Forty-six years before the modern Olympics began, the small Shropshire market town of Much Wenlock was the seemingly unlikely setting for the establishment of an ‘Olympian Games'. Commencing in 1850, they were to become an annual festival in the town. The architect of this sporting enterprise was a local surgeon and J.P., William Penny Brookes. Initially these Games were the ‘Olympian Class' of the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society, which Brookes had started in 1841, but they came to be organised separately by the Wenlock Olympian Society. Brookes exercised a very personal and extensive influence over the proceedings until his death in 1895.

His purpose in creating these Olympian Games was that he wished to encourage and improve the horizons of the people of his town, especially those of the working class. This was merely an extension  of the philosophy which had earlier led him to establish the Agricultural Reading Society. The philosophy behind his Olympian Games is well-expressed by a statement in the Olympian Society committee book, written by Brookes on 25 February 1850. An

‘Olympian class' was to be established ‘for the promotion of the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood 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 athletics exercises and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments'...