolution.

More than anything else this remarkable man--William Penny Brookes--was a social reformer whose progressive ideals when it came to class consciousness were decades ahead of their time.  It was his desire for reform and social improvement that gave rise to the Wenlock Olympian Games and made William Penny Brookes the founding father of today’s modern Olympic Games.

To this very day the Wenlock Olympian Games are still held each year, and still contain a variety of different events both athletic, intellectual and just plain fun in nature.  However, the first incarnation of the games, which took place over the course of three days in October of 1850 thanks to William Penny Brookes and the then named Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society, probably looked very different from the type of competition that we would expect today.

That original 1850 version of the Olympian Games looked like part serious athletic competition and part company picnic or medieval carnival.  The original games had the typical track and field sports and competitions in archery and weightlifting, but they also contained competitions in old-fashioned English countryside games such as cricket, football that was more akin to rugby and played by a mob of citizens, as well as a game called “quoits” and old form of ring-toss which has largely evolved into the modern backyard barbecue game of cornhole.  The original Olympian Games even involved a three-legged sack race and a sort of coed wheelbarrow race!  Prizes were awarded to the various winners in all contests and it sounds like the whole thing was a roaring Victorian Era good time!

Without a doubt the inaugural Wenlock Olympian Games of 1850 were a success because they’ve stuck around almost annually for one hundred and seventy five years!

Wenlock Olympian Games ca. 1860

In addition to all the many professional things that he was as already mentioned, it should be stated that William Penny Brookes was also a devout, some would say almost a fanatical student of ancient Greek history, culture and mythology.  This was the reason that Brookes initially proposed that the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society, which he led and founded, name their games the “Olympian Games” as a nod to the heritage of Ancient Greece and the games held every four years from around the year 800 BCE onward to honor the Greek Gods on Mount Olympus.

By 1860 the Wenlock Olympian Games had increased enormously in popularity and soon included participants from all over Shropshire and various parts of England.  It was at this point that many began to take exception to Brookes’ naming of the Games “Olympian” because critics felt that the Games should not look towards a foreign civilization like ancient Greece, but rather, that the games should embrace their uniquely British and western heritage.

In 1860 Major General Herbert Edwardes, a national Victorian Era war hero, known for suppressing native uprisings in British India and all across Her Majesty’s empire, as well as a lifelong resident of Shropshire himself proposed that the Games be called, “The Shropshire Class of British Work or Play--or anything else you will--but let it tell of English men and women; English boys and girls!”

There was quite a dispute over the name.  The Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society that Brookes had founded was bitterly divided.  Members were unable to agree on what to do.  Finally, those members loyal to Brookes broke away from WARS and founded the Wenlock Olympian Society, specifically for running and overseeing the Games, and thankfully the Wenlock Olympian Society and the festival known as the Wenlock Olympian Games has endured to the present.  The Shropshire Class of British Work and Play just doesn’t have the same ring to it, and had members of the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society given in to the prejudicial nature of upper class Victorian society, then maybe what we know today as the Olympic Games would never have been born at all.

Medal Awarded at the Wenlock Olympian Games

In 1890 Baron Pierre de Courbertin, the founder of the  modern Olympic International Committee (IOC) and the Frenchman largely credited today with creating the modern Olympics, visited with the Wenlock Olympian Society and the citizens of Wenlock held a special iteration of their Olympian Games in honor of their distinguished guest.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was so taken with the spectacle of the Wenlock Olympian Games, and so inspired by the work of William Penny Brookes, that he promptly returned to Paris and used his enormous wealth and diplomatic connections to found the International Olympic Committee.  In 1894 Baron Pierre de Coubertin named Englishman William Penny Brookes an honorary founding member of the IOC and the first modern day Olympic Games, in a nod to their ancient Greek roots, were held in Athens in the summer of 1896.

During the London Summer Olympics of 2012 the Games’ mascot was named Wenlock in honor of the modern Olympics' uniquely British heritage.   The Wenlock Olympian Society is alive well and today the Wenlock Olympian Games are as strong as ever and open to all athletes and competitors, showcasing a wide variety of skills and talents in all walks of life, as diverse as running, creative writing, dance--and  yes--even quoits and a three-legged sack race.

The Wenlock Olympian Games remain Good Old Fashioned Fun just as their founder William Penny Brookes would have wanted and intended.