‘At Great Wollaston, just off the road from Shrewsbury to Wales, stands a small thatched cottage, birthplace and home of the oldest Englishman who ever lived. Thomas Parr was born in 1483. He lived to see ten monarchs on the throne, from the Plantagenet Edward IV, through all the Tudors to the Stuart Charles I. He joined the army at 17, returning when he was 35 to run the family farm. He married for the first time when he was 80, had an affair and an illegitimate child when he was 100 and married again at 122. When he was 152, the Earl of Arundel took him up to London to meet Charles I, who asked for the secret of his long life. ‘Moral temperance and a vegetarian diet,’ he replied. Unfortunately, the foul stench of London polluted his lungs, which had thrived on Shropshire air, and he died in November 1635. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.’
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 