It’s strange to think that even as late as the 1950s, Telford didn’t exist. What was here was a collection of tiny settlements and acres of farmland, with Wellington the local market town, and Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton the main urban centres 20km away. But with the push for New Towns in the 1960s and 70s, this area was deemed perfect for a new life for people from Birmingham and beyond.
As with so many similar developments up and down the country, a complete town, with shops, schools, hospitals, offices and homes sprung up, and 50 years later it’s indistinguishable from settlements that would have appeared in the Domesday Book. Its name is a nod to the great engineer who designed and built the world’s first iron bridge over the River Severn, just a few kilometres to the south.
Now, Telford is a busy place to live, shop and work in, with plenty of successful businesses setting up here. There are a couple of well connected industrial estates, which account for a good deal of the town’s rail traffic, and a busy shopping area right in the middle. In the domestic parts, though, the town’s planners have ensured it’s a green town, the newly built homes occupying small clusters with open fields and woodlands in between, making it a pleasant place to live, and certainly a New Town success story. Looking for trains and tickets to Telford? Here’s the lowdown.
