Telford
Telford is a town in the Telford and Wrekin borough in Shropshire, England. The wider borough covers the town, its suburbs and surrounding towns and villages. The town is close to the county's eastern boundary, and near the River Severn. The notable hill near the town called The Wrekin is part of the Shropshire Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. To the south of the town is the Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Places around the Ironbridge Gorge area, which were developed into the town itself, are internationally recognised as being "The Birthplace of Industry" being to a large extent constructed during the Industrial Revolution on the Shropshire Coalfield. The town is the main administrative centre for Telford and Wrekin Council.
The M54 motorway was completed in 1983, improving the town's road links with the West Midlands conurbation, Wolverhampton is south east and Birmingham is in the same direction. In the 2021 census, the town had a population of 156,896 while the wider borough had an estimated population of 185,600. It is the most populous settlement in Shropshire and is nearly twice the size of Shropshire's historic county town, Shrewsbury, to the west. It is near Staffordshire: Stafford is to the east and Stoke-on-Trent is north east from the town.
The town is polycentric, having been designated under the New Towns Acts in 1963 and 1968 and developed between the 1960s to the 1970s. Centred on a shopping centre and a public park, the new town is named after Thomas Telford, a civil engineer on many road, canal and rail projects in the county. It was originally designated under the name Dawley New Town. As well as multiple villages and Dawley, the other constituent towns are Coalbrookdale, Madeley, Newport, Oakengates and Wellington.
History
Early history
Early settlement in the area was thought to be on the land that sloped up from the Weald Moors towards the line along which the Roman Watling Street was built. Farmland surrounded three large estates in the 10th century, namely Wellington, Wrockwardine and Lilleshall.From the 13th century there was urban development in Wellington and Madeley, where Wenlock Priory founded a new town. Six monastic houses, founded in the 11th and 12th centuries, had large interests in the area's economic growth. They collectively acquired almost half of the area and profited from coal and ironstone mines and iron smithies on their estates.
The area was the site of the 1821 Cinderloo Uprising, which saw 3,000 people protest against the lowering of wages for those working in the local coal industry. The protests resulted in the deaths of three striking colliers.
Modern history
The New Town was first designated on 16 January 1963 by the Conservative administration as Dawley New Town, covering of Dawley, Wenlock, Oakengates, Wellington Rural District and Shifnal Rural District. Development started, guided by the Dawley New Town Development Corporation, with the first homes on the new Sutton Hill housing estate being occupied in 1967. Initial planning and design concepts for Dawley New Town were produced by the Birmingham-based John Madin Design Group.The Minister proposed an extension of in 1968. The Dawley New Town Amendment Order was made on 29 November 1968, extending the New Town area by of "land lying within the urban districts of Oakengates and Wellington and the rural districts of Shifnal and Wellington". The Order also renamed the new town Telford, after the Scottish-born civil engineer Thomas Telford, who in 1787 became Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire. Other suggested names at the time were Dawelloak and Wrekin Forest City.
Most of the infrastructure was constructed from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, with the major housing and commercial development occurring over three decades up to the early 1990s when the Development Corporation was wound up to be replaced by the Commission for New Towns, later English Partnerships, and most of the property was handed over to the then Wrekin District Council. Telford was now 25 years old and was firmly established as one of the most important towns in the region. There is a Retail Park called Wrekin Retail Park in Wellington.
In 1983, after fierce opposition and three public enquiries, the M54 motorway was completed, connecting the town to the M6 and thence the rest of the UK's motorway network. Other major roads are the A5, A518 and A442, which is commonly known as the Eastern Primary or EP, and is officially branded Queensway.
Many of the new town's residents were originally from the West Midlands conurbation, which includes Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Dudley and Walsall. A majority of the council house tenants in Telford were rehoused from inner-city Birmingham. The rehousing affected existing communities, who were sometimes resentful of the changes. As a result some individuals still refuse to put Telford in their address, instead using the original local name and often citing the existence of Town Councils as support for the argument "you can't live in a town in a town", e.g. Wellington Telford. The new town's residents who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s earned the unwanted nickname 'overspill' from people living in the existing towns and villages.
In 2007, a £250 million regeneration plan for the town centre was announced, which includes the pedestrianisation of the road surrounding the shopping centre and the creation of new cafés, bars and shops which would lead to 1,750 new jobs. The reason for the expansion is that the original 'centre' was only ever a shopping place with no real heart. As the 'centre' closed early in the evening there was no nightlife at all in the area, the only major local entertainment areas being in Oakengates and Wellington.
The first phase of the town-centre development, named Southwater, was completed in 2014. The official opening ceremony, on 18 October 2014, included live music and fireworks. The area includes a refurbished library, various chain restaurants, Cineworld IMAX Cinema, a bowling alley/arcade and a new multi-storey car park.
Geography
Telford town centre lies about east/south-east of Shrewsbury and north-west of Wolverhampton. The town covers 7,803 hectares and its southern and eastern parts, between the Severn Gorge and Donnington Wood, include the East Shropshire coalfield. North and north-west Telford lie beyond the coalfield's boundary fault on sandstone beds which, along with other Triassic formations, prevail over much of the North Shropshire plain. The town centre stands on a watershed, with land to the south draining towards the River Severn and to the north sloping gently down towards the Weald Moors. The town is dominated by the Wrekin, a large hill of 407 m, south-west of Wellington, straddling the border with the unitary Shropshire Council.Governance
Within the borough of Telford & Wrekin, the town is entirely parished. Telford has no single town council because of this. The town is also divided into Wards, within the Telford and Wrekin borough. These are used for electoral purposes and demographic surveys. Telford was created politically – but its attempts to make a cohesive town from the fusion of other independent towns: Wellington, Madeley, Hadley, Oakengates, Dawley, Ironbridge and Donnington have largely been successful. Despite this, the town has much clearer divisions than in other older towns, such as nearby Shrewsbury, which have developed into one consolidated urban area over time. Some small settlements to the south such as a part of Ironbridge and Broseley, while part of the Telford Urban Area, are administered by Shropshire Council.Telford is the only settlement within the Telford parliamentary constituency, which was held by Labour from its creation in 1997 until the 2015 general election. It was then held by Lucy Allen who stood down ahead of the 2024 general election after defecting to the Reform UK party. The current MP since the election is Shaun Davies. Some suburbs, such as Wellington, are located in The Wrekin, which also has varying support between the Conservatives and Labour. Conservative Mark Pritchard was reelected as the latter seat's MP in 2024, and has now held the seat continuously since 2005. Telford is administratively part of the West Midlands region.
Demography
In 1963 Dawley new town was intended to take 50,000 people from the West Midlands conurbation and so to grow to a town of 70,000 or more. By 1968 Telford was intended to take an additional 50,000 and grow to a town of 220,000 or more by 1991. By 1983, however, Telford's population was just under 108,000, and it was generally thought that it might not reach 120,000 by the late 1980s.The population of Telford's built-up area was 147,980 according to the 2011 census. At the 2001 census, the urban area had 138,241 people. The built-up area includes Broseley which lies outside the Borough of Telford and Wrekin and also includes the towns of Dawley, Oakengates, Wellington and Madeley.
Telford has a younger than average population, and a higher rate of teenage pregnancy than the national average, as well as relatively high levels of income deprivation with 15% of residents living in low income households. In addition the level of statutorily homeless households in 2004/05 was above average for England. The Telford and Wrekin area is a popular commuter zone, containing some relatively rural areas in the North and West of the borough. These are popular with commuters to the West Midlands conurbation, due to the good transport links provided by the A5/M54.
In 2011, the town was 91.9% white, 4.7% Asian, 1.2% Black, 1.9% Mixed race and 0.2% other. At the same census the population of the town was 142,723 and had an area of 46.2 kilometers with the population estimated to be 147,105 in 2016.
Economy
During the economic crisis of the late 1960s, unemployment in the then-new town was initially high.However, in 1967 Halesfield Industrial Estate was founded on the south-eastern edge of the town – the first real answer to Telford's unemployment problems. Other large estates followed, in 1973 with Stafford Park just east of the town centre and in 1979 with Hortonwood, to the north, helping ease the unemployment crisis in a decade which saw an almost unbroken rise in unemployment.
In total, half a million square metres of factory space were provided between 1968 and 1983, making Telford an attractive investment area.
By 1976, Telford had begun to recruit industry from the US, Europe, and Japan. The foreign firms required larger factories, and they began to be built at Stafford Park. By 1983 over 2,000 jobs in Telford were provided by around 40 foreign companies. In contrast to industry in the Black Country at the time, these new companies focused on high-technology industries rather than the heavy and metal-finishing industries.
The new arrivals included the American company Unimation and three firms from Japan: Nikon UK Ltd., which opened a warehouse at Halesfield in 1983; video-tape manufacturers Hitachi Maxell at Apley Castle in 1983; and office equipment manufacturers Ricoh, who took a site for a factory at Priorslee next to the M54, and formed the first in Telford's new enterprise zone.
Consequently, from the later 1970s, Telford began to attract high-technology firms and to diversify its industry, and the promotion of the Service industry also began to prosper, in the Telford Town Centre area. However, a deepening national recession meant that, despite the creation of new jobs, there were net job losses from 1979. Unemployment grew from 3.4 per cent in 1969 to over 8 per cent in 1972 and 22.3 per cent in 1983; long-term unemployment rose even faster. Nevertheless, the rate of increase in unemployment was slowing down by 1983 and was making some progress against national and regional trends.
Unemployment in Telford was still around the 20% mark – nearly double the national average at the time – as late as 1986. The Lawson Boom of the next three years saw that figure fall dramatically by the end of the decade, only for it to rise to a similarly high figure again by 1992 as a result of the early 1990s recession. In recent years the local economy has matured, the median gross weekly earnings for full-time workers who work in Telford and Wrekin was £563 in 2019.
Telford has attracted several large IT services companies, including EDS who support the MOD contract from the Euston Park site, as well as a vast array of clients across the world from the Plaza building. Also Capgemini and Fujitsu employ a significant number of staff in the area, mainly supporting their governmental client, HM Revenue & Customs. The expansion in these job sectors provided a great asset to Telford's economic recovery after 1992. By August 2007, the success story of Telford's economy had seen unemployment shrink to 3.3% – a fraction of its peak 15 years earlier.
However, the subsequent recession meant that unemployment in the area had risen to 5% by February 2011, although this was still well below the national average.
The Shropshire Star evening newspaper was based in Ketley. There is a free local paper the Telford Journal which is also published by the Shropshire Star. However, the building was demolished in 2023, and moved to Telford Town Centre.
There have been job losses, with the movement of 500 Defence Logistics Organisation jobs at the MoD base at Sapphire House, Telford town centre, to Bristol. The sugar beet factory at Allscott closed in 2007.
In 2019 a joint venture called Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land installed itself in Telford, not far from Babcock DSG. Together they are responsible for the Challenger 2 Life Extension Project.